Launch day

It was fabulous!






We hauled our three kayaks down to the beach and prepared to launch.






Coincidentally, something was going on at one end of the beach that caused a burst of applause, just as I was pushing off onto the water. Mike and Ruth laughed and gave me a round of applause too.









We had a lovely paddle. It was quite windy at Kingsport, probably not as bad as Baxter's Harbour and not rocky either.







We headed down wind to get around the point into the protection of the high sandstone cliffs and spent an hour or two paddling along the shore out of the wind.







Because we were so late launching, we returned to Kingsport a couple of hours after the tide had turned and was heading out.

So when we rounded the point to return to the beach, we were headed both upwind and against the tide.




I paddled as hard as I could just to stay in place! It was probably the most strenuous paddling I have ever done in my life. The beach looked so far away, I wondered if I would ever make it.

But finally, I was just behind Ruth heading into the beach. Then, the wind caught my bow and turned me around! I tried very hard to steer against the wind but to no avail. I was forced to head back out to sea and do a wide loop to come around in the opposite direction. Mike and Ruth were already beached and out of their spray skirts when I pulled in, quite exhausted.

Ruth and I carried the kayak back up to the truck. Dobby had waited patiently in the truck during our little paddle, so I let him out while I worked on getting the kayak back on the roof rack. Mike helped. The ramp seemed to work OK, but we both agreed that it could use some improvements to really work well.

Meanwhile, Dobby headed down to the beach to check out a dead skate that had washed up. I couldn't see him there, and after getting the kayak secured to the truck I went hunting for him. Some French Canadians signalled to me his location and I called him. It was clear that the skate was way too fascinating for him to come when called, so I went back to the truck to get his leash.

A few minutes later I got down to the beach where he was to leash him up and haul him back to the truck. But he was standing with a woman on a cell phone who had apparently called the local SPCA (or equivalent) about a lost dog on the beach. She had called in his Toronto dog tag number, the SPCA had patched through a call to the Toronto Animal Control Services who had contacted my son Isaac about his lost dog on the beach in Kingsport Nova Scotia. Then I showed up with the leash, secured Dobby and walked away with him. The woman was a bit shocked and just hung up the phone!

I am assuming that Isaac will figure out what happened, and know that nothing serious has happened if he does not get a frantic call from me about losing his dog.