| Start: | Deal Island |
| End: | Upper Hooper Island |
| Estimate Leg: | 20 miles |
| Actual Leg: | 19.7 miles |
| Estimate Cumulative: | 116 miles |
| Actual Cumulative: | 119.2 miles |
After yesterday’s slog across the Manokin River, I was very excited to get to the launch site at Deal and see glass:
Beatiful paddle weather - enjoyed the crossing through Hooper Strait on the East side of Bloodsworth Island and into the Honga River. Here’s the only selfie I plan to take this whole trip: I value my camera and my friends too much to subject them to any more of this. By the way, I shaved off the fuzz later in the day.
Was really enjoying the day - then came the weeds. Up to now, I’ve passed through loose grasses that were single bladed and didn’t seem to travel in clumps, so they would pass on one side of my hull or the other and wouldn’t catch the rudder. The weeds in the Honga was different: it was long stringy stuff that clumped together in huge balls that floated on the surface or submerged right below. If I wasn’t able to spot a patch before I hit it, the ball would travel under my boat and catch my rudder. Talk about throwing on the brakes - I thought I was going to break a tooth on my kneecaps a couple of times.
The first couple times I took off the elctronics that I had tethered to my PFD (all waterproof - but still…) and swam back to the rudder to clear it. After this, I found that stopping the boat (which wasn’t hard with all that stuff on the rudder), throwing in full engines a’stern for about three or four strokes a side, coupled with a few rudder wiggles, would free the rudder and I’d see a big ball o’ weeds float past in a “C” shape. Then carefully steering around said ball I could continue on my way. So anytime I found that I was pulling hard and seeing my speed drop, I’d throw in one of these maneuvers and continue on. This worked well, but got old really fast. Kicking myself for not getting a weedless rudder for my boat before this trip (on a weedless rudder, the leading edge is at an angle - not vertical, so weeds slide off of it).
Came into the P.L. Jones Marina at Back Creek to use the boat ramp (cleared ahead of time). Felt really out of place as this was almost exclusively a work-boat marina. Not that I’d expect to see another outrigger at most any marina, but this one was all hard-core watermen. So there I was. With my little carbon fiber Hawaiian style canoe. And a Prius. We didn’t hang out long.