Ned's Point Light House.
When I arrived at Ned's Point, I was surprised to already see a familiar car in the parking lot with a kayak on it. Usually nobody beats me to the put-in on my own trip, but Sue was traveling from the Cape and left a little too much time for traffic and had arrived way early. I had planned to try to find a geo-cache at Ned's Point before people arrived, but when I saw how strong the wind was and the white-caps on the water already, I realized we might need to devise an alternate plan. I had paddled in Marion, about 5 miles away, a few weeks earlier and got my trip cut short by thunderstorms and had not gotten to explore the inner harbor. I thought this might be a nice alternate trip for today. So, Sue and I took a ride over to Marion since it was still very early. We went to the Silvershell Beach put-in that I had used before and found that there were no life-guards on duty any more and no parking lot attendant. The water was much calmer than at Ned's Point, but this area might be too exposed later in the day so we went to the Island Wharf Town Dock to check it out. Gif had told me this was an excellent place to launch and he was right. This would be our new launch spot for the day. We went back to Ned's Point and waited for everyone else to arrive.
Everyone was agreeable that the water was too rough for a trip out of Ned's Point, so we all drove over to Island Wharf and unloaded our boats and parked. The boat ramp area is just a sandy beach area with rubber mats for traction. There is a nice pavilion type building with rest rooms right beside the ramp. I think the Harbormasters Office was on the second floor. I didn't wander around too much and run into anyone official that might tell us we can't use this area - the town website says it is for residents only but there isn't much signage around to make that perfectly clear to visitors.
Sue, Maureen and KenW were the first ones in the water and ready to go.
Once we were on the water, we discussed where to head first. I didn't know of any public place to stop for lunch within the inner harbor and we knew the wind would be building as the day went on, so we decided to head toward the sand bar at the end of Planting Island that Gif had shown me a few weeks ago to see if it was reachable in the current conditions. We started off heading for the harbor side of Ram Island.
Ken's Pics - Heading out to Ram Island.
There are a couple aquaculture farms near Ram Island.
The water outside Ram Island was too rough to bother fighting our way out to Planting Island and since it was close to high tide, there probably wasn't going to be much sand bar to land on anyway. We decided to instead head over to the eastern shore of the bay and make a counter-clockwise trip around the harbor.
Heading along the eastern shoreline.
From here we could see the Tabor Boy training ship.
I thought this pier looked interesting with it's drooping center.
As we headed into Hammett Cove, there was an Osprey on it's nest watching us.
We now had a reprieve from the wind but first had to move out of the way of a power boat coming out through the channel.
In the cove, Ken got out his camera and took a bunch of pictures.
Three pictures of Sue by Ken.
Ken got a picture of me, Norm...in the wrong boat...my Kajak Sport boat aggravated my knee problem on Wednesday.
Maureen, by Ken.
Sue, with Bob in the background, by Ken.
Bob and Norm, by Ken.
Me, Norm, by Ken
Bob paddling by a boarded up building. This place made me think of Bea, always commenting about needing a Wild Turkey Paddlers clubhouse on the water.
At the end of the cove, it looks like there might be a culvert that feeds into a marsh, but the culvert was now under water.
It didn't look like there was any public land in the area and we were ready to take a break for lunch, so we stopped on a little shell beach out of sight, beside the boarded up building.
After lunch, we headed into the other arm of the cove where there was a small marina with a boat ramp.
Beside the marina was a nice house with a private dock.
Heading out the channel from the marina.
This house caught my eye...looks like it got cut in half. One of the frequent discussions throughout the day was how little space and height there was from the water to the houses along the shore. It didn't look like it would take much storm surge to flood them. Notice they wrapped the bottom of the tall house with plastic. I wonder how much help that would have been?
The wind got stronger and stronger as we were leaving the cove.
We came across 5 or 6 people in recreational kayaks drifting along the edge of the cove with the wind. I imagine they were bound to have a very difficult time if they had to head back into the wind in those small boats.
Leaving Hammett Cove.
The flag gives a good indication of the wind.
There was a pretty good amount of chop, even in the this protected end of the harbor.
One small sailboat was cruising around amongst the moorings.
We swung around Little Neck, taking a shortcut across a marshy area since it was high tide, and headed to the furthest reaches of the northwest end of the harbor to see if there was a creek or marsh to investigate but found nothing.
Ken admired this wooden boat in a marina.
I took a close look at this yacht, "I Dream of Jeannie". I noticed that the windows don't seem to open and it sounded like there was a lot of machinery running as I passed close-by. Must have had air-conditioning running.
There was another boat ramp, beside the marina, with some people launching a small sailboat
I think these buildings are part of Tabor Academy.
It seemed there were a whole line of unoccupied moorings that I guess belong to the academy's boats.
There was one hearty sole out for a swim in the harbor.
I think this sailboat looks fast just sitting at it's mooring.
Back at the take-out.
Here is a topo map with the track of our paddle highlighted.
A few statistics from the trip:
Launch time: 11:30am
Stopped for break in Hammett Cove: 12:30pm 2.7 miles
Left lunch stop: 1:00pm
Take out time: 2:00pm
Total Distance: 5.3 miles
Thanks for joining me Sue, Ken, Maureen and Bob. Sorry it was such a long drive for such a short paddle.
