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Kayaking, January 2007
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Despite some of my friends thinking I am a lunatic, I am beginning a trip by sea kayak from the Tampa region, down the west coast of Florida, across the Everglades, and up the east coast until I get bored, or tired, or find something more intertesting to do. I am cruising in a Hobie Adventure Island, which uses Hobie's Mirage foot powered drive system, along with conventional paddle, a sail, and outriggers to propel this craft. Hobie claims that it will carry 350 pounds. I'm doubtful. I have around 320 pounds between me and my gear. With all the gear and me aboard, there is two inches of standing water above the floor. The boat is in no danger of sinking, but lying so low in the water will undoubtedly slow me down. I hope that as I lose weight and as I acquire more efficient clothing, I will reduce some of the load on the boat.
I bring to the trip a collection of (sort of) relevant skills. I sea kayaked a couple of summers in the late 1990s. I have sailed both 16ft and 18ft Hobie catamarans. I know navigation and weather from being a private pilot and owning a small airplane. I have done long distance backpacking (1000 miles in 2003) and know how to stay warm. I have been comfortable with no food for five days. I have been by myself in wilderness for weeks at a time.
I've erred on the side of safety as far as gear is concerned. I'm carrying an EPIRB, a VHF radio, two GPS systems (a GPSMAP 76 and a simple hiker's eTrek), a cell phone, and night navigation lights. Additional electronics include an Apple 13 inch MacBook, an iPod, a digital camera, and a stash of batteries. Once all of the cables and chargers are included, this represents a considerable amount of the weight I am carrying (approximately 20 out of 90 pounds of gear).
In terms of camping gear, I am going pretty minimalist with a tiny wood burning camp stove, a Sierra Design backpacking tent, a Thermorest pad, a lightweight tarp, and a cheap but warm synthetic fiber sleeping bag.
My sister left me off at Sargeant Park on the Hillsborough River on Saturday morning.
This run down the Hillsborough River was chosen to allow me time to get used to the boat and gear in relatively benign conditions before I hit Tampa Bay and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
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My first waypoint was the mouth of the Hillsborough River where it dumps into Tampa Bay, only 17 miles as the crow flies. Well, the path I took was one that a drunken crow would fly, cause after 7 hours of bustin' ass, I still had 10 miles to go. I spent as much time going north as I did south. The river, at this stage was more like swamp, full of hairpin turns, cypress knees, and fallen logs. At times, it was difficult maneuvering the Islander with its outriggers through the mess.
Because of all the debris in the river, I started off using a paddle instead of the foot drive. When I finally encountered a stretch of open water, I put in the foot pedal drive and took off. It worked well, although my legs will take some time getting used to the exercise. Within 15 minutes, I ran into a submerged log and bent the pedal drive so that it was no longer usable.
Back to slow paddling. At around 4:30, exhausted and aching (this was the first day I have paddled a kayak in years), I set up my first stealth camp across the river from some large residential homes, and crawled into my tent.
It rained hard that night, with my tent accumulating about a quart of water. Fortunately, I had set up the tent on a slope so the water pooled at one corner.
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I got up the next morning before dawn (typical of stealth camping), packed, and set out. The morning was cold, wet, and raining; pretty depressing. And in the midst of the gloom and misery, asking what in the world I was doing there, a guardian angel appeared.
Coming around the corner, heading upriver, was someone in a Hobie kayak with the same Mirage drive I had just busted up. When I get closer, I could see that he even has the same model (Hobie Adventure Island) as I have, with the outriggers removed. This is in itself pretty remarkable, because the model was just released in September of 2006. Of course we stopped to compare notes. The man saw the gear I was carrying and asked me where I was going. When I said that I was heading south to the Everglades, he said that he was preparing for the Everglades Challenge, the race from Tampa Bay to Key Largo (the same route that I am taking), staged by a group called The Water Tribe (Nick's moniker is "Pelican") and that he was going to use the Hobie. The man said that he had placed second in his class and fourth overall in the race last year (a more grueling 1200 mile trip around Florida), and Hobie had just sent him a free boat to test in the race this year. This guy is oozing with experience and good advice.
He introduced himself as Nick Hall. I reply with the hairs on the back of my neck rising, "Are you the Nick Hall who went to graduate school in the Gainesville Neuroscience program?" He cautiously said yes, and I introduced myself. Nick and I were graduate students together! I haven't seen him since the late 70s. What is amazing (well the whole encounter is amazing) is that I had just finished reading a book by Daniel Goleman and the Dalai Lama called "Destructive Emotions", in which there was a discussion about neuroimmunology, and I had remembered Nick as one of the very first scientists to risk their career studying this phenomenon back in 1979. Four days later, there he was, in person.
Nick was in training, so he pedaled upriver for a few miles, while I paddled my way down. He caught up and passed me going downriver 1.6 miles from his house. When I reached his home, he invited me in, where we spent the rest of the day talking about the trip I'm making and the race he will be running in March (both on the exact same course), stealth camping, gear problems (Nick helped me repair the pedal drive and gave me some spare parts), really stupid moments at sea, and catching up with the last 30 years. Among other things, he convinced me that I have the right boat for the voyage I'm making.
Of all the people in the universe I needed to find that day, Nick was the one.
And the encounter was an incredibly unlikely one. I had almost kept on paddling the previous afternoon. Nick had thought about heading downriver, but changed his mind with the strong wind and cold temperature. That morning was the first day Nick had the boat in the water and his first day of training (he had just received it from Hobie two days earlier and until a week earlier had no intention of racing this year). My original plan had been to set out on the Chassahowitzka River, but the bad weather convinced me to do the Hllsborough River instead. If I hadn't just read the book "Destructive Emotions", I might not have so quickly recognized Nick's name and face. I have a hard time recognizing people out of context.
Like previous long expeditions I have done, I started this trip with anxieties. There is so much uncertainty as to where the weather will send you, where you will sleep, what adversities and allies you find along the way. Such trips are a leap of faith: like jumping off a cliff and trusting either that the ground is soft or that you will learn to fly.
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18 miles and three portages in 10 hours.
After spending a couple of nights with Bob and Mary, and a night with Nick, I got underway before dawn. The original plan was to go down the Hillsborough River. However, I had been warned that there was a dam on the river with shallow water below and lots of rocks. Just upriver from Nick's house is a cutoff to the Tampa Bypass Canal, which is a much more direct run to Tampa Bay with lots of water and a total distance of about eight miles. I decided to give it a try.
I found three flood control gates, which collectively lower the water level about three feet from the river to the Hillsborough Bay. The first gate is right at the cutoff, the second is three miles further on the Tampa Bypass Canal, and the third is about 2.5 miles after that. Each gate requires a portage of around 300 ft on nicely cut lawn. The only difficulties were the rocks along the bank. However, on the first two I was able to find places where the rocks were not so bad and if I had portaged on the left side of the canal, boat ramps existed on the downriver side of the gates. The banks on the third gate were totally rock and the Hobie suffered scratches on the bottom. Each portage took about 40 minutes.
On the putin at the second gate, the lever that raises and lowers the rudder popped off in my hand. As far as I can tell the Allen screw had come loose. I tried to do a field repair, but the repair required lying on my side with my left arm up to the shoulder inside the boat and my right arm trying to position the handle and hold the Allen wrench at the same time. I gave up after 30 minutes. However, I could manually raise and lower the rudder. Lesson for the day, periodicallly check all screws for tightness.
When I reached the mouth of the Bypass Canal with an expanse of open water ahead of me and a nice gentle tailwind, I put up the mast and sail (accidentally leaving the sail bag on the shore (a repeated theme so far on this trip). I was unpleasantly surprised to find that when I tried to sail, the boat would automatically turn left to irons, no matter how much rudder I applied. I reefed in about half of the sail area and was able to maintain control enough to get about a disappointing three mph. On the way, the boat repeatedly would fail to respond to right rudder. Eventually, I learned that a quick left on the rudder, which caused the rudder to make a clunking sound, would give me rudder control again. The rudder was apparently kicking up out of the water when under sail. I suspect that there is a spring loaded lock down mechanism in the rudder raise/lower control that, without the handle, I could not engage.
At around 1700, with one hour of daylight left, tired, and 22 miles to go to Ft. Desoto, I decided to camp on one of the spoil islands across the bay from McDill AFB. When I landed, I discovered signs that "Restricted, No Trespassing". Expecting that any minute, people with guns were going to chase me off the island, I pulled the Hobie up to the high tide mark, pulled out my sleeping bag, and slept under the stars, occasional light showers, and a full moon. No one bothered me.
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| Copyright (c) 2007 by Dick Delanoy
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