Kayaking anyone?
(not me pictured)
I have now gone on two Mangrove tours. One last week and again yesterday. 4 hours of paddling through a swamp....
We had a very nice, small group last week, of 6ppl for the kayak trip. (they had 16 ppl the week prior and 4 yesterday.) Rick off s/v Island Time led the tour. In addition to Rick we had Terry, Mark and I. Then as we were leaving our meeting location we spot a kayak way across the harbor headed our way.... We waited. It was Peter and 'his flame' Elise in a two person kayak. (Peter was just a few spaces down the dock from me when i was at Sombrero Marina in February.) Our tour lasted a very long, hard fought four full hours. I was tired, sore, sunburned and sufficiently impressed that I want to do another tour some day. (next time I'll try to steal a bigger kayak to match my size and weight. Plus i'll wear some gloves to avoid the blisters) I quickly realized I'm not in 'kayak shape.' Not only am I out of shape, I'm also not physically sized to squeeze into a tiny hot-dog bun of plastic!
We took turns following the leader, and then leading. We rested a few times and even stopped about ten minutes to eat a snack way back at the back of nowhere in a lake. At about the last half hour, way off in the thick of the 'lower right edge' of the diagram, Mark turned over and dropped his phone. We felt very bad for him and waited several minutes while he searched for it but never found it. His was the only spill during the tour. (during the tour, because MY spill was back at the boat before I ever left. I carefully packed up my kayak with snacks and water. Then I slowly sat down in the kayak and immediately turned a barrel role off into the water.) *does a kayaker fall out if nobody sees him do it?
Our trip track through the mangroves
Jelly Fish on the lake bed
going around the mooring field to the entrance of the Mangroves
Rick, our guide, studies his chart. please dont get lost!
Kaitlyn and Izzy are two of three sisters living aboard. The three sisters, plus four brothers and two parents. That's a total of 9ppl. The oldest (and she says smartest) is Kaitlyn at 13. Izzy is 12. (Kaitlyn informed me that 'there is one week per year when they are the same age' as their birthdays fall a week apart.) No pets on-board. They left a cat with grandma in Wisconsin. This is a sailboat about the size of mine.
