In my travels in Maine, I have found or heard about some places with pretty interesting names (see my earlier blog entries on Hot Ass Pond and Bunker's Whore).
I recently came across another one, called Asshole Rock. Like Bunker's Whore, Asshole Rock is a marine ledge, and is located in the passage known as The Gut, which separates Great Cranberry from Little Cranberry Island off of Mount Desert Island.
Asshole Rock is described as porkchop-shaped with a large crack down the middle. One wonders if the crack contributed to how the feature got its name, but I was unable to find any information about this. Although there are stories about how some places, like Hot Ass Pond and Bunker's Whore got their names, the naming of Asshole Rock remains a mystery.
While lobstermen set some of their traps in the shallower water closer to shore, many set traps in the deeper, colder water further out. The Gut serves as a shortcut to get to the deeper water without having to take the longer way around either of the Cranberry Islands. Tides influence the depth of the water around the rock, so going safely through The Gut can happen only at certain times of day. Using GPS to navigate is not safe, because it is not accurate enough to guarantee you will not run aground.
One of my sources, a local named Bruce, described how to navigate safely through The Gut the old-fashioned way. According to Bruce, when you sight Asshole Rock, look for the crack on the ledge. If it is completely exposed at low tide, it is unsafe to proceed. If the bottom of the crack is still submerged, steer forward toward the boulders, but look backward at a church steeple three miles away which you align with a seaweed-covered stone a hundred yards off the boat's stern. Looking forward, when the ledge lines up with the tree line on an island two miles to the east, turn the boat forty degrees to port.
During Prohibition, small ships loaded with cases of whiskey came down from Canada and stopped outside the three-mile limit in international waters. Locals came out in small boats to unload cases of whiskey and attempted to elude federal agents in fast boats to run the cargo ashore where it could be distributed to buyers. The locals risked arrest and seizure of their boats but, if they were skilled and lucky, this did not happen often and there was money to be made during hard times.
Reportedly, if locals were being chased by federal agents, going through The Gut offered an opportunity to escape. Many chases ended because the pursuers did not want to risk running aground.
Today, Asshole Rock serves as a reminder that, although radar, GPS, and other modern devices are helpful, sometimes you just need to rely upon skills learned from the old salts.
