I got to go paddling today because it was Martin Luther King day...how much better if we had no holiday because he was still around. He would have been 77 this weekend, I think. Couldn't just let it go, had to say something.
That being said - we had a fine paddle today. I woke up in the morning & turned on the weather channel on the VHF - hearing "19 degrees with a wind chill of 7" at 7:30 am was discouraging, it would have been tempting to turn off the alarm & crawl back under the blankets but I was all packed, I've got the new drysuit, I've been paddle-deprived for too long, it was a good crew that was going, and it looked beautiful outside. The weather.com forecast was calling for the temperature to climb fairly quickly; our launch time was at 10:30 & by that time we were supposed to be up to 29 degrees (oh, for the non-US set - I'm talking in Fahrenheit of course - 19 celsius and I would not be whining, but I'm using the scale where water freezes at 32).
Did I say "water freezes"? Well, yes it does:
ICE:
Icy PFD! I had to break it loose from the bottom of my boat. That was after thawing out the lock by holding it in my hands. I started our paddle with a neoprene hood - switched to my balaclava very quickly as my face started to sting! That's why they call it frostbiting, right? Balaclava worked GREAT, though - except that my fellow paddlers didn't see a ninja...they saw Kenny from South Park.
Ice on my kayak (this just builds up from paddle drips & the occasional splash from a wake
Icicles on a Circle Line sightseeing boat
Icicles on the derelict piershed at Pier 64 (when I started paddling these beams were up straight forming a sort of porch or apron at the end of the pier, surfaced in concrete - this is the one I wish I had taken a series of photos of because the time-lapse effect would have been fascinating)!
Better icicles under the same dock
Ice on sailboats at Pier 63, end of the day (the wakes come in here & spray up between the bigger & smaller boats)Now I had originally meant to do a post with all the pix from the day, but Blogger is playing funny games with me, spending long amounts of time uploading pictures without actually putting them in this post (if I paid anything for this I'd be howling, but it's free and I'm just glad they made it so easy to post photos - one at a time almost always works), so I think it has to be a 2-parter 'cause it's almost 11 & I need to turn in! However I will post one more just 'cause I said I would - Lyn took this on our Paddle-Off-the-Turkey Paddle and I think I didn't notice the camera because I don't have that sort of tense smile-for-the-camera smile I usually have -
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