Skip to main content

ECCKF Trip: Day Five


Today started off with a sunrise trip in Charleston Harbor. I got up at 5 AM, made myself a quick breakfast then headed over to the meeting point at 6 AM. From there we caravanned over to the put-in, about 5 miles from the park. We hit the water just as the sun came up – another beautiful day – and were almost immediately joined by dolphins. There were two to the right of us and a couple more out to the left. They stayed alongside for about ten minutes. That was really cool.

The trip, while really enjoyable, wasn’t very organized. The trip leader’s initial briefing was just that we would paddle towards Ft. Sumter, but would turn around short of the fort so we could get back on time. Except if we wanted to. But then we wouldn’t be with the group anymore. He made no assessment of anyone’s skills, though he did set up a sweep to follow the group. It didn’t take long after launching for the group to get very spread out on the water. I was in the front group with the leader, who was paddling pretty quickly. At one point he did stop and say we should wait for the group to close up, but then he immediately started paddling again. Before we knew it we were landing on the beach at Sumter (the place, you’ll remember, where we weren’t going).

Along the way I had noticed that one woman was getting really panicy. She was paddling an NDK Romany, and said she wasn’t used to the tippiness of the boat. She said she had just gotten it and was used to the greater stability of her old boat, a Wilderness Systems Tempest 170. Since I happened to be paddling my Tempest 170 and am also very comfortable in a Romany (I own one of those too) I offered to switch with her for the return trip. She readily accepted. She had a much happier paddle back, and I got to play in a Romany (still my favorite boat), so it was a win-win. On the paddle back I chatted with one of the woman’s friends, who said that this woman has a tendency to panic under any kind of uncertain conditions, which explains why she was freaking out in what were really very benign conditions – the smallest of rollers from the wind and tide. I’m glad I was able to help her out.

At the end of the paddle I got back into my car and flipped on the GPS to guide me back to the festival, since we weren’t all caravanning back together. Lo and behold, the unit said there was a geocache 350 feet away! I grabbed a pen, hopped back out of the car, and dashed over to make a quick find. By this point the tour guide was ready to leave and lock the gate behind him, so I sprinted back to the car so as not to hold up the last of the group.

I got back to camp about 9:30 AM and had a snack of some cereal and the leftover coffee from early in the morning. Mmmm, cold coffee that had been sitting in the French press for four hours. Maybe not the ultimate gourmet coffee experience, but far from the worst cup I’ve ever had!

The rest of the day was a whirl of classes (Core Paddling with Ben Lawry, Balance Drills w/ Karen Knight), trying out boats (I really like the Valley Aquanaut LV. Must refrain from buying more boats. Must refrain from buying more boats. Must refrain ...), and a spectacular evening show featuring Dubside, Nigel Foster, Alison Sigethy and the team of Karen Knight and Boob Foote.

I finished the evening by hanging out at the campsite with my friends Dan, Kathryn, Marla and Steve. Then I headed back over to my tent where I quickly conked out.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apostle Islands: Gordon Lightfoot Warned Us

This entry is part of my write-up of a September 2024 trip to The Apostle Islands. The story begins  here . Thursday 9/5 Thursday morning we drove the roughly 20 minutes to our launch point at Little Sand Bay in The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Upon our arrival we were met by Ranger Angel (it makes sense that the Apostles have a guardian Angel, right?), who directed us as to where to launch, checked our permits, gave us useful information about the weather, and told us how to describe our location ifwe needed to call 911 (!). She also gave us a once-over and declared that we appeared to be "shipshape". It is not her responsibility to evaluate people's ability to paddle in the open waters of Lake Superior, but by her own admission if she detects that people don't have the appropriate skills or preparation, she'll gently steer them to safer courses of action.   Loading the kayaks at Little Sand Bay Many people are familiar with Gordon Lightfoot's song The...
Post a Comment
Read more

Visiting Charles in Upstate New York

Looking back, growing up I was friends with a lot of the weird kids. It makes me think - maybe I was a weird kid too? Let's table that line of thought for now, but along those lines, let me tell you about my friend Charles, who was a textbook example of ADHD before ADHD was even in the textbook.  For the record, ADHD was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM) in 1968. Coincidentally, that's the same year Charles and I met, and yes, he's an ADHD dude. A smart kid, he nonetheless never paid attention in class and typically spent class reading a comic book he had hidden inside whatever book we were supposed to be reading - when he even bothered to sit in his seat and pretend to pay attention. During our college years Charles attended something of a party school, where he focused more on party than school. As a live-at-home commuter student, I loved that I could visit Charles and get a taste of the ov...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Guilty Pleasure

I have to admit that I feel guilty doing it. It's just not something that people like me do. In fact, I have spent years looking down on people who do it. I'm talking about powersports. Activities which involve using a motor to have fun. I have always been a people-powered person. On the water I scowl at jet skiers and water ski boats. On the cross-country ski trails I shake my head at people who ruin the pristine winter wilderness with snowmobiles. Being something of a car guy, I go a little easier on the pleasures of motorized vehicles on land. I don't expect car owner to be a super-miler in a Prius, but I also give a pretty wide berth to ATVs and dirt bikes. But now I'm motorcycling. Over the summer I fulfilled a "bucket list" item by learning to ride a motorcycle (Valerie took the class too). For the last month or so I've been tooling around on a borrowed Kawasaki Vulcan cruiser, and I must say I'm enjoying it. Riding a motorcycle is ridiculous...
Post a Comment
Read more