Fjard vs. Fjord

As the summer nears end, the days are beautiful… clear, crisp, cloudless skies, and the nights are COLD! We’re enjoying our last full week of the season revisiting some old favorites, and exploring a few new ones. We sailed up from Tenants Harbor to Somes Sound. This is a fjard that separates the two halves of Mount Desert Island. Before you submit your comments telling me about a spelling mistake, I found out that a fjard (from the Swedish fjärd) is a thing, and not the same thing as a fjord. Now what’s the difference, I hear you ask. Well they are both sea inlets formed by glacial activity. They are both deep. They both have steep banks on either side. Neither are rivers. The only real difference I can find is that fjords tend to have more dramatic cliffs on their banks, and fjärds may be less straight. Who knew?

Anyway, I digress. We sailed up this nice body of water, whatever it’s called, with the hills of Acadia National Park on either side. At the northern tip, the fjard widens into a bay, where we moored and dinghied over to Abel’s Lobster Pound for dinner. Then next day, we headed back down the fjard to Southwest Harbor, where we met up with Dan and Marcia, friends we met through our grass roots activism group, for… you guessed it… another lobster dinner. Think I’m starting to grow claws!

Today, we took a short hop over to Northeast Harbor, just across the bay. This is a narrow harbor in a quiet, but very pleasant town. It was mostly a work day, catching up on business and administrative matters.

It’s sad to think the season is coming to an end. but I suppose there’s more to life than the sea and sailing.