An Outing on the Yacht
We went kayaking on Lake Union Sunday. We used the Agua Verde parking lot to launch (they used to be really easygoing about it, but now they and the adjacent marina have gotten real proprietary about the parking spaces - another of the endangered species Freebius Seattlus bites the dust). Still, Agua Verde is a cool little restaurant and an amiable place to rent kayaks.
We paddled west, under the University and I-5 bridge, past the hulk of the Kalakala (see below), Gasworks Park and up the ship canal. Gasworks Park was once a coal gasification plant that was turned over to the city of Seattle. Only later did they find that it was a burbling quagmire of toxic stuff. It’s been stripped of soil and recapped, and a gas burner runs 24×7 trying to burn off benzene that emanates from underneath. Even so, it’s a great location from which to view downtown and Lake Union, and it’s a frequent destination for our evening walks. The rusting hulk of the gasworks presents a striking silhouette from many angles.
Although Seattle is surrounded by water, we lived here for 20+ years without having anything to do with boats except for the cross-Sound ferries. In the early 90s, I started renting kayaks for a couple hours at a time, and found I enjoyed being on the water. I finally bought my own kayak a couple years ago.
There’s a slower pace to life among boaters of all stripes as opposed to land-based activities, owing perhaps to the higher viscosity and density of the medium. Flail as I might in my kayak, a competent runner on shore will outdistance me, and a bicyclist will be a blur on the horizon. There was a time when I would spend almost all my free time bicycling, and the comparison I like to make with kayaking is that, on a bike ride, if you notice something you’d like to inspect closer, you have to make the effort to find a spot to stop the bike, pull off the road and break the flow of your activity, get off the bike and maybe park it. You’ll only do this once or twice during a 30-mile bike ride, and spend the rest of the time worring about traffic, or watching the pavement. In a kayak, you simply stop paddling and look as long as you want. Plus, being on the water affords views and perspectives of the city I never had from the streets.
