Coming into Bar Harbor.
Looking back at the Yorktown.
Bar Harbor
We stopped at Sieur de Monts, where we had time for a short stroll through the Wild Gardens of Acadia. Along our trolley route, we saw beautiful views of the rocky coastline and the woods, while we were filled in on the history of this sizable park.
We stopped at Thunder Hole, an unusual rock formation on the water's edge. When there is a good surf, it apparently sounds like thunder. We were having a calm waters sort of day, so there was no thundering going on. Still, it was an interesting and pretty spot on an incredibly pretty day.
We spent a fair amount of time trolleying through the park, but, of course, the ultimate goal is to go to the top of Cadillac Mountain (all 1,530 feet of it).
We were blessed with a super-clear day and were able to see forever. Lovely fresh air. Beautiful views. Couldn't have been better.
In the picture below, our Yorktown is the tiny white blip on the far side of the island at the left. The larger ship visible to the right is Holland America's Veendam.
We wound our way back down to Bar Harbor, where we were treated to a "lobster bake." Once again, we had steamed mussels, a whole lobster, and corn on the cob. We're getting to be old hands at this lobster thing. We had been told that the blueberry harvest had just concluded and to expect a blueberry dessert of some sort. Ours was a moist blueberry-studded cake. Everything was tasty and evocative of the area.
We had a couple hours of free time to wander through the town and soak up the sea air and sun. Eventually it was time to head back to the dock to catch our short tender ride back out to the ship.
And that's where the fun began.
A group of 65 of us had signed up for the early shuttle back to the Yorktown. There would be another at 5pm. Both of these trips were to be made by smaller tenders than we'd had in the morning. (The tendering was being provided by a local whalewatching company and we were dependent on whatever other demands they had for their services.) Since so many people had been interested in the earlier shuttle, the Yorktown offered to send two inflatables to pick up the additional "early" folks.
Sixty-five of us clambered onto the provided shuttle, and we made our way through the harbor to the Yorktown. When we arrived, we were sitting too low in the water. The tender's short gangway left the angle unusable, and the Yorktown didn't have something sized to work with the tender size either. Much gnashing of crew teeth (on both vessels). Finally, our tender was told to go the stern, where there was a landing platform set out for the inflatables. We made several approaches, trying to make that work, to no avail. We were told to go back to the starboard side. Several more attempts were made. The inflatables had now arrived and left their passengers.
The eventual solution was for us to don life jackets and transfer from our tour boat tender to the inflatable and be taken to the stern. This took awhile to negotiate between the several vessels and also determine who would provide the life jackets, etc. We happened to be in the first wave to get our life vests, which resulted in us being on the first trip of the inflatable-ferrying. The captain greeted us at the landing platform and helped each of us out of our life jackets. Since there were 65 of us having to transfer to a single inflatable that held 13, this makeshift process took quite awhile. By the time we made it back onto our ship, we were all thoroughly tired of the whole shooting match. The last of the people made it off the tender/inflatable around 5pm. Added a little mixture of excitement and relief to our cocktail hour.
Just to add to our evening's socializing, we found out that we hadn't left Bar Harbor at the planned time of 6pm because our anchor was tangled in abandoned old lobster traps and potlines. The crew spent about an hour and a half dragging things up and clearing our line before we were able to sail out of Frenchman Bay.
All in all, our day was quite perfect and spectacular. Let's just say there were a few logistical hiccups. I'm guessing there will be some serious conversations--between the captain and crew, between the cruise line and the hired tenders. We travelers were just glad to be on board, laugh a bit over our awkward and strange boarding process, and shift our focus to the adventures ahead.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment