Puffin Cruise to Eastern Egg Rock, Maine, with Hardy Boat

Following the Black Hole of travel writing that was 2020, I’ve been fortunate—and hugely relieved—to have a steady flow of assignments since the early spring. One of my favorites was a story on the new Empire State Trail for National Geographic, and the experience of working with them was such a joy that I immediately talked my editor into a story on birding ecotours and conservation that I’ve been wanting to write for over a year. (Look for that in September.) Wanting to add firsthand experience to the piece, I started researching an Atlantic puffin cruise off the coast of Maine.

I got lucky: one tour company had an opening the very next weekend. I immediately purchased the tickets, knowing I’d figure out a coastal Maine road trip itinerary later.

Find out more about the road trip and the best places to stop in this post. Here we’re going to get into the experience of the puffin cruise. 

How to Choose a Puffin Cruise

In North America, your two best options for seeing Atlantic puffins are:

• Machias Seal Island, in the disputed waters between the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine. Tours for Machias Seal Island generally, but not exclusively, depart from New Brunswick, Canada.
• Eastern Egg Rock, in Muscongus Bay, off the coast of Maine.

Given that I live only a few hours’ drive from Maine, I went with a US-based puffin tour.

Though there are several puffin tour operators, I chose Hardy Boat for a couple reasons. Their tours are shorter, but the company guarantees puffin sightings—or you’ll be credited toward a future tour. They also partner with National Audubon’s Project Puffin, which helped create the first restored seabird colony in the world more than 40 years ago. To date, Hardy Boat has donated $200,000 from its ticket sales to Project Puffin. Our tickets cost $35 per person, for a 1.5-hour Saturday-evening cruise. An Audubon naturalist narrates each cruise, which gives invaluable insight into the birds and their habitat.

A quick PSA: Hardy Boat did not subsidize this trip or compensate me in any way. I paid for the entire Maine coastal road trip out of pocket.

Although I was able to book a same-week cruise, I don’t recommend it unless you’re already planning to be near the harbor where the boat launches—in my case, this was New Harbor, across from Boothbay Harbor. Making a last-minute reservation means you’re limited on tour days and times, and also makes it exceptionally difficult to find a decent local hotel with availability.

Preparing for the Puffins: What You Need to Know

It gets pretty chilly out on the water, so make sure you dress in layers. Rubber-soled shoes with good treads will help you maintain traction on the boat deck even if the seas are choppy. Tours usually run in the rain (unless it’s extremely heavy), so take a poncho or a rain jacket with a hood.

If you’re planning to use a digital SLR or film camera to photograph, make sure your equipment is charged and packed. You’ll find it nearly impossible to capture a decent shot in rough weather, so consider taking a rail mount, plus a lens hood in case of rain. While my photos were uniformly disappointing, my friend Aisha, who is a talented photographer and took the same cruise the day after ours, posted some nice shots on her Instagram.

And don’t forget your binoculars; unless you have excellent distance vision, you’ll be squinting to see birds hundreds of feet from the boat.

If you’re prone to even the slightest bit of motion sickness, take your favorite meds at least an hour before climbing aboard. Meclizine, also known by the brand name Bonine, works best for me, and doesn’t cause as much drowsiness as Dramamine.

Perhaps as important: be prepared to line up early.

Hardy Boat Puffin Cruise

The e-mail confirmation for our trip with Hardy Boat said to arrive on the dock 45 minutes prior to departure. We got there an hour before, and were surprised to find that the line was already at least 15 deep. People also weren’t especially observant of social distancing, but that’s a different story. We joined the queue, keeping as much distance as we could, and were excited to spot several seabirds, including two kinds of gulls and cormorants, right there on the docks.

Boarding time finally arrived. It is a truth rarely spoken that no one wants a lower-deck seat on a tour boat. Unless, perhaps, it’s raining, or you feel the need to stick close to the snack bar. Being early to queue up meant we were able to stake out a bench at the back of the Hardy III’s top deck, as the seats around us quickly filled.

Then the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker: the waters were especially rough that evening—a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 for rolling. (The man and woman in front of us, the latter of whom was sporting a transdermal patch behind her ear, immediately disembarked. Hardy Boat will rebook you on a future cruise when this happens.)

My husband flashed me a look. Motion sickness and I have a long, long history. With a proprietary cocktail of one Bonine and two ginger capsules every four hours, I can usually manage it well enough on planes, trains, and buses. But stop-and-go car traffic and choppy waters are my nemeses. We’d gone on a rolling-seas whale watch in Cape Cod several years ago, during which a handful of people were unable to hold down their breakfasts. How I managed not to toss mine overboard remains a mystery, but I’d walked off the boat on shaking legs.  

I’d already swallowed my motion-sickness meds, we’d driven all this way in mood-killing traffic, and I had an article to write. On top of that, my desire to see the puffins was becoming a bit white whale-ish. I slouched into my seat and resolved that I would not leave, nor would I get sick, damn it.

We motored out into Muscongus Bay, en route to Eastern Egg Rock. I was fine, at least for the first half of the trip. Yes, the boat rolled—so much that I don’t have a single good photo from the trip. But we saw dozens of birds: laughing and herring gulls, cormorants, arctic terns, common eiders, Northern gannets, and black guillemots, whose white wing patches and bright red feet make them easy to spot while they’re in the air. Although we didn’t see nearly as many puffins as gulls, we did see about a half-dozen—floating on the water, taking off into the sky, and swooping over the boulders of the treeless island.

Every sighting was an event for me. I’m a lifelong animal lover, and I still stop what I’m doing to observe the deer browsing along the edges of my yard, or a fox bounding into the air and then diving into my pasture grass in pursuit of a rodent snack. When we’re out hiking and I see or hear a songbird I don’t recognize, I immediately pull out the Merlin app to make an ID. I won’t even bother to recount how much time I spent stalking a great blue heron that decided to go fishing in my neighbor’s pond.

Suffice it to say that on the puffin cruise, each flash of yellow-dimpled white cheeks, bright orange beak, and webbed feet brought a new wave of excitement. If my mother were still alive, she’d have reminded me to stop grinning like a chimp, lest my face freeze that way.

A couple of times, my husband motioned for me to stand up and come over to the starboard side for a better look. This was my big mistake. As the boat slowed to a crawl along the edges of Eastern Egg Rock, the rolling became more pronounced. I started to feel the first telltale waves of nausea, but stubbornly wanted those last view avian views as the boat turned around and headed back to harbor.

I spent the 30-minute return trip berating myself for not taking some Queasy Drops with me, and reciting I will not throw up, I will not throw up in my mind. Behind me, a fellow passenger asked his companion if she’d liked the trip, and she whined, “We barely saw any puffins.” If I’d been able to open my mouth without undigested objects flying out, I’d have said to her, “Are you kidding? For $35, you went on a tour narrated by a National Audubon Naturalist, and you did see puffins. Plus you got to see a couple hundred other birds, many of which you’d never see from shore.” Instead, I stared morosely at a fixed point on the horizon, unable to savor the views of Muscongus Bay, and tried to hush my roiling stomach.

Did this taint my experience on the puffin cruise? Only slightly. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, just to catch a glimpse of these spectacular birds in their summer habitat.

Post-Puffin Cruise

Back on land, we walked very slowly back to the car. It took about 15 minutes for the imminent-barfing sensation to subside, replaced by fatigue and low-grade but not unmanageable queasiness. After reminding my husband not to drive so close to other cars that we might have to stop short, I tipped my head back against the car seat, closed my eyes, and let myself drift into a brief nap, one of the best ways I know of to calm an upset stomach.

We’d bypassed the touristy-looking restaurant at the dock where we’d disembarked—I hadn’t been up to eating at that point, anyway—in favor of driving toward our hotel, 40 minutes away in Boothbay Harbor. At about the halfway mark, we stopped in Damariscotta, a sweet little riverfront town where we’d spent a couple hours that afternoon.

At 8:00 p.m., the crowds had vanished, and we had our pick of restaurants. Not up to seafood, we stopped at Best Thai, in the middle of Main Street, where I sipped a Coke to further ease my stomach, before digging into a mango curry (not very spicy, but pretty good nonetheless).

As I scrolled back through my photos from the puffin cruise, none of which were especially good, I cursed the fact that I hadn’t been able to get something worth posting on Instagram. Then I reconsidered: I’d had an experience not everyone gets to enjoy. I’d seen the birds live, with my own eyes, as they splashed in the water and took off into the air. And I’d even observed some birds I’d never seen before. I’d gotten to do something I’d always wanted, and that was something to remember, long after a fleeting post on social media gets a paltry number of likes.

It also got me thinking about how I’d like to go on a puffin cruise again, and what I’d do differently. In the meantime, there’s always the Puffin Burrow Cam.

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