Black & White Wednesday

My boat is waiting patiently...

I usually carry the boat down to the water first and then return for the rest of my gear. This day was no exception. I can carry everything down in one trip but two is much easier. When the water is this dark you get the nice reflections. The tannins in the water made it the darkest I have seen water in a while. I saw my share of dark water when I used to clean boat bottoms. I would dive somedays and would have zero visibility. Some days I could hold my dive light out at arms reach and not be able to see it shining at my face. Days like that are great for reflections but bad for working under water. 

My Ride is waiting

Black and White Wednesday

My canoe is patiently waiting for me to carry the rest of my gear down to the dock and get in the boat. The water was very dark. I could not see below the surface at all. There was a ton of run off coming from the woods. The current is running from the left to the right in the picture. 

This is a view looking up stream. I usually go either upstream or upwind first. That way if there are any problems you can drift back towards where you started from. Also the second half of your trip is easier. The only hard thing is timing your trip. Paddling upstream takes a lot longer then paddling and drifting back. 
As I stated earlier I can't wait to try this creek again. I will wait till the weather is cooler. I think it will be a nice day trip. 

Stay tuned....

New Boat

I have been saving my money for a few months now and finally bought a new boat. It is a Bell Canoe (Did I mention it is Kevlar) It is 15.5 Feet long and it only weighs 42 pounds! I can load on and off the car with ease. I took it out on the lake today to try it out. It paddles very nice. The boat seems to go through the water very well also. I tried out a kayak paddle and really liked that. I think a lot of my paddling will be solo. Since I plan on using the boat to take pictures. I am going to go paddle the Wacissa River next weekend. I hope to have some good pictures to show from my trip. 

Todays trip started out by carrying the boat to the lake in the rain. I decided that I was going to try it out no matter what. I put the boat into the water and got in. It is pretty stable. Sitting in the back seat it lifts the bow up too much. I was able to kneel in the boat more towards the middle and it was much more balanced. I am planning on either adding another seat or turning the boat around and paddling from the other seat. I need to relocate the thwart to a different location. That is the easiest option. I would like to find a place to mount my GPS that I got for a Christmas present. I am checking into a thwart bag with some kind of pocket with a window.  Tonight I made some webbing loops using Samantha's new sewing machine. The loops wrap around one of the supports under the hood and they barely stick out of the hood. I will use these to tie the front of the canoe to keep it stable while driving on the highway. I will post pictures and a report of how this works out next week. Now I am just waiting for the weekend.