THE NEW MEADOWS RIVER is the only river draining into eastern Casco Bay. It is relatively short, but of all the Casco Bay rivers its the widest, deepest, and most navigable. In fact, the term river is almost a misnomer. It drains only a small area, saltwater reaches almost to the river’s headwaters, and practically all of the water passing in and out of the river is tidal. The river is more like a long, splintered cove, part of the sea, but a world unto itself, made, it seems, for poking around in small boats.
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Each part of the river is distinct. It begins as a slight drainage creek through cattails, but it quickly flows into a brackish pond formed by natural bedrock and the damming of the river at the Bath Road. Beneath the road’s culvert, the tide falls downriver on the ebb and upriver on the flood, forming a modest reversing falls. From there, the river runs south between tight and rocky banks.
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At its midsection it widens, the water slows, and silt sprawls in rich mud flats and eel ruts along the banks and between the river islands. Ospreys nest in trees on almost every island and point, comprising one of the most dense populations of the birds on the coast.
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In its lower reaches, the river is joined by several long and narrow coves and by the Gurnet, which carries seawater in from as far away as Harpswell Sound. It flows past the nearly land-locked pool of the Basin and by the working harbors of Cundys and Sebasco and then through a narrow mouth between Bear Island and Fort Point.
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For the sailor with time to explore, the New Meadows River and its approaches offer a dozen attractve and remote anchorages that are little known to cruising boats—a mixture of working harbors and summer havens well worth the visit. Attractive Sebasco Harbor is only four miles north of Cape Small. Three miles farther north is The Basin, easy to enter and completely landlocked, a marvelous harbor of refuge.

Approaches. The New Meadows, despite its short length, has a large tidal volume by the time it reaches Casco Bay, with correspondingly strong currents. They can reach several knots in the narrow sections and be felt out in the bay as far as Wood Island. The ebb runs against the southwest winds, so when it is blowing from that quarter, the river becomes choppy, and so does much of eastern Casco Bay.
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Boats can be launched from the town ramp in the upper reaches of the river, at the New Meadows Marina, or at the gravel ramp on the upper pond, known as New Meadows Lake.
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