We finished the NCC

Well, we made it. Let me reflect a bit on our trip. First of all Dave and I are thankful for our wives Debra & Cheryl who give us the freedom to do crazy things like this and for their love & support. We left home Wednesday morning, Sept. 22 on our way to Greenville, NC to stay at the home of Charles Gaston & his mom. Charles is a former member and deacon at Madison Ave. and moved down to stay with him mom last year. We enjoyed their hosptality and seeing a bit of Greenville which is home to East Carolina University.

We arrived at Cedar Island by noon on Thursday with plenty of time to go through our gear check and captains meeting at 4:00 p.m. We camped in the Driftwood campground for the night and even took an evening paddle to scout out the coastline for our return and try to find the "cuts" from the back bay to the ocean.

Friday morning began with a beautiful sunrise. The race began at 7:30 a.m. on very quiet and flat water. This was great for the paddlers but meant that most of the sailboats had to paddle or row. Some rowed from 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. when the wind finally picked up on the Neuse River. The catamaran below sailed by "SewSew" aka Randy Smyth somehow caught just enough wind and took off and actually covered the entire 100 miles in 15 hours and 25 minutes. Amazing.

As we started off, we passed several pods of dolphins and throughout the day enjoyed the beauty of God's creation in the salt marsh, bays, islands, ospreys & egrets fishing, and sun shining. I even had a shrimp jump right in my kayak once. All I needed was a bit of cocktail sauce. We were challenged with paddling into a headwind and pushing ourselves to the limits of our endurance. We learned to stop and rest, eat and drink as much as we needed to continue on.

Here we are joyfully paddling up what we thought was "Clubfoot Creek". Somehow when we started and I reset the trip computer on my GPS, I erased all of my waypoints and route. I wasn't too concerned about this since we also had charts and Dave had put the waypoint of Clubfoot Creek in his GPS. However without his glasses he doesn't see too well and so what I erased, he misread and we paddled on. I called Ben (our shore contact) to excitedly tell him he could file a report for us that we were in Clubfoot Creek and then turned my phone back off to save the battery. After paddling for a mile or two - it was a beautiful cyprus swamp - we began to wonder how the sailboats were going to make it through, then we began to wonder how we were going to make it through. At that point I called Ben again to receive the news that we were not in Clubfoot Creek but that it was 3 miles further up the Neuse River. Big letdown...and the sun was going down fast as well. We paddled back out and 3 miles further as the sun set and we finally entered the real Clubfoot Creek which was more like a huge river than a creek. We passed our first sailboat as they were rowing and for the next several hours passed most of the other sailboats. Crazy Russian from Staten Island and Dog Paddler from Long Island were not happy about rowing or paddling for most of the day. But they all pressed on. When we finally reached the Harlow Canal, the tide was against us, but we still did better than the sailboats paddling against it. We finally reached the Newport River around midnight and found a place to camp at 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning. As we pulled up we realized that someone else was already camped there but were too tired to do anything but stop. We woke up SeaHawk aka Craig Smith who had been sleeping a few hours and he welcomed us. Once the sailboats reached the wind, they sailed on through the night.

We slept from 1 am to 6 am and were back on the water by 7 am headed for the checkpoint in Beaufort. Here's Dave standing in the salt marsh where we stashed our kayaks for the night and slept just above it on a grassy road above an old boat slip. This is part of "stealth" camping to leave no trace and stay on the down low.

We checked in in Beaufort around 9:00 a.m. and after some coffee, oatmeal and more power bars continued down Taylor Creek. We had the tide right and with little effort were able to move at 4-5 mph for that stretch. Across this creek - which is more like a big channel - is the Rachel Carson Preserve. Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962 that is often credited with helping to launch the environmental movement in our country. On the preserve wild horses grace peacefully and people are the guests. We took the outside route around Harkers Island which put us in a lot of wind and surfing the waves. Fun, but challenging. We made it to Brown's Island for lunch and a rest for the final push north along Core Sound. When I was planning the route, I thought it might be nice to paddle across Core Sound to camp on the beach by the ocean. In reality a 2 mile paddle across the wind tossed sound was the last thing we would do. At this point we just wanted to keep going toward the finish the shortest way possible.

Saturday afternoon we had a south and southwest wind mostly at our back but also creating 2-3 foot waves. I kept getting better at surfing them but also kept getting blown sideways in which case they crashed over you and hopefully the skirt kept out most of the water. In theory at least. By 8:00 pm. we were out of light and not comfortable continuing in the dark in those waves. Dave spotted a trailer campground and we pulled into their slip, paid our fee, cooked dinner and went to sleep early. We got up at 5:00 am. and were on the water by 6 am. with about 12 miles to go. Here is the Sunday morning Sunrise as I worshiped the Lord singing "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty the King of Creation. Oh my soul praise him for he is my strengh and salvation.

We plotted our course to take the shortest route to cut through to the finish line only to get up up to the end of the channel and realize it was the wrong one. There was about 50 yards of beach between us and the ocean. On our track if you zoom in you can see our little portage to make it through. We were welcomed back on the water by a few Watertribe folk sailing & paddling and a welcoming party of 20 on the beach. We came in last but as I reminded Dave... Jesus said "the last shall be first." :) Lessons learned....Our character is developed by persevering in the midst of difficulty and struggles. When you feel like you can't go on, stop and rest, get something to eat, sleep and start over on a new day. It was striking that at the captains meeting they reminded everyone to do this before they quit. When Elijah was ready to quit as a prophet of Israel, running away from Queen Jezebel who was trying to kill him. The Lord sent him an angel in the desert to feed him and tell him to sleep. It was only after that he could go on. In ministry as well as life God created all of us to Work, Rest and Play. If we get those out of balance our life will be out of balance. This race was my play.

Map of our entire route (for a larger version, click HERE)

Watertribe North Carolina Challenge

Yes, I think we are ready to paddle. Tent, sleeping bag, air matress, paddling clothes, camp clothes, bad weather clothes, cooking stuff, safety stuff - flares, radio, gps, SPOT, cell phone, spare paddle, etc. And of course a fishing pole & some lures.Today I tried to see if it all fit and it did so I think we're ready to go. David Lyle and I will leave Paterson on Wednesday morning, stay Wednesday night at the home of one of our former deacons, Charles Gaston in Greenville NC. Thursday morning we will go out to Cedar Island in preparation for the inspection in the afternoon and captains meeting at 6:00 p.m. We will be camping overnight at the Driftwood Campground right at the start and begin at 7:30 a.m. Friday morning. There is a detail schedule and narrative of the race on the Watertribe website. Below is a copy of the map that shows the course of the race. You can track me in two ways. You can go directly to the SPOT tracking site (just click on SPOT). Here I will be called Macatawa, which is Ben's paddling name, since I'm using his SPOT - but its really me. Or you can go to the Watertribe Map site - click HERE.
At this site you will see all of the paddlers. My name is PassaicPaddler. If you want to just see just me click on that name in the 3rd box and hit "regenerate view". David Lyle is Summit Paddler.

For all of those who are supporting me to help raise money to purchase kayaks,vests, paddles and a trailer for our Christian Cadet Club, I'm happy to report that I have surpassed my goal with pledges of $55.00 per mile. This will be enough to also purchase new camping and fishing equipement for our new cadet group. Thanks so much to all who made a pledge. Please keep us in your prayers.

Glassing the Deck

Heres the deck after the 3rd coat of exoxy. I felt much more comfortable doing it the second time around. The first coat adheres the cloth to the wood. Second coat fills the weave and third coat just tops it off. This coat will eventually be sanded smooth in preparation for 4 final coats of spar varnich.

Here is my friend Lou mixing the epoxy. For the first coat I found its very helpful to have Lou mix while I apply. After about 1/2 hour I could begin squeeging the excess off.

I'm very pleased how the cockpit recess came out. This will eventually be cut out to make way for the cockpit which is black walnut. the color contrasts are beautiful I think.

Here I am installing the first coat of epoxy. It always amazes me how the cloth totally disappears and become like glass once the epoxy is applied. Note the gloves, long sleves and safety glasses. We felt no need for resperators since we had the basement windows open and there seemed to be no fumes.

Urban Paddling

Yesterday afternoon Richard Narrmore, a fellow New City Kid's Church board member, and I set out to paddle from Liberty State Park to Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus. The route I planned showed just over 17 miles. We had an incoming tide and hoped that would help us get up the Hackensack River before it got to dark. Unfortunately I overestimated how fast and how far we could paddle and by 7:30 the sun set and we still had over 5 miles to go. By 8 p.m. we had lost light and the ingoing tide turned fast to outgoing. The last 3 miles againt a growing outgoing tide were not fun. We pulled off the water at 10:00 p.m. Thanks to Richard for renewed energy through his Liver Dumplings.....you should try one sometime. Lessons learned. Don't be unrealistic....Why do I have to keep learning that. Keep ready communication between each other. Once we lost each other in the dark (even with our lights on) and even our whistles didn't help alot since I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from. Other than that it was a great trip.

Here is Richard going under the Bayonne Bridge. Construction on the bridge began in 1928, and eventually cost $13 million. When it opened on November 15, 1931, it was the longest steel arch bridge in the world and was deliberately built a few feet longer than the Sydney Harbour Bridge, The same pair of golden shears used to cut the ribbon for the Bayonne Bridge was sent to Australia for the ribbon cutting of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In the next few years they are going to have to rebuild or build a new bridge to accomidate the new giant freighters from China that will be 60 ft. higher. The future life of the Newark Harbor now depends on raising the height of this bridge.

Here we are approaching the lighthouse in the New York Harbor at the entrance to the Newark Harbor with the Verazano Narrows Bridge in the Background. We had high westerly winds crossing the bay from Liberty State Park.

911 Memorial in Bayonne. Standing more than 100 feet tall, “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism” honors victims of 9/11 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and serves a symbol of solidarity in the fight against world terrorism. Created by Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, the memorial was a gift from the Russian people. It resembles a giant teardrop.

Richard coming across the bay with lower Manhattan in the background.

A track of our trip: