Uff da...long time no blog. Stuff got in the way.
Anyways - in my last vacation post, I'd been gushing about our lovely sun porch, but mentioned that our love of hanging out there instead of rushing out to seize the day did backfire on us one day.
This is the Orient Point lighthouse. One of our main goals for this trip was to get in a good play session out here. Back before my 2015 breast cancer diagnosis and the subsequent fall/winter/spring round of surgery and treatment, and also back when the club was doing an annual Orient Point trip, TQ and I used to lead rough-water play sessions out here for paddlers who were ready for it.
The trick to it was that we would get there at high water slack. We would paddle down from the Orient Point ferry parking lot. We'd pause on the beach there, point out the string of rocks that extend from the point, talk about what would happen as the water started moving out of the Sound, and then we'd re-launch just as things started moving. This would let everybody start out on some confidence-building easy little swirlies and build up from there as the current picks up.
Left to our own devices, though?
Well - we hung out on the sun porch a couple of hours longer than we should have. It was windy and rough, we paddled out close to max flood and got our backsides handed to us on his and hers plates, pretty much.
No, nothing awful happened. We just got out there & realized we'd bitten off pretty close to more than we could chew. So we turned tail and went home - only because we'd gone all the way out to the lighthouse, getting back was one long freakin' haul. No "fun play session" about it.
Have to try this again sometime with a little more respect for our start-at-slack rule - there's plenty of time
Hey, at least I got a nice photo of TQ at the lighthouse.
This is the Orient Point lighthouse. One of our main goals for this trip was to get in a good play session out here. Back before my 2015 breast cancer diagnosis and the subsequent fall/winter/spring round of surgery and treatment, and also back when the club was doing an annual Orient Point trip, TQ and I used to lead rough-water play sessions out here for paddlers who were ready for it.
The trick to it was that we would get there at high water slack. We would paddle down from the Orient Point ferry parking lot. We'd pause on the beach there, point out the string of rocks that extend from the point, talk about what would happen as the water started moving out of the Sound, and then we'd re-launch just as things started moving. This would let everybody start out on some confidence-building easy little swirlies and build up from there as the current picks up.
Left to our own devices, though?
Well - we hung out on the sun porch a couple of hours longer than we should have. It was windy and rough, we paddled out close to max flood and got our backsides handed to us on his and hers plates, pretty much.
No, nothing awful happened. We just got out there & realized we'd bitten off pretty close to more than we could chew. So we turned tail and went home - only because we'd gone all the way out to the lighthouse, getting back was one long freakin' haul. No "fun play session" about it.
Have to try this again sometime with a little more respect for our start-at-slack rule - there's plenty of time
Hey, at least I got a nice photo of TQ at the lighthouse.
3 comments:
Live and learn, right?
I've been to the Montauk Point Lighthouse, but never to the one at Orient Point. Looks interesting.
Yes, indeed. Poor planning and a little "oh we've been out there so many times" cockiness. If we'd had the weather we had with a Sebago group, I suspect we would've called off the play session and gone to one of the more sheltered areas (there's a lovely marsh very close by that's a great alternative if things aren't looking so good). We didn't watch out for ourselves as well as we watch out for others.
Greenport's a nice little town. The lighthouse is out on an island and you can't visit it but I always like going out there. We had a really good time visiting the Montauk light one of the years we were doing our 5 year paddle around Long Island, one three-day segment at a time - we always had to plan our weekends well in advance and it was usually in September, so there was always the chance of the weekend coinciding with a hurricane passing by. We'd gone out anyways, the campsites were reserved & we figured we would see what we could do, but there was at least one day that we went to the launch site, stood and looked out at the water for a while, and said "Uh, nope". Which was actually nice because that let us visit the lighthouse, otherwise we would've been paddling during visiting hours.
We also went bowling. That was a hoot!
A good photo is a great goal!! Where is the pic of TQ??
Post a Comment