2026-05-24 Update

I didn't want the very few people who actually read this blog to think that I have been inactive, so I am posting this just to let you know what I have been up to.

On 2026-05-16 I did what I call a "Harbor Cruise" with some friends of mine. I don't want to invade their privacy, so I am including no photos of them or of the trip. It was a nice sunny Saturday, and I had spent most of Friday scrubbing the decks, so she was nice and shiny and didn't smell of shrimp bait.

We pulled out about 10 AM and first motored to the NW to look at the airport ferry docks, the Alaska Marine Highway ferry docks, the JAG shipyard, Taquan Air, the Petro Marine fuel dock, and anything else we could see along the waterfront in that direction.

Then we motored back through the entrance to Bar Harbor to look at the boats that can be seen from the passageway that is near to the rock breakwater.

From there we headed SE along the town waterfront.

There was a lot to see there. There were 3 large cruise ships in port that day plus a smaller one.

After the cruise ships you pass the entrance to the Thomas Basin boat harbor, all the fish processing plants, the dock for the NOAA ship the Fairweather (not in port that day), the US Coast Guard base, and then Doyon's Landing private moorage for larger yachts that don't fit into our harbors.

After that we went off the SE end of Pennock Island, and I shut down the engines while we enjoyed our lunches as we just drifted there for a while.

To get back to the harbor we circled the SE end of Pennock Island and headed back NW around the far side of Pennock Island which eventually brought us back to Bar Harbor.

We didn't log many miles, but it was a nice day to be out on the water for a few hours and enjoy the area and spend some dedicated time with friends.

The on 2026-05-23 I took the boat again for just a day trip with a couple of friends. My primary goal for this trip was to finish setting up and dialing in my new Scotty electric downriggers. For those who don't know, in simple terms, a downrigger is a device that fishermen use to get their rigs down into deep water without having to put any weights directly on their lines.

I have been a diehard fan of Penn manual downriggers for decades but have now made the switch to Scotty electric downriggers. These electric downriggers require a bit of setup, and I had not done that yet. I also had a 12 VDC power port installed on the port transom area that had never been tested, so that was part of today's mission as well.

I figured that since I was setting up and testing the downriggers we might as well do a bit of trolling for King salmon at the same time.

Here's a map snippet from my Garmin InReach that shows our track for the day.

The harbor is up at the top left, and the farthest point we went to is down on the lower right.

On the way out of town we have to motor through town and there is a 7 knot speed limit, so we are forced to go pretty slowly through that area.

We were up on the flybridge on the way out and a sudden squall rolled through. It was short lived, but fairly violent. The rain was mixed with hail which rattled off the canvas flybridge cover and sounded like machine gun fire.

One of my boating buddies saw my track on the InReach and texted me to ask where I was headed. I responded that we were going to try a little trolling for King Salmon. He replied that he was fairly certain that King Salmon fishing was closed in this area until June 1st! We looked it up on our phones and confirmed that was correct, sort of. The way the regulations were worded it appeared that we could FISH for King Salmon but we just couldn't KEEP any King Salmon.

So, our plan for the morning sort of changed at that point.

In any case, I still wanted to set up and test my new electric downriggers. When we got to the Mountain Point area I went to neutral and we just drifted for a while. One by one I set up and tested each new downrigger, in the pouring rain I might add, and confirmed that they were working as expected.

Then, since we could not troll for salmon, we just went over to a nearby spot and bottom fished for a while. But it was cold and wet and a bit windy out on deck so that effort didn't last long.

It was getting close to lunch time, so we decided to run a mile or so over to an area known locally as "Ice House Cove." There is a mooring buoy in there.

The point marked with an "X" was where we set up and tested the new downriggers.

The point marked with a "Y" is where we bottom fished, briefly.

The point circled in blue is Ice House Cove where the mooring buoy is.

You have to sort of pick your way through the small islands and avoid the many rocks to get in there, but I've been in there numerous times so it was not a problem.

The mooring buoys are first-come first-served, but we lucked out and it was open when we got in there. We tied onto it, shut down the engines, and enjoyed our lunches in a real nice setting.

About 1 PM we pulled away from the mooring buoy and motored back to town, getting into my slip in the harbor a little after 2 PM.

We didn't get the opportunity to troll for salmon, but any day out on the water when you return safely is a good day on the water.