On the Water Again

What a wonderful week it was, good paddling, good food, good friends. Thanks Paul for keeping the blog updated. I'll post a slide show later in the week if my pics come out.

I’m hoping some of the other paddlers I was with will write up trip reports. We were a varied group in many ways, and I’d love to hear their perspective’s regarding the trip. I suspect they will vary from terribly hard with head winds and long distances, to a wonderfully fun and exciting trip with the usual coastal challenges. It’s all relative based on each of our own kayaks, skills, strengths, and endurance.  Good forward stroke technique ruled on this trip. Though forecasts were often for NE 20-25 knots, we left early each morning, and based on the Beaufort Wind Scale, we were primarily paddling in Force 3 with an occasional hour or two of Force 4. Always fairly relaxed, and always below a 3 mph moving average.   My next paddling purchase will be a good wind meter, this to keep it all real.

Home only for a quick stop, and to clean gear. Paul and I are off to the lake for the long holiday weekend with our Core Sound 20 sailboat “Dawn Patrol”. This is to be sort of a dry run for a trip we’re planning in a few weeks along with Steve and Bruce in Steve’s beautiful home built John Welsford Pathfinder named “Spartina”.

Steve keeps a blog “The Log of Spartina” that Paul and I have followed for a few years. The name has changed over the years as previously it's corresponded to specific sailing trips. Steve (in Virginia) and Bruce (in California) are very old friends who get together yearly for a long sailing trip. Both contribute to the blog, which is full of detailed descriptions of both the planning and preparing of their trips, to the actual trip reports. Steve is also a professional photographer, his photos published on his blog are just beautiful.  We seem to have become a fan of each other.

Anyway, Steve has written a nice piece about us, and about our upcoming trip on his blog called “June Cruise – the Tag Team Match”.

This will be Paul's and my first real expedition cruise in "Dawn Patrol".  With only a few weeks to go, we are furiously getting cruise ready.  I've ordered some no-seeum netting and sunbrella fabric, and am planning to make a little screened in porch in front of the cabin behind the mizzen mast, as well as a shade bimini that will go over the stern of the cockpit, these all using simple bungied tent poles so they can be easily put up during the relaxed down times and camping.   We'll see how time and creativity actually pan out.  As I found out this past week,  the sun is hot, and the mosquitoes and no-seeums are out in force.

I did get home to a bit of a surprise.  Paul had put the picture below on my laptop home page.  Seems Alan has gotten a BIG tattoo in the Marquesas Islands.   He talks about his tattoo on the EYE website here.