Josh and I had our first kayaking venture of the season on Saturday.
Todd, who is prepping for a trip to the Aleutian Islands sometime later this summer, wanted to start getting practice in wind, waves and frigid water. To this end, we went over to the North Shore Beach by Grand Haven to have a little paddle.
Conditions were for 10-15 knot winds and 3-5ft. waves, at least to the best of my recollection. I can safely claim that there were 3ft. waves, because I was able to lose sight of Josh over the top of several. I can’t say much for the wind other than it picked up about an hour into the paddle.
We paddled for maybe an hour and 45 minutes, staying just outside the breaking waves, and made almost two miles of progress into the wind. By that time, I was completely worn out, barely making forward progress, and thinking that maybe this wasn’t such a brilliant first paddle of the season. We landed, rested for a bit then spent all of 20 minutes getting back to where we started.
This was my glass Tempest’s first run on anything bigger than the flat water of Long Lake. It handled nicely, but feels less stable than the plastic one; odd, given that they are in theory the same design. It has a smaller cockpit than plastic boat also. Like the plastic Tempest, I still have to figure out how to arrange the outfitting so that I can sit comfortably for more than 30 minutes. Legs falling asleep leads to tentative paddling and slow rescues.
Also, I discovered that I am not in very good paddling shape. I think there will have to be a standard day of the week nominated for paddling this summer.
I believe Linda took some pictures, so maybe they’ll surface sometime in the future.
