Finally, after two weeks of bad weather on my days off, BIG paddling day today. We covered a lot of territory, both thematically and geographically. The Geezer picked me up at 7:45 and we rode down to the Basin at FF. There we met Lydia and Scott, Virginia and Curry, and Chris and Laine. The trip was proposed by Virginia as part of her research for an article on migratory birds in the area in a local pub. We launched into the falling tide and no wind at about quarter after nine. There were a couple of dolphin in the channel. Mike had heard tell of a dolphin carcass from his old ferry mates, so that was a first stop. All that was left of flipper was the poor animal's head. Strangely, he still looks kind of happy in a way.
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Since that one above is a bummer, here's a picture of a live, happy dolphin that's still in water and has an entire body in a similar pose (I guess the pose is really only similar from the neck up):
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After that charming little break we rode the river further down and stopped at this old defunct lighthouse, purportedly built during the Civil War. There are recently built steps inside.
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I didn't check my watch, so I'm not sure what time we made it to Southport, but I'm guessing roughly 11:30. We ate and chatted at a conveniently placed picnic table and then walked around a little in the town.
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After we got back on the water is when things really started to get interesting. The wind picked up a bit while we lunched, and due to the very nice spring day there was a fair amount of boat traffic on the water. In combination this resulted in considerable chop as we crossed the channel to Battery Island. About half-way across I heard someone yell "man overboard." Despite the well known fact that it's not a good idea to swim shortly after eating, a paddler rolled over. I didn't see it happen, but I'm told that it was a perfectly executed half-roll. Lydia and Rezac were both there immediately, so I continued across to get out of the worst of the chop. They got the paddler back in boat and the only real casualty was sunglasses. I was having fun punching through the waves in the channel when I realized that my dry bag, stowed in my deck rigging, was no longer there. This was bad, as it held my camera, cell phone, wallet, and favorite knife (a pretty expensive Benchmade that was a gift, more on this later, as there's an interesting coincidence here). I remembered exactly the wave that took it, because it washed my whole deck and splashed me pretty good, but that had been over 45 seconds previous. I spun around hopeful of finding it, but figuring that it was a lost cause in the chop, wind, and current. Luckily, Virginia saw it bobbing and snatched it out of the drink. All was dry and I was much relieved. From this harrowing experience, I learned a valuable lesson: always keep an observant paddler behind you so they can grab whatever washes off your deck (or, always lash your crap securely to you or your boat). There was a copse of trees on BI that looked, from afar, like they had giant white flowers in them. Lydia asked Scott, an accomplished arborist, what kind of tree they were. His reply, "Ibis tree." There were hundreds of white ibis perched in the trees, and they came and went in like numbers.
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I also saw a little blue heron land nearby. From here we rounded the southern end of BI and paddled over to the marshes behind Bald Head Island. After one failed attempt through the marsh (where there were lots of turtles sticking their heads up), we found the right route into the big basin south of Zeke's. I never realized how fricking big that basin is. After paddling for eternity in 6" of water, we rounded Zeke's and paddled to the parking lot. The birding was quite good throughout the day. In addition to the hundreds of white ibis, I saw: ring-billed gull, laughing gull, herring gull, misc. tern (royal and/or caspian, and probably common), cormorant, pelican, great egret, snowy egret, little blue heron, tri-colored heron, american oystercatcher, willet, red-winged blackbird, grackle, osprey, turkey vulture, hooded merganser, common merganser, ruddy turnstone, yellowlegs, and misc. peeps. I'm probably forgetting something, but you get the idea. It was good. All told we covered about 14 miles, about six hours on the water. We enjoyed the falling tide on the trip out with no wind, and rode it back with a following wind on the return. It was a great trip with great people and I can't wait to get back out there again.
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