10/11/00 Paddling From Carolina Beach:
I moved down here to Carolina Beach Sate Park ahead of a cold front a couple of days ago, And it followed me and is still here. Temperatures have been in the 30's the last three nights. It's gotten up into the 50's during the day but that's been offset by a 15-20 knot wind.
I've been anxious to get out on the water but not with a cold wind blowing in my face. I particularly didn't want to paddle against that kind of wind with the big old heavy spare paddle I've been using.
So I've just been taking it easy waiting for the weather to moderate some. I'll be here for a few more days as I wait for an important letter to be forwarded from my mail service. I hiked one trail in the park looking for the Venus Flytrap; that carnivorous plant that eats insects. This is the only area in which they grow naturally but I didn't see any. They've evolved to trap and digest insects to supplement the nitrogen poor soil in which they grow.
This morning my impatience got the better of me. The temperatures were up a little and the wind down a little so I launched from the boat ramp here in the park. I had on fleece socks and sandals, synthetic T-shirt, fleece sweater and a Gortex windbreaker. I also had a PFD on and a spray skirt for a change. I dunno if that was for safety or for warmth.
The Cape Fear River is about a mile wide in this area. It was about 2 hours into an ebb tide and a steady 10 knot wind was following the tide, kicking up 1 foot wind waves. It took me almost 30 minutes to paddle to the other side as I headed upstream into those forces. Once across the river I tucked in behind an island, hoping to get away from the wind a little. This appeared to be the main channel because a couple of large boats and a large barge had come this way, although day markers plotted a channel up the main river.
As I passed the downstream end of the island I scared up a great blue heron and a bunch of sea gulls. Rounding a corner I was surprised to see seven adult white Ibises with their orange (pink?) legs and long curving bills and one youngster in its brown coat.
Town Creek lies 6 miles or so upstream. That was a wishful goal but I knew there was no way I was going to make that distance. It's supposed to have alligators and you can paddle up it as far as you care to. Sure enough, by time I got past the island I'd been paddling for an hour against the wind with that heavy paddle. Not being a fanatic and no one being around I had to impress, I quit. It took 45 minutes to drift back with no paddling at all. So my guess is I had only been paddling at a 1.5-2.0 knot speed.
10/12/00 Paddling From Carolina Beach:
I put in at the Carolina Beach State Park boat ramp on the Cape Fear River, hoping I'd be able to progress a little farther than I did yesterday. I soon saw conditions were pretty much as they were yesterday, although it was a bit warmer. When I got out on the water I saw the wind was stronger at 10-15 knots and the wind waves were from 1.5 up to 2.0 feet. I paddled directly across the river rather than angling upstream as I did yesterday. This put the north wind and the waves on my beam so I had to pay a little more attention to them.
Once on the other side I turned directly into the wind. The waves over here shrank to less than a foot but the wind was 10+ knots for the most part. After 1.5 hours of paddling into the wind the middle three fingers on my left hand became numb. I assumed this was the tendonitis in my left elbow flaring up again.
I paddled another 10 minutes to the lee side of an island up ahead and landed on a nice sandy little beach. In less than 30 seconds my fingers seemed almost normal again. Having stopped I decided to have an early lunch, then I decided a nap would be nice. 1.5 hours later the wind had veered to the east but was just as strong. Not knowing if it would swing to the south and not wanting to battle it anymore for that day I began a leisurely paddle back.
10/14/00 Paddling From Carolina Beach:
Pushing out into the Cape Fear River for the last time I could feel the 5 knot wind blowing in my face again as the temperatures hovered in the low 60's. It was pretty close to high tide and the wind waves were less than one foot for the most part.
I really wanted to shoot through Snow's Cut, a narrow passage connecting Cape Fear River with Myrtle Grove Sound, but I was afraid of getting hung up on the way back on a strong ebb current. So, instead, I headed up the eastern shore of the Cape Fear River, rather than the western shore I had paddled on the other two trips.
Just past Snow's Cut I was treated to my first two brown pelicans on this trip south. A number of cormorants could also be seen drying their wings on the docks. This part of the eastern shore had many of the larger houses pretty close together. Some of these had docks extending out into the river quite far.
After the houses came a stretch of shoreline consisting of marsh grass backed up by 10-12 foot live oaks and 15-20 foot pines, followed by another stretch with larger houses spaced fairly far apart. The far side of the river was all marsh with a couple of large islands about 2/3 of the way across and no development at all.
The only thing of interest I could see on the river was a long, steep bluff on the far side. Drawing even with the near end I angled across the river in 20 minutes. Well, I got as close as I was going to get to the bluffs in 20 minutes. I could see a large tug boat pulling a large barge at the end of 150 feet of thick, steel cable. The barge was pushing up a two foot bow wave. I didn't want to be near shore when those suckers started breaking.
The other day I was on an island when another tug and barge combination came by. I noticed a barely perceptible surge coming in from the barge. And it kept coming and coming with a great deal of force and made quite a commotion when it hit the beach and surrounding marshes. This time it didn't seem so bad though. Probably because this one was empty and being pulled whereas the other one was full and being pushed.
The main channel of the river was easily distinguishable. It was a narrow stretch of water with a lot of chop and some white water. The tug more or less followed it right down the line as it continued downstream.
The bluffs turned out to be sand with no apparent reason for being there. I would think the wind and tide would quickly erode them away. I suspect they, and the islands, may be the end result of a dredging operation to keep the river open to the large freighters and tankers that go up to Wilmington, another 5 miles upstream.
A couple of miles ahead I saw what appeared to be a dredger belching thick, black clouds of pollution into the air. When I finally paddled by it I could see Great Lakes Dredge And Dock Company on a specialized tug boat sort of thing with dual smoke stacks. A large crane on a barge was being pushed around by a tug doing something. I guess they were in the early stages of building some sort of docking station in the middle of the river.
Just up from there a barge was off loading what appeared to be grain into another barge. They too were right in the middle of the river. The barge had large arms extending out to the other barge through which the grain (or whatever) was being blown.
By noon the wind had died down and it was really getting warm, probably the lower 80's. What wind there was, was just enough to keep thing cool. The tide was now ebbing so I had a nice push all the way back to the put in. On the way back I passed a couple of other sea kayaks heading up river. Where I've been paddling and I guess when I've been paddling has kept me from meeting very many canoes and kayaks.