Day 11

Day 11, May 24, Point Harbor NC, The blog has been neglected because I just wasn't familiar with blogging and resorted to emails which of course are limited to addressees...so I'll now transpose stuff scrawled in a notebook and glean emailed high points...

May 13, the day before departure...
The kayak alone, with a few embellishments like hatches etc weighs 100 lbs.

Today for the first time we stuffed in all our stuff for the first time, including 40 lbs of food, 3.5 gallons of water (30 pounds), lots of clothes and camping and living stuff...
solid hatch covers and solar panel and electronics like this little laptop computer.
...totaling 150 lbs easy (we used a bathroom scale).
The thing is crammed chock full, but we left room for ourselves as though it was empty.

So that makes 250 pounds or so, and toting that much just won't work, but the wheeled cart is rated for 275 lbs and we rolled the whole mess around the house, over big roots etc,
and everything seems OK. The pictures show the loaded 21' kayak on the cart...in the dark tonight.

And with me at 145 and V at 120 lbs, we're pushing 425 pounds total load. The kayak is rated to hold 700 lbs, they say...

We haven't gotten it all in the water yet - tomorrow we roll the whole mess a mile to the Wrightsville Beach bridge and put it in and take off, heading N.

Who knows?



Notebook:
May 15 morning 2 - gnats, ospreys on hurricane-snapped tree poles roosting, still air 6:30am scrub oak yaupon fragrance cammed on hammock island 10meters wide 200meters long on W side of ICWW about 3 mi S of N Topsail Beach bridge. Itching gnats, hoping for breeze, all is still except geese trumpeting...no - saxophoning. Water slick calm. I need a thermometer to measure air and water temperature. We slept well...26 miles yesterday.
May 16 morning 2 - 30 mi yesterday left 9am arrived 4 pm Bear Is, Hammock Beach State Park. Turns out bridge was 6 mi away, not 3, but around noon SW wind kicked in for healthy tailwind and the sail did great. Hit 7.8mph on GPS. Fairly cloudy and batteries charged moderately, but GPS faltered. Many brown pelicans, a channel porpoise - glided right over it. Passed through USMC Camp Lejuene, say deer on pristine military reservation in mid-afternoon. Crossed Bear Inlet with incoming tide/wind- both strong but not too bad...and a racoon was on the other side busy until we were next to it...we apologized for disturbing. SunTuf corrugated polycarbonate panel hatch covers working out great. We wear spray skirts against the occasional ICWW (IntraCoastal WaterWay) monster luxury liner cabin cruiser in full tilt, throwing 3-4' wakes right next to us which force us to go to General Quarters (self-preservation emergency)...Navy talk. Here at State Park we have remote campground that we were lucky to get - turns out there are still penalties for vagrants...3 figure fines are levied...and when the 5pm ferry came to pick up the last of the day visitors we were denied camping because we hadn't registered 5 miles from where we came...I finally was able to give the ferry guy my drivers license and $20 which he took back, and the ranger found us the next morning in a howling SW wind that had increased during the night, gave me back my license and $2 change, $9/night and we're going to stay here one more night until the wind lets up. There was driving light rain overnight, and this morning we relocated the tent behind a dense pine thicket for cover against the wind. Part offers showers, but it was a 2 mile walk over scrubby dunes.
We are transitioning - changing reality from domesticated to out there. Muscles are doing fine. Skimmers, plovers, a black bellied plover, herons egrets. Vickie is wonderful - brave, strong, smart.
email on the 16th...
We're camped since last night at the W side of Bogue Inlet - 56 miles covered yesterday and the day before...the first day the 14th. Took the day off after getting rained on all last night here on Bear Is, Hammock Beach St Park. Showers!...so we haven't turned too primitive yet, but we're transitioning from domestic living to sharing life with the creatures of the earth and water. Camping day after day'll do that. Tomorrow we head E to Beaufort, wind willing. After that we ain't sure...lots of options.

email on the 17th...
we had an amazing day as we went from bogue inlet to beaufort inlet via bogue sound,,, 29 miles with unfavorable wind till noon and contrary tide all day, but a beautiful sail the rest of the time until beaufort inlet where we got whaled bigtime...incoming boats and tide whacking seiche waves against big seawall and it was all we could do to make progress. we're headed up the intracoastal wway. dolphins swimming under and storks and tricolor herons and little blue herons and egret rookery and ibis. we're getting healthy. the solar charger is doing beautifully and we've got things better arranged so it looks better and better, and your mother is tougher than nails, except she broke one on her left hand.
Solar powered data card laptop (on fringe of reception) internet has its limits.

email 5/20:
So...Vickie and I are not having fun, but we aren't trying to. We have covered about 180 miles in the past week with a day off, and now we're camped in thunderstorms with a tornado watch after covering 30 miles in harrowing seas and winds gusting 35 easy. We're at the south end of Alligator River, about 50 mi S of Elizabeth City where highway 94 crosses the intracoastal waterway. Everything is working great on the boat, including electronics although Skype phone service is lousy. Amazingly well, everything else. Vickie believes she values her life more than I do mine, but she's wrong. We met great people in Oriental NC, camped in a yard and you can see the newspaper story on us in the website www.towndock.net ...under Shipping News.

The tornado watch on 5/20, I think, yielded a tornado maybe 200yds N of us, moving SE right at the ICWW NC94 bridge...the fringe gust lifted V in the tent off the ground and then let go, while I was securing the kayak against the maelstrom. Let's see...it was around 6:15 pm. Safe?? This has been Everest!...way off the deep end, but hopefully that's over and we can be more like normal people.

We don't know how long we can keep this up,...maybe we should slow down or something but the weather is pretty violent and we catch all the violent opportunities or paddle our arms to death. Rain every other night at least and radical winds as atmopspheric waves zip by. The boat will handle 5-6' seas and vickie got the exhale of a dolphin in her face. This is really great, but we can't call it fun any more than climbing Everest is fun. Eastern NC is amazing from a little, little boat. Things are within the realm of reason, but some would argue.

Fun? Fun?? Is climbing Everest fun?
We've been brutalizing ourselves over the past week, but it has been great!...but not fun. Love is great, but not fun. Vickie is great...and she's fun sometimes. I'm never fun. You are often fun. We have gone close to 180 miles in the last week, paddling and sailing into and over harrowing waves in the little kayak, camping wherever we can find a place. Now we're close to the Albermarle Sound.

A week has passed, and yes, we have liftoff and have transcended. We are trying to learn to speak eagle, but the eagles aren't helping.

5/21 - Day 8
A high demand, traveling this way. Much is called for, beyond familiar extremes. Paddling arms like gorillas, legs occupied running the rudder pedals, body balance working muscles as we and the boat become one as kayak flies over and into waves/troughs on multi-mile open water crossings, every wave it's own danger to deal with and we're continually dealing with one and poised for the next, poised for anything while paddling and being thrown, Vickie saying with full conviction, "We're going to die."...and after we make it around the point to the calm water but still 30+ mph gusting raging wind we deflate and slide along in the lee awhile, and then she's up for another crossing - we did 4 yesterday from Pamlico Beach up the Pungo River to the ICWW ditch toward Alligator River.
Extreme demands met because no choice - we had to work like never before, dig deep until beyond our capabilities, and then beyond that...deeper.
We're on the USACE (Corps of Engineers)- dug ditch on the ICWW where NC highway 94 causeway/bridge crosses in the Alligator River marsh (no gators), and we were lucky to find this spot to camp where the old bridge was because there was nowhere else to speak of. We have had 5 nights with rain/7 nights total. This morning a family of geese floated away, familiar with all extremes as if this is just another day. Grackles live under the bridge in the I-beams, dozens of them, making a racket...using the bridge as a home, chasing away a passing heron while the real wildlife avoids human stuff, staying out in the swamp as real and strong as the rest of nature, always ready...but we're here with the human stuff and we ain't complaining, except for that grackle racked - there isn't much vehicular traffic...a car every 5 minutes or so. I see swamp grasses expanse interspersed with various trees. So we went from Bear Is to Oriental in a day and camped near the boat ramp at the yard of dear Grace Evans, beautiful 78 year old grandmother from Martha's Vinyard whose parents lived into their 90s and quit swimming when the water got to 68 - too warm! Grace moved to Oriental in 72' and had a couple of sailing schools and got the RiverKeeper programing going in E NC and was a founding member of the concept of the NewYearsEve dragon that parades through the town in Oriental fashion (the town was named for a foundered ship whose nameboard was the inspiration, and it is a town in E NC, so what the heck- cool little town on the Neuse river - the crossing of the Neuse was a quite harrowing 5 mile run across 30 mph gusting SW winds right down the river with quick choppy 3-5 footers, until a flotilla of 3 megasportfisher boats met us halfway across, each augmenting the seas to 6'+ and we were delirious with incredulity as they passed so near our bow - we had to veer off!...but Grace is a fireball of environmentalism and passion for all things good. And then over at Grace's came Melinda and Keith of the TownDock.net newspaper, festooned with camera and notebook, and we all spent the afternoon together - Vickie and I mostly happy to be alive on terra firma, but these folks were real nice and we had a good time, and we hit a little restaurant. Melinda and Keith had a great little 21' BayHen sailboat, well worth investigating, and they said we'd be featured in their towndock.net under Shipping News, I think...the pictures would be interesting. For my part, my camera wasn't set to take pictures so I pulled the trigger and shot nothing, it turned out.

So I haven't had an opportunity to clean off my glasses in a day (it turns out another day would go without an opportunity). All fat has been burned off after a week. Thought of a funny name for a boat: SwanSong II. Well...it was funny at the time.
Things have changed - now I squat to poop and don't have to wipe - the turds are that solid and clean...a good thing.

5/22 Day 9
This morning at East Lake on the E side of mouth of Alligator River at NC64 bridge - nothing here but a launch ramp...we had hoped to get food and a shower at a motel or campground or a gas station or anything...a town dot on the map but it turns out it was once a ferry terminal and now the few shacks are deserted... and it was no picnic getting here, having finished ICWW USACE ditch into Alligator River, up W side along Wildlife Refuge - one osprey and a healthy W-NW wind - we were just able to catch and make some use of the wind until the last few miles when it turned NW and buffeted us as we paddled against it, with lots of cypress stumps well out into the water - we hit a few, and were always a threat, and zero camping opportunities until we got here. Tired, worn out really worn out.

5/23, 24 Day 10, 11
Crossed dreaded Albermarle Sound, shellshocked from previous crossings, and this one 7mi across with hellish NW winds gusting 30 all day kept us holed up on Durant Island on the S side, waiting for 5 pm when the wind should have subsided...it did enough to make the Sound navigable across the wind to Point Harbor, so we set out with big swells only occasionally wetting us down until we got to the middle, when the wind turned to NE!..and we dug it out the rest of the way with whitecaps coming at us and swells coming in from the left and meeting in a mid-sound seiche-type condition that made it injurious labor and insultingly wet. After days of brutally hard work, scuzzy and low on drinking water we anticipated comforts, with the many fine houses along the point and a big bridge to Kitty Hawk, but there was nothing again - no gas station, no nothing. Vickie went to a house to ask to see the sheriff for help, and she knocked at the door of Nick and Dawn Kiousis, who opened their hearts and home to us and we've been here 2 days recuperating, restocking...and we had the worlds greatest breakfast at Stack 'Em High, Pancakes and So Forth on the ocean side of the bridge, and then S 9.5 miles (mileposts) where they have a hopping breakfast house that seats 110 and it was full this morning. Nick's folks came over on the boat from Greece and did well with restaurants, and sons Nick and Steve bought them out and each has a breakfast house. Nick/Dawn's house is on the W side of the bridge, and our tent is in their back yard on Currituck Sound. A godsend - open-hearted people who make a hard living running a restaurant and making feel welcome every person who comes in and stands in line to order the finest omelettes and pancakes and coffee and grits and hash browns and toast...the line runs outside and you don't want to miss the place if you're ever out here.

Vickie can go and talk to people and I'm one lucky guy to have her as a guide through the human world of strangers - she makes them our friends.

They also have a great German Shorthair Pointer, Scout, who is the fastest runner and best leaper and acts like a zany bird dog, oblivious to most people.

Our muscles were worked beyond pain, and over the past 2 days the pain came and is now subsiding, and a northerly wind push will be over after tonight and we'll push off tomorrow morning toward Elizabeth City, 30 miles to the NW, before heading up the Pasqoutank River toward the Dismal Swamp and then aircraft carriers of Norfolk.

email 5/23:
The wind has been all over the place and sometimes crazy fast and we've been using the sail and it is just too great running that toboggan through such amazing scenery...and there ain't been diddly for camping places so we have to keep going once we get started from the last lousy camping place - it ain't like there are towns or motels or campgrounds or anything human...so we keep moving with the rest of the wildlife. We smell the roses and move on to more - the wildlife would prefer that we keep moving, too.

There are two worlds, and ne'er the twain shall meet - the world of humans and the world of wildlife...there just ain't no gettin along, even for the humans who mean no harm, who have no interest in hunting or fishing, eating or molesting...wildlife is wary and elusive or it'll be eaten or it will kill, and we humans skim the surface of a dangerous interplay. They may be beautiful and inspiring, but they don't want us around and we need to give them their space, to respect their right to be...nothing we want is worth their expense - there is nothing we can do for them that doesn't harm them except to leave them be and give them the room they need.

We reached the breaking point many times and we bent most of the time, but the last couple of days we had a few breakdowns...electronics and emotional - exhaustion, losing pounds, working muscles all the way down into the marrow and pure cold blooded fear that forced physical stamina into overdrive, over and beyond again and again too many times...just to see how far we could go 'til we couldn't go no more, but mainly because there was no place to camp and we had to go on...once well after sundown, crossing the Pamlico River on a still full moon night and sailing the kayak up to 11.5 mph on the GPS readout - BELIEVE IT!..ahead of thunderstorms sailing across a howling wind with 4-5' waves washing across the deck in a raging foam hadn't cleaned the layers of caked salt off our glasses in 2 days...and other times labored...paddling the 500 lb boat for hours into wind with pounding waves causing the bow to submarine and water to whack Vickie...gad! And sometimes really scroungy camping conditions but sleeping as though dead. Often frantic discussions/arguements/last rights administered. Quick oats mixed with cold water never tasted so good.

Sometimes out there we wonder at a butterfly gamely crossing a wide expanse, and we realize we aren't much different.

Today we're holed up outside the house of a couple of saints at Point Harbor, where Currituck Sound meets Albermarle Sound after a cold front blew through last night with a contrary wind today and tomorrow. The GPS reads 239 miles, but we didn't have it on all the time. It is suffering electrolysis from repeated immersions while charging - the contacts dissolved, but the backup charger is working. I'll keep it in a bag or below from now on.

Now that we're headed for "smaller" water for a while we'll slow down some...hopefully we'll find more places to stop - the scenery has been overwhelming - eagles and ospreys and shore waders and walkers, racoon, deer...maybe a wolf, marshes and forests and flowers and dolphins in strange places - playing with us...

We're on our second day off now, relaxing and feeling the muscles heal slightly, but we were beat to smithereens and then some. We were going screaming fast at times, and while I was shocked to see 11.5, there ain't much current in the Pamlico Basin except when wind-driven, and I don't much mind counting that. It may have been while tobogganing across the face of a big breaking roller - the boat really zips cleanly for a moment or two...

We don't know how much further we'll get, but we'll go tomorrow for ElizCity and then up the DisSwamp Canal - probably pure muscle, 2-3 mph and not much for free, but hopefully not much against us either.