Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

So, despite the economic gyrations of last week, I got out on an amiable kayak trip Saturday on Hood Canal, a ferry-ride west of Seattle. We’d been promised a weekend of Indigenous-People-Weather, and Manitou or whomever delivered nicely. I arose at an uncharacteristic hour for a Saturday (6:30) in order to secure my gear and boat to the car and drive to the Seattle-Bainbridge Island Ferry (click any photo to enlarge):

I hooked up with a group called the South Sound Kayakers. They tend to organize trips in areas south and west of where I usually paddle, and it helps me extend my range and paddle in new venues. Hood Canal, west of Seattle, separates the Kitsap Peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula. It is home to the Bangor submarine base (if you’ve seen Gene Hackman taking command of his submarine Alabama in a downpour in Crimson Tide, you’ve been there in spirit.

A little bit north of our launch point, there’s a sand spit where someone - sea sprites, witches, local devil-worshiping Democrats - maintains a driftwood evocation of a sea monster.

Now & then I paddle with people who have gone to the effort of building their kayaks from either a kit or a set of plans, and have been rewarded with a sweet-looking wooden boat. This boat, a Redfish kit, stood out from several others I’ve seen lately.

Wooden kayaks garner an inordinate amount of attention from both kayakers and landlubbers. A guy I paddled with a couple of weeks ago, who’s built a boat from the Pygmy company, observed that “if I were all about hooking up with middle-aged men, I’d have it made.”

It’s tempting to engage in a boat-building project, but I think my spare time is better-spent in getting the fuck out on the water with the boat I have.

It was a wonderful weekend. You never know around here when winter will arrive, so I’ll cleave to it while I can. More pictures from this Hood Canal trip here.