Sebago Canoe Club Opening Day, May 4, 2019

Setting out for the pre-meeting paddle. Click on any photo for a better view.

So yeah, it's been drizzling on NYC for the entire week, but the club's Opening Day goes down rain or shine! And what a good turnout of all different sorts of club members. 

New thing at the club this year - Steve the Paddling Chef is leading a skin-on-frame kayak building workshop. Saturday was their very first gathering and as i arrived, they were just completing their paper patterns for the first rib of their future boats. Wish I could do this but it's a serious time commitment and I have my own goals (well, not entirely defined yet but I'm working on it) for the season that involve lots of time on the water. More on that another time. Still, very cool to see this this going on at Sebago and I'm looking forward to seeing the boats take shape. 

The rowers were getting back from their morning row just as the paddlers were gathering to launch.

Lori and Frank had organized the Opening Day paddle for the sea kayakers. Nothing super ambitious as we did need to get back to the club for eating and meeting, but a good crowd assembled for a paddle around Canarsie Pol. It was one of those amazing mirror-calm days out on the bay. The fishing committee was out there too, I could hear them chatting on the radio about who'd caught what where. Lots of motorboats out fishing too - most of them were just anchored with their motors off so it was still nice and quiet out there, but we're clearly past the time of year when a paddler gets to have the whole bay to herself. 

So smooth - I love it when you can see the sky perfectly reflected in the water!

Mirror paddle turned to rain paddle as we approached the old pier with the osprey platform at the eastern end of Canarsie Pol. It actually felt wonderful; we're in a tricky time of year when there tend to be a lot of accidents because people get fooled by a warm day, go out dressed for the air temperature instead of the water, and get in trouble very fast if they go in. Sebago paddlers are mostly still wearing drysuits this time of year, although the water's just about up to where a wetsuit will do. I was on the fence as far as what to wear but had ended up taking my drysuit, and with temperatures getting up to 60 during the day, drysuit wearers were actually feeling overheated before the rain started. Usually cooling down is not a problem but it had rained a lot through the week, and poured the night before, and in NYC the water quality gets seriously sketchy after a lot of rain (google "cso" and then scroll past the Chicago Symphony Orchestra results if you're curious), so a dunk was not a good idea. The rain starting up when it did was perfect! 

No photos of the ospreys this time, but the pair at the pier is back and somebody said they had heard that there were chicks this year. Or at least eggs - we gave the nest a wide berth but I could just make out an adult's head peeking over the edge of the nest at us, and as we paddled by the other one flew in and they switched out.

We got back to the pier at about 12:10 when we'd planned to get back at 12:30 - I made a joke about how we needed to keep going because we were early, then looked up the basin and saw Ilene heading up towards the end, and decided my joke was a good idea. The racing folks were out in their K-1's and surfskis - the basin's always calm but they had true flatwater conditions and were just flying along!

With the extra leg up the basin, came to around 7.5 miles, and that puts me at around 63 and a half miles paddled so far in 2019. Hoping to pick up the pace as the weather warms up! 

The sailors were the only ones who got shortchanged - the total absence of wind that made for such nice paddling and rowing of course meant it wasn't worth rigging the dinghies. But they STILL got a work day in doing whatever fixing of boats can be done in light rain, so hats off to them. Oh, and a group had gathered early in the day to get Canarsian onto her launching trailer, she'll be on the water soon. 

And here's Nancy from the fishing committee with her beautiful first day of fluke season fluke. 

Then it was time to eat and meet - another great Sebago potluck, and a pretty good meeting with a lot of fun info about the plans for the season. 

The gardening committee even had a little bit of a gathering afterwards - maintaining the grounds is a task that had been really falling on the shoulders of too small of a group of people, so those of us who have gardens plot have been asked to start doing a little more towards that by supervising weeding days. I'm good with that and was happy to have another review of this is a weed, this is a weed, 

this is not a weed! This is a bleeding heart - one of my favorite mainland flowers, so pretty.

So there we are, all set for another good season on the Paerdegat shore.