Century Club: Tim Ford

Forecast was wind south, 10 kn gusts to 15.  Well that didn't happen. I paddled to the very back of the creek where strainers block any further progress, flipping a surface lure thinking maybe a channa or yellow perch might be hungry and sunning itself in shallow water. Nope. 

But paddling back out toward open water, it looked a little different and once I cleared the windbreaks on shore, it was more like "holy crap, this isn't 10-15." 

From 1430 hrs on it blew 20-25 kn and there was a puff at Gibson Island to 30 (mph). So the paddle back was a chore but no biggie.  

Then I decided to use the wooded point south of PSA  (we need to name that point) as a shelter to see what the breeze was like on the windy side of the woods. It was honking, and breaking waves from the little stone breakwater meant a lot of water was rushing over the shallow beach.  That's a playground for kayaking.  Between the wind and the current, it was fun to paddle as hard as possible and make little or no progress.  

Seemed like fun for a few minutes...this morning, the day after?  Not so much.

Warm day, 80 degrees, to get stuff done.  Got the O/B on board with help of a clubmember who really knows the drill when it comes to lifting something heavy on to a moving target.  Let's put it this way, it went a whole lot better than it did last year (see August 4, 2025).

Splashed the dinghy and rowed for the exercise and also to take a sight line down the row of moorings. Mine, E-4, is slighty shifted south and might need to be dragged north a few yards, to maintain distance from whomever is moored on F-4.

Dinghy still did not leak.

Ice is gone and I finally got a kayak outside the cove.  It was sunny and high tide, so I figured pickerel would be hungry and on the prowl after a few weeks of ice covered, sunless misery.  Not so. I tried shallow water, medium depth water and deep water. Nothin'. 

Which was fine with me.

Frustrating kayak ride.  There's open water farther out in the creek, toward the mouth, but it's just too much trouble and too dangerous to try to reach it.  At least for me.  I bashed through some thicker stuff in the effort, but there was frozen stuff that was too thick and too narrow to get the 30-40 yards I needed to make a safe portage for the rest of the way.  So I bailed.

The plan was to wait for the tide to come back in and then maybe there would be enough depth to proceed farther along shore.  But with the flood came the rain and by 1530 hrs it was just too miserable to give it another go. Maybe on Saturday!