Hi gang,
This is my second paddle trip with the Northwind, first was 12 mile solo on the Withlacoochee river paddling against 1900cfs, didn't record much on that trip so didn't do a report. Didn't record much on this trip either. Just a mish mash of a few photo's and short video clips taken between the three of us. I stuck them all together in order and added some captions to provide a glimpse of what we did in 9 or so hours. Its unfortunate we didn't get more footage because its a really beautiful area to paddle. The transition from fresh water coastal swamp to coastal estuary is very interesting, however we just weren't prepared to document much since this is the first of our training trips preparing for the watertribe everglades challenge this coming March. Our main focus was paddling for distance and speed. Tom is a long time friend and established triber, mostly helping Ron and I get in shape. We all agreed that we have to work harder at getting setup to document these trips better tho.
Here's the mash up clip: www.vimeo.com/288747823
More details for those interested...
The plan was to paddle about 1/2 way between the launch and Cedar Key where we'd primitive camp for the night, which was about 12 miles. We would hang around and do most of our goofing off fishing and what not that afternoon. Then paddle to Cedar Key in the morning and return to the Wacasassa River and either camp at another primitive camp at the mouth of the river or just continue on in to the ramp, which would have been about 22 or 26 miles of more focused and high pace paddling for the second day or about 38 miles for the two days. We were pretty close to how we'd be loaded for the EC too except we had less food. I had about 30lbs of hickory firewood and a Yeti cooler that I wouldn't have on the EC that would over compensate for the food weight. Ron had some extra firewood too I believe. Otherwise, we had pretty much everything we would have needed to qualify for a WT event inspection.
This trip commenced 2 days before hurricane Gordon came up the gulf of mexico. So in addition to the afternoon thunderstorm pattern for this time of year, we had the additional instability of an approaching tropical depression. Since its so difficult to get synchronized time off together we were determined to paddle somewhere barring an outright hurricane. We contingency planned right up until late Friday night. The alternate plan was do about a 30 mile Withlacoochee river segment where we'd have some cover on either side of the river regardless of what the weather did. Based on the hourly predictions we decided to go ahead and do the coastal trip. We would shoot for camp at Kelly Creek before the afternoon storms kicked up. We figured we could either ride out the storms on the camp site proper or retreat via Kelly Creek further into the tree line and up into the hardwood swamp if things got really crazy. The Sunday hourly pattern was essentially the same, relatively clear until about 4pm before the thunderstorms closed in on us. As long as we got on the water early we had our window to paddle as planned.
When we got to the Kelly Creek camp site we discovered it was basically uninhabitable. A shell mound with a few small weathered trees, overgrown with coastal shrub and sand spurs guarded by a moat of oyster, sharp coral cap rock and 3'+ deep organic marsh muck. It was almost dead low tide when we got there which made it worse for getting out of the water as well. A high tide and we could have floated over most of the gnarly oyster, cap rock and mucky muck. After about 15 minutes trying to find a safe place to land, Tom managed to extricate himself from his canoe using a blowdown that was laying over the water. He got some new scratches on his brand new Savage River too. He didn't get 10' onto the mound and was literally covered in sand spurs. Not what we had in mind. Tom did a quick survey, Ron and I just stayed in our canoes.
At this point we didn't have many options. We either set up camp on the fiddler crab hilton, make a break for Cedar Key, which was a little farther than we paddled already or paddle back to the Wacasassa River. Regardless of what we did the storms were forming in all directions. It was very hot too, low 90's, which made it even harder to talk ourselves into trying to make camp in this heck hole. After a brief deliberation we decided to go back to the launch knowing we'd be rolling the dice on getting caught in a thunderstorm or two. Turns out it was only one...
We filed back down the creek to the gulf and paused on a oyster shell and sand spoil mound to hydrate and get the canoes ready for open water. After maybe 10 minutes off we went. I stayed closer to shore and Tom and Ron were a couple hundred yards out from me. They wanted to get into deep enough water to overcome the drag of ground effects. Under the circumstances I didn't care about that as long as the water was deep enough to get a good paddle stroke I was OK, which it was for most of my path.
The whole time we're headed east there are storms building on land behind our destination and headed more or less in our direction. There were storms build south of us and west twoards Cedar Key, but they were moving away from us. The weather flow was roughly SE to NW as a result of the approaching tropical depression. I paddled pretty hard and steady and regularly looked back at Tom and Ron who where a bit farther back off my right shoulder. Ron was dealing with some knee and shoulder pain and was not able to paddle as fast as Tom and I, but we all agreed we'd keep each other in sight.
Paddling open water on a collision course with a thunderstorm on full display for the better part of an hour is an interesting experience. The closer I got to a point of land that we all had to get around the more I knew we were in for it. We were too far apart to communicate this but I was sure Tom and Ron knew this too. Tom later told me he tried to up his pace without leaving Ron behind and I stayed steady at it for the point. When I was about a 1/2 mile out from the point things started to pick up and I had to either paddle harder to make the point or bail for somewhere on shore to my left. Going towards shore at that point was about the same distance to the point and in either case there was nothing there but oyster bars, mud and grass. I looked back and Tom and Ron where still paddling so I dug in for the point.
By the time I was couple hundred yards out it was raining pretty hard and the wind was howling and I could barely make headway. I looked back and saw Tom driving hard maybe a 100 yards behind me, but could not see Ron. Even though it was somewhat lee to the wind, when I got to the shoreline it was a frothy sloppy mess and getting worse. I floundered a bit in the waves and froth and not knowing how much worse things could get found a little kink in the grassy mud line and paddled hard into it and got out in knee deep mud and dragged the canoe up and over the mud bank on to the grass. By this time Tom was just barely making it to shore about 80' north of me. Still no sight of Ron. I yelled where's Ron at Tom when he was better situated on shore and he pointed to shore west and north of us.
At this point all we could do was sit there and take it. I tried to video some of the fun, but my touch screen didn't work worth a crap in the driving rain. So I was only able to get a few seconds after the worst went through, which is on the clip above. I then texted and tried calling Ron to see if he was OK. By now Tom was also able to yell out to me that Ron cut for shore before things got really bad. So as long as he didn't get struck by lightening or have a heart attack he should be OK.
No response from Ron but about 10 minutes after things subsided we see him bobbing up and down in the waves heading towards us. After a few laughs we got underway again as there were more storms threatening and we still had a little over an hour to make our way to the ramp. Tempting fate once and coming away unscathed was enough, we didn't want to push our luck any more than we did already.
The rest of the paddle was refreshing since the storms cooled the temperature by at least 10 degrees. Nether of the other storms made it to us either so the rest of the paddle was uneventful weather wise and we all lived happily ever after...
the end
This is my second paddle trip with the Northwind, first was 12 mile solo on the Withlacoochee river paddling against 1900cfs, didn't record much on that trip so didn't do a report. Didn't record much on this trip either. Just a mish mash of a few photo's and short video clips taken between the three of us. I stuck them all together in order and added some captions to provide a glimpse of what we did in 9 or so hours. Its unfortunate we didn't get more footage because its a really beautiful area to paddle. The transition from fresh water coastal swamp to coastal estuary is very interesting, however we just weren't prepared to document much since this is the first of our training trips preparing for the watertribe everglades challenge this coming March. Our main focus was paddling for distance and speed. Tom is a long time friend and established triber, mostly helping Ron and I get in shape. We all agreed that we have to work harder at getting setup to document these trips better tho.
Here's the mash up clip: www.vimeo.com/288747823
More details for those interested...
The plan was to paddle about 1/2 way between the launch and Cedar Key where we'd primitive camp for the night, which was about 12 miles. We would hang around and do most of our goofing off fishing and what not that afternoon. Then paddle to Cedar Key in the morning and return to the Wacasassa River and either camp at another primitive camp at the mouth of the river or just continue on in to the ramp, which would have been about 22 or 26 miles of more focused and high pace paddling for the second day or about 38 miles for the two days. We were pretty close to how we'd be loaded for the EC too except we had less food. I had about 30lbs of hickory firewood and a Yeti cooler that I wouldn't have on the EC that would over compensate for the food weight. Ron had some extra firewood too I believe. Otherwise, we had pretty much everything we would have needed to qualify for a WT event inspection.
This trip commenced 2 days before hurricane Gordon came up the gulf of mexico. So in addition to the afternoon thunderstorm pattern for this time of year, we had the additional instability of an approaching tropical depression. Since its so difficult to get synchronized time off together we were determined to paddle somewhere barring an outright hurricane. We contingency planned right up until late Friday night. The alternate plan was do about a 30 mile Withlacoochee river segment where we'd have some cover on either side of the river regardless of what the weather did. Based on the hourly predictions we decided to go ahead and do the coastal trip. We would shoot for camp at Kelly Creek before the afternoon storms kicked up. We figured we could either ride out the storms on the camp site proper or retreat via Kelly Creek further into the tree line and up into the hardwood swamp if things got really crazy. The Sunday hourly pattern was essentially the same, relatively clear until about 4pm before the thunderstorms closed in on us. As long as we got on the water early we had our window to paddle as planned.
When we got to the Kelly Creek camp site we discovered it was basically uninhabitable. A shell mound with a few small weathered trees, overgrown with coastal shrub and sand spurs guarded by a moat of oyster, sharp coral cap rock and 3'+ deep organic marsh muck. It was almost dead low tide when we got there which made it worse for getting out of the water as well. A high tide and we could have floated over most of the gnarly oyster, cap rock and mucky muck. After about 15 minutes trying to find a safe place to land, Tom managed to extricate himself from his canoe using a blowdown that was laying over the water. He got some new scratches on his brand new Savage River too. He didn't get 10' onto the mound and was literally covered in sand spurs. Not what we had in mind. Tom did a quick survey, Ron and I just stayed in our canoes.
At this point we didn't have many options. We either set up camp on the fiddler crab hilton, make a break for Cedar Key, which was a little farther than we paddled already or paddle back to the Wacasassa River. Regardless of what we did the storms were forming in all directions. It was very hot too, low 90's, which made it even harder to talk ourselves into trying to make camp in this heck hole. After a brief deliberation we decided to go back to the launch knowing we'd be rolling the dice on getting caught in a thunderstorm or two. Turns out it was only one...
We filed back down the creek to the gulf and paused on a oyster shell and sand spoil mound to hydrate and get the canoes ready for open water. After maybe 10 minutes off we went. I stayed closer to shore and Tom and Ron were a couple hundred yards out from me. They wanted to get into deep enough water to overcome the drag of ground effects. Under the circumstances I didn't care about that as long as the water was deep enough to get a good paddle stroke I was OK, which it was for most of my path.
The whole time we're headed east there are storms building on land behind our destination and headed more or less in our direction. There were storms build south of us and west twoards Cedar Key, but they were moving away from us. The weather flow was roughly SE to NW as a result of the approaching tropical depression. I paddled pretty hard and steady and regularly looked back at Tom and Ron who where a bit farther back off my right shoulder. Ron was dealing with some knee and shoulder pain and was not able to paddle as fast as Tom and I, but we all agreed we'd keep each other in sight.
Paddling open water on a collision course with a thunderstorm on full display for the better part of an hour is an interesting experience. The closer I got to a point of land that we all had to get around the more I knew we were in for it. We were too far apart to communicate this but I was sure Tom and Ron knew this too. Tom later told me he tried to up his pace without leaving Ron behind and I stayed steady at it for the point. When I was about a 1/2 mile out from the point things started to pick up and I had to either paddle harder to make the point or bail for somewhere on shore to my left. Going towards shore at that point was about the same distance to the point and in either case there was nothing there but oyster bars, mud and grass. I looked back and Tom and Ron where still paddling so I dug in for the point.
By the time I was couple hundred yards out it was raining pretty hard and the wind was howling and I could barely make headway. I looked back and saw Tom driving hard maybe a 100 yards behind me, but could not see Ron. Even though it was somewhat lee to the wind, when I got to the shoreline it was a frothy sloppy mess and getting worse. I floundered a bit in the waves and froth and not knowing how much worse things could get found a little kink in the grassy mud line and paddled hard into it and got out in knee deep mud and dragged the canoe up and over the mud bank on to the grass. By this time Tom was just barely making it to shore about 80' north of me. Still no sight of Ron. I yelled where's Ron at Tom when he was better situated on shore and he pointed to shore west and north of us.
At this point all we could do was sit there and take it. I tried to video some of the fun, but my touch screen didn't work worth a crap in the driving rain. So I was only able to get a few seconds after the worst went through, which is on the clip above. I then texted and tried calling Ron to see if he was OK. By now Tom was also able to yell out to me that Ron cut for shore before things got really bad. So as long as he didn't get struck by lightening or have a heart attack he should be OK.
No response from Ron but about 10 minutes after things subsided we see him bobbing up and down in the waves heading towards us. After a few laughs we got underway again as there were more storms threatening and we still had a little over an hour to make our way to the ramp. Tempting fate once and coming away unscathed was enough, we didn't want to push our luck any more than we did already.
The rest of the paddle was refreshing since the storms cooled the temperature by at least 10 degrees. Nether of the other storms made it to us either so the rest of the paddle was uneventful weather wise and we all lived happily ever after...
the end
