I’ve made some decisions on the relaunch. It will happen the middle of next week and I am going to take the inside passage aka, Bay Side. This means that I won’t have a continuous paddle to Key West, but will have to portage the kayak over portions of land where one bay ends and another begins.
Approaching her room, I found her in a wheelchair in her doorway. I asked her name and there she was. I introduced myself and she invited me in. We sat, talked for a moment and I asked her if I could record our conversation. She agreed and so it began.
Looking back at my journey so far, most every day has been wonderful. Sure, there have been some challenges, a little bad weather and times when I wondered; What the Hell Am I Doing.
August 9th & 10th 2016 Yorktown Heights, NY My contacts around Sandy Hook are growing and so both the proverbial tide is changing as well as the real tide. Both are good news for me and soon I will be able to re-launch and continue my journey. In the meantime, I’m hanging out here in Yorktown…
I was trying to decide what to discuss today as it was a day of helping Arlene move some boxes, then it came to me – via e-mail. I had sent out some emails looking for support in New Jersey and I’d gotten some nice replies and now have a few people working with me to come up with solutions, but the email I got was an alert that someone had mentioned this blog.
If I could paddle 30 miles in a day, I could make it in one trip. The longest I think I’ve been able to accomplish with this heavy kayak is 20 with the wind on my back and tide in my favor. Running down the coastline now will be a bit harder as the tide will be trying to pull me out or push me in and won’t be running with me so I doubt I will be able to do more than ten to fifteen miles in a day.
Here I am, in the very waters Aleksander Doba paddled that day, rather evening of May 31st, 2016 and off my port side are very large waves. Waves I am sure I do not have the skill to navigate, but more importantly, waves that are well off my route, yet I am getting closer to them and further from shore. Now I’m checking my track frequently and even though I have done a dramatic course correction and now I’m paddling almost 45 degrees to starboard off my route, just to make shore, I am getting nowhere.
My early start didn’t happen today. Oh, I was up early, but even with the car loaded, time just gets away from you and before we knew it, it was 9am and we were just leaving for Red Hook, Brooklyn.
My last night in my old neighborhood.
It was a rather busy day. We scored some of that food I’d been looking for in the last place we looked (wink wink). The Daily Voice interviewed me today or rather tonight, just as I sat down to eat dinner. Then it was back to packing up my gear in the new dry bags.
Today proved to be very busy. When I awoke, the plan for the day was to just attach four pad eyes onto the kayak for the Topkayaker.com Knee Straps that will help me stabilize the kayak in bigger water, and if I’m really good, roll it. Then we’d run to the Supermarket and pick up my food for the next thirty days. Get back, pack up and head out tomorrow morning for the re-launch. Well that was the plan anyway.