If you’re in the area and you look outside right now, the weather is kind of cool to cold and drizzly. That was not the case last weekend. Sunday, Josh and I took advantage of the nice day and went to Grand Haven to check and see if there really were 3-5ft waves.
We got there about 3:00 to find two things of disappointment. 1. 3-5ft was wishful thinking encouraged by an inaccurate GLERL forecast. 2. The beach and water South of the pier were packed as far as was public, so no chance of being sneaky and running kayaks down to the water without anyone caring. We backtracked a bit and launched in the river.
This was my first experience doing this. It’s nice because you get a warm-up paddle out to Lake Michigan, but nasty because… well, it’s just kind of nasty compared to the Great Lakes. If the waves were truly big, leaving the river and rounding the end of the pier could be exciting to say the least. I take time to get a feel for waves, so plunging right into the biggest ones crashing into and reflecting off the pier is not my preference.
We did go out into Lake Michigan and tried to catch a few waves. Some people might have deemed our attempts successful, I not sure that’s accurate. After screwing around in the non-breakers for a while we returned in. It wasn’t a terribly exciting paddle, but it was good to explore a new and less busy launch site.
We also checked out Earth’s Edge in Grand Haven just after the bridge. They had a lot of rec boats and apparel, which is fine, but not really what we were hoping to see. One sales woman did try to give her sales pitch on a Wilderness Systems Tarpon (sit on top, lots of frills)… that was entertaining.
This coming weekend of course is 4th of July. As of yet, I have no plans, but really feel that I should take advantage of the 4 day weekend to do some extended paddling trip. I’m not sure any of the typical paddling collective agree – at least not on the long duration part – so this may or may not happen.
