July 6, 2006

Mathews

Bill, Ron and I arrived at the campground in Mathews County on Thursday. A bit late and threatening weather for a real paddle, but since the wind was up I went out in front of the campground to surf a few waves.

My first run was great, but runs 2 and 3 didn't amount to much so I decided to paddle a good distance north to line me up for a final run right back from where I launched. As I paddled I looked ahead and noticed a wisp of smoke heading into the sky from the ground - maybe 3-4 miles away, but it was difficult to estimate. As I watched the smoke it occurred to me that it was too windy for the smoke to be rising so straight into the sky so I stopped a moment to study this strange oddity. The first, and probably last, characteristic I noticed was that the 'smoke' was funnel shaped.

I immediately turned hard toward the beach and began paddling hard. The tornado darkened a bit then began to lighten. I continued paddling toward shore constantly looking back to check on the tornado and in a matter of seconds it lost its form and undissipated.

As I related this story to a coworker on Monday, he asked me if I was south of the tornado. I was, but I didn't understand the reason for his question. He told me that studies have shown that in general, tornadoes move from southwest to northeast (70%) or northwest to southeast (30%), so at my guesstimated distance and being directly south I was pretty safe. An interesting factoid that had I known I would have likely taken photos rather than trying to paddle back to shore.

We had dinner that evening at an Italian restaurant. I'm not a big fan of pasta, but the food was tasty. We all turned in shortly after dark with plans of an early morning paddle.

We were all up by 6:00 am and Bill cooked Ron and I breakfast. Ron made coffee and I washed dishes before we got on the road in search of our launch location. As we drove out of the campground we passed Mike heading in and Ron and Bill passed on our plans and where to catch up with us after checking in.

We stopped at an outfitter so Ron could buy a new paddle float and possibly launch from their site. But the outfitter was closed and launching there would have meant trudging through a puddle drenched yard full of mosquitoes so we elected instead to try a little farther down the road.

By now Mike had caught up with us so we headed further down the road to Bethel Beach. A potential site, but the numerous tree stumps in the water made us decide to go further north and try again.

We finally found a place to launch into Whites Creek near Rigby Island. Since the wind was out of the northeast we immediately crossed over to Rigby island to help block some of the chop. As we reached 'Hole in the Wall' I mentioned to Mike and Ron that I was going to swing wide to play in the bigger waves while they headed directly to the next point. It quickly got a bit bouncier when I looked behind to find Bill was following me. At 73 years old its difficult to keep Bill from playing too when he gets the chance.

When Bill caught up I told him he didn't need to follow me and his only comment was 'this seems a lot like a waste of effort', then he started paddling again. We crossed a shallow sandbar and the waves on the bay side were approaching 2 feet as we bounced our way up to the point where Ron and Mike were now exploring the shore on foot.