So the weekend's over, I survived (although through my own stupidity I've got the worst sunburn I've ever had in my entire life - and I grew up in Hawaii so that's saying something) and now I can say what the big trip I couldn't talk about was 'cause we all made it & it was great! Lyn, Tom, DS and I launched from Pier 63, 23rd St. & the Hudson River, at 6:15 a.m.( sadly Drum Guy couldn't make it 'cause of a runaway case of poison ivy) and, after meeting with "IsleSteve", a paddler who lives on Staten Island & was nice enough to make all the current calculations & be our "local knowledge" guy (necessary for this trip - it's easy to get in trouble with the Coast Guard in some areas & Steve knew exactly where they were - plus he just knew a ton of stuff about Staten Island) we proceeded to spend the day paddling all the way around Staten Island.
It was pretty darned cool - even with the sunburn, which made me absolutely wretched the last 6 miles or so. Fortunately weather cooperated such that in the end I only had to work one sail today (and that was a beautiful one so I was glad we had it even though I'd been joking about doing a rain dance to get even that one cancelled).
14 hour day - 50 miles or so - here's the crew:
and here are a few pix I took in the "Graveyard of Ships" in the Arthur Kill - there are actually a couple of these, they're places where old boats were taken & sunk in shallow water & left to rust away. This was definitely one of the high points of a really good day.
I've got a lot of pictures & will probably do a couple of my "Frogma tours" - doing the whole trip as one would just be unwieldy. I was VERY happy with my new Pentax Optio WP - the only problem it caused was that I got so hung up on taking pictures I ended up doing a lot more sprinting to catch up than is really advisable. Got a lot of good pix though. Thanks again M & B!
awright, bedtime already...
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