October 23, 2005

Black Vultures

It is sort of ominous to pull up to a launch site and have it covered with Black Vultures. On the trash cans, on the dock. Walking in the grass between the parking lot and the muddy beach, and sitting on the roofs of nearby buildings. But the cool morning made me brush away the vultures from my mind and focus on getting ready to paddle.

Just as I finished packing the kayak Joan rolled up and I helped her carry her stuff down to the water. There was so little boat traffic on the way out, we paddled down the West River from Galesville, staying just outside the channel marker so we could keep a somewhat straight path on our way out.

We had no specific goal in mind, but thought we might paddle out to Thomas Point lighthouse. As we paddled by the town of Mayo a multi-colored roof caught our eye so we headed in close to shore to take a closer look. It was hard to tell, but from our vantage point on the water it looked like someone had painted a tin roof with a variety of colors arranged in small squares. It was too far away for my camera to catch, although I tried.

We crossed the mouth of the South River as the boat traffic began to pick up. Sail boats mostly. The water got a bit bumpy as the traveled down the length of the river toward us. We ruled out paddling out to the lighthouse, about a mile further offshore, since the winds were supposed to strengthen.

Across the mouth of the South River we began looking for a place to stop for lunch. Around the tip of Thomas Point we found a small beach tucked back beyond the rip rap protecting the shoreline. It was good to stretch out after 7 miles sitting in the kayaks, with the last two miles being fairly bouncy with the waves coming in from the rear port quarter.

After lunch we started heading back. The boat traffic was picking up a good bit and we stopped several times crossing the South River to wait for boats to pass. Once across the water flattened out and remained fairly benign the rest of the paddle back.

When I launched I think I failed to lift my back band up to the small of my back, and as we got near Triton Beach, Joan said something that gave us an excuse to go ashore. She stretched her legs while I stretched my back and on returning to the kayaks I made sure my backband was in place. It made all the difference in the world.

Entering the West River again we hung toward the west to avoid all the sail boats tacking back and forth across the entire width of the river. Although we hit a few blasts of wind, in all it was a very pleasant day. After 14 miles I felt like I had plenty of reserves.

Pictures

I just finished working on a little application for myself to make it easier for me to journalize the distances I paddle. I had kept pretty good track of my mileage up through 2002, but not at all since.

After entering what I knew to be correct from 1999 to 2002, I culled though all the trip reports in 2003-2005 and figured out the minimum mileage for each trip and threw that into the application. If you look over in the sidebar of this page near the bottom, you'll see my best guess on the miles I've racked up over the years. It's dynamic - I enter my mileage after a trip and it magically updates the sidebar.

I was a bit taken back to realize I've paddled nearly 2100 miles. Since I didn't write about many trips, there are quite a few miles that could probably be added in, but without a trip report, old GPS log, or a journal entry, I left them out.

2,100 miles down, another 10,000 to go.

Woody