Jamestown Island Back Door Paddle 8/13/13

On Tuesday, 13 Aug, the weatherman did his very best to scare sane people about “severe” thunderstorms, high winds, flooding, et al. That same day, eight intrepid Tuesday Groupers arose, saw the sun, and fearlessly decided to paddle around Jamestown Island. Richard T, Mark C, Steve R, Jean B, Phyllis, John F, Bill B, and Brian arrived at Jamestown Beach Park and took notice of the high waves on the James. Since the weatherman was predicting Armageddon to arrive near the end of the paddle, we figured it would only get worse coming back, and changed plans on the spot. We moved our Put-In site to the Jamestown Yacht Basin—also now a part of the ECO Discovery Park. We could go behind the island all the way to the furthest tip and avoid the big waves of the James—which we did. The Yacht basin has installed the dry-launch system which lets you roll into the water—and take out—without getting your feet wet. Nice touch. We set off with the idea that we would paddle for an hour and fifteen minutes and turn around. Remember, Armageddon was to strike at noon. But as we paddled the beautiful inside passage around the Island, we forgot about the weatherman and just kept paddling to the far end of the island. We put in at a beach just north of Black Point for a stretch and Twinkie break, and started on the return paddle. We stayed on the inside passage again as the wind was ramping up. We even had good wave action on the inside passage—I wonder how it was on the river side? But we did not get large aggressive cloud formations, no thunder, no lightning, so we sauntered an hour-and-a-half longer on the paddle. Just to throw it into the weatherman’s face, we had ice cream at the marina. Then these eight certified nutcases went their own way—again “beating the bad weather”. The bad weather never came for the rest of the day. We won!

View Bill B's photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/b.billings/TuesJamestownIslandAugust132013Brian?authkey=Gv1sRgCIfL96O0-ffAXg&feat=email