After a long winter the time has finally come to make our return to our summer home at Boater's Beach! The first trip out is always exciting and having a perfect sunny day with smooth seas certainly helped to make it a great day. There is such a neat feeling returning to a place that you haven't seen for 6 months, but have thought about all winter long. Today is also the first time we will try to launch and retrieve our Sea Eagle kayak from the boat. It also gives us a way to get to the beach without having to wade through the cold 58 degree water.
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| A deserted Boater's Beach |
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The kayak measures 14 feet long by 3 feet wide, so inflating and launching it from a 26ft boat can be a little cumbersome. For the first attempt we used the bow of our boat as the launch area for Lil Pickle.
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| Unrolling the kayak |
Even angled on the bow the kayak overhangs both sides of the boat. Inflating the kayak takes just a few minutes, but I really wish there was a way to transport this without having to inflate and deflate it all the time.I guess that's a small price to pay for all the cool new places we can explore with it and the ability of getting to shore dry!
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| Dana testing her paddling technique |
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| Touchdown!! |
It really shocked both of us as to how quickly we were able to paddle to shore in a 15-20 knot headwind! I knew the kayak would glide through the water on a calm day, but this thing really impressed me today! The seats still leave a lot to be desired, so we will try to address that before our big trip this summer.
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| Leaving our mark |
After a great day on the beach and a successful launch of Lil Pickle, it was time to return to the dock and celebrate. It must have been a long winter because I forgot how delicious Dana's dockside dinners are.
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| I've missed this! |
This is going to be a great year! See you out there!!
I like your blog. Caryn and I have a boat on lake superior. We boat the apostle islands and have a great time Inflating our 10 foot dingy also. Got to the point I just tow it.
ReplyDeletePeter and Caryn,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback we really appreciate it! The Apostle Islands are definitely at the top of our boating bucket list! I'm going to try some different methods of transporting the kayak this weekend and towing will definitely be one of them.