July 29, 1999

Chincoteague Island

Trip #38, #39, and #40

27-29 July, 1999

Day #1 - The Journey Begins

It started as most our vacations do. We had planned up to the point of actually getting there, but not much further. On the way there I stopped at a gas station for gas, and as I pumped it, ESPN played a baseball game at the pump. That was different. I wondered if you could change channels.

We arrived on Virginia's eastern shore at Chincoteague Island around 3:30 in the afternoon and were checked in and unpacked by 5:00 p.m. My daughter and I went out scouting for a place to launch our kayaks on the following day. We found that in order to use the public boat ramps we needed a $5 permit (for a week) but the government offices had closed for the day. A guy running a boat rental place offered us his boat ramps at no charge if we were unable to find anything else.

Side note #1: About thirty minutes from home I was kicking myself for not getting hold of Larry Bliven before I left. Larry had graciously offered to paddle with me and I was supposed to get back with him as vacation time grew near. As usual my short-term memory kicked in until it was too late to email Larry and make any plans.

Side note #2: While tooling around the beltway the cockpit cover on the Gannet blew off. I saw it blow away in the rearview mirror and I had to cross 2 lanes of traffic to pull over to the side of the road. It was a quarter mile jog back to where the cover was continually being run over and carried along by cars. There simply was no break in the traffic and as the cover blew by me two lanes away I thought I saw a nasty hole in it. I decided it wasn't worth the risk of getting it back and started walking back to the car. As the cover got near the van I saw the wife hop out like she was trying to get it. I had to start running again yelling for her to leave it alone that it wasn't worth getting run over. As luck would have it as the cover came by her there was a huge break in traffic and she just walked out and picked it up, then walked back. As I came running up all out of breath she asked me what all the yelling was about. I took the cover from her and saw that there was no damage at all and tossed it inside the van as I pulled my winded self back into the driver's seat. Kayaking is a dangerous sport.

By 7:00 we were driving around looking for the beach for the next day's outing. The plan (we were making it up as we drove around) was that the wife would drop me and our daughter off in the morning while she headed for the beach. When we got to the beach we spotted a nice protected bay on the backside of Assateague Island where we could put in the kayaks if it didn't get too shallow at low tide. One hundred yards away on the other side of the island was the beach. We could kill two birds with one stone since when we were done kayaking, my daughter could go play on the beach.

Day #2 - Me and the Munchkin go Paddling

MAP

The next morning, after a bunch of non-early rising grumbling, my daughter and I were on the water while my wife headed off for breakfast and I think a stout cup of coffee. It was high tide and this put in was called Little Tom's Cove.

We didn't really know where we wanted to go. I thought at first we might paddle out towards the "hook" of Assateague island, but there was a fishing boat between us and the tip of the island, so we just paddled straight out along the northern shore of Tom's Cove. About a half-mile from the launch site we could hear the ponies. They were penned up awaiting their swim and auction on Wednesday. We paddled on passing an Osprey nest on up to a building on stilts up over the water. Katie took great pride in paddling through "the holes" under the house.

We watched the pelicans for a bit and then started our trip back towards shore. Katie had tired quickly as we had faced a slight but constant wind the entire way out. I offered a tow several times but she wanted to prove she could do it all her self since we were in a *special* place. I allowed her to grab my stern and hold on while I paddled. Somehow this wasn't deemed as "towing". She quickly got her wind back and the paddle the rest of the way in was easy with the wind at our backs.

About a half mile from the launch I looked back just in time to see what I "think" was a large ray surface just in front of Katie. I yelled for Katie to look and she became so frightened she closed her eyes and refused to look around. I managed to quickly get her calmed and we paddled back the rest of the way without incident. The tide had gone out but we still had plenty of water to float us back to shore.

On shore some college students were taking some core samples as we loaded the kayaks up and walked across to the beach. The beach had a steep shore. There was an obvious sandbar a 100 yards or so out that the waves would break on at low tide. But at high tide there was no breakers until the last 10 feet of water where the wave would suddenly rise up and crash hard. The remains of the wave would then climb up the 3-4 foot high bank at about a 45-degree angle. Certainly too rough to launch a kayak from.

The only other thing worth mentioning about this day is that while on the beach we saw 2 pods of dark gray or black colored dolphins running along the sand bar about a hundred yards from shore.

Day #3 - Paddle with the Ponies

MAP

Again it was an early morning for me and the wife as she dropped me off at Little Oyster Bay down the road from the house we were renting. Today's plan was for her and my daughter to catch the bus to watch the ponies swim across from Assateague Island to Chincoteague, while I paddled around the island to meet them there.

The entire way was against a fairly swift current, but as long as it was flowing I knew the ponies were not crossing. The exact time the ponies cross is determined by the Coast Guard to be at "slack tide" which they somehow determine at the swim site. My GPS kept me in the channel as I paddled around Piney Island. The island is a mixture of older homes and piles of salvage from years gone by. But the salvage soon gave way to nicer homes or sometimes unpopulated marshes.

After getting near the swim site and paddling among the boats moored there, I headed near shore to scan for the family. Trying to look for someone you know in a crowd of 40,000 people is no easy task, so I was quite glad when I saw the wife waving a hat and yelling to me. I took up position near shore where they were seated since there was no place to land and just kept station for the next few hours. I did learn I could open and re-close my rear hatch without getting out of the boat. A task that I didn't think possible until the wife asked me for the binoculars...

Before the ponies came across I paddled up and down the shoreline a few times. A few people asked me where was the best place to view the ponies, which I had to just shrug and tell them it was my first time too.

The ponies finally came, and after their four-minute swim I bid the wife and daughter goodbye as I started my paddle against a current now flowing the other way. After arriving back at the dock I stashed my kayak and gear out of the way and walked the half-mile to the house for the car. Later that evening we would return to the beach and see more dolphins.

Day #4 - The Last Paddle

MAP

The plan for the day - Get up early and have wife drive me to the tip of Chincoteague island for me to paddle out around the tip of Assateague and into the Atlantic Ocean. This would eliminate the danger of launching through the surf. What really happened is I got up early and sat on the couch and went back to sleep. By the time I woke up it was about 10:00 and with the threat of afternoon thunderstorms I decided that I didn't want to risk getting caught on a 10+ mile paddle in an electrical storm.

As luck would have it, the entire day was overcast, a perfect day to paddle and I was moping around having blown my only chance to take my sea kayak out to sea. The afternoon came and went with not a single clap of thunder. About 5:00 p.m. we headed for the beach one last time for my daughter to play in the sand. As I sat there looking out into the ocean I was trying to figure out how to get me and the kayak out there. In the surf there were too many people and a kayak would create a hazard for more people than just myself. But by 6:30 the crowd had dwindled down a lot and there was a large open section outside the yellow flags. I asked the wife to help me carry the kayak to the beach. She carried the gear and I toted the boat down to the shore.

As I carried the boat a lady noticed the Orcas on my front hatch cover and went crazy. I told her my wife designed them and she had to get a picture of them. She made me sit the boat down and turn it on edge so she could get a picture of the whales and my wife. Of course this made my wife happy that she finally got to hear for herself what many others had told me many times about her handiwork.

With gear now loaded I faced the problem of how I would get out into the water. I inflated the paddle float and placed it on the end of my paddle, and then the paddle I placed in my cockpit. There simply was no way to launch from the beach so I took the bow grab loop and walked out past the surf zone and began to swim with one hand. The kayak immediately broached and stayed that way the entire time I swam out with the kayak. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to get in so I swam out a good ways before trying. My first attempt I put too much weight on the paddle and pushed it around to where I face plowed back into the water. After righting the kayak I tried again and this time everything went perfect.

With the non-float end of my paddle I took several strokes to make sure I didn't end up back in the surf, but with the offshore winds I think I was actually being pushed further away from the surf. I flipped on my bilge pump and not hearing the motor kick in I turned it off and pulled out my manual pump. I would later determine the electric pump was working fine, I just couldn't hear it over the surf. Having finally pumped out the cockpit and attached my spray skirt I was finally off and running north with the wind and waves.

About three tenths of a mile later I realized I was violating one of my cardinal rules: Paddle the difficult track first. So I turned and headed south against the wind and waves. The going wasn't hard and I thought I might try to get down to the end of the island and back before dark. But about a mile from the launch site I heard a noise and looked over to see a pair of gray bottlenose dolphins just 50 feet away! I turned to paddle with them, which wasn't hard since they ran in and out towards shore. I eventually lost sight of them after about a half mile and turned south towards the end of the island.

Again about eight tenths of a mile from the launch site I came upon another group of dolphins, this one being five or six in number. This group I paddled with for almost a mile. They were feeding further and further from shore and eventually I decided to head in before the sun went down. I was absolutely psyched from having been so close.

Near shore I again thought about the surf. As I got fairly close I simply rolled over and wet exited and "swam" the kayak in to shore, again in a broach condition all the way. As I got close my daughter wanted to come into the water but I made her stay out until the kayak was on shore and away from the breakers. I timed my run through the surf zone and made it ashore with no problems.

I loaded the kayak and watched the sun go down on the west side of Assateague Island. I couldn't help but reflect on how each one of my previous trips had added up to put me in a kayak among a pod of dolphins. The safety net of a roll, battling the wind and waves of the Chesapeake and Potomac, paddle float re-entry, sweep strokes, experience in a flooded cockpit, 300+ miles of rain/wind/sun...all of this and more led up to me feeling quite up to this task of paddling in the Atlantic. I think it will be some time before I can top this trip, but I'm already beginning to think about it.