Re: [Paddlewise] Massachusetts / NH Coastline

On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Jerry Hawkins wrote:

> Any paddlers familiar with the NE corner of Massachusetts,

Intimately.  I've been paddling that/this area for about 25 years.  Ask away.

> please let me know if there are rental shops in this area. 

I don't know of any that rent "performance" sea kayaks.  ERBA, 
http://www.erba.com has already been mentioned.

http://www.nspn.org, north shore paddlers network, is the local kayak 
club.  It would be worth posting this question to them.  

Jed Lube is active with them, I would expect a few other NSPN members to be
on this list.

> I'll be in Andover in a couple of weeks and may get a chance to get a paddle wet.

> I see Plum Island on the map and the name is somehow familiar.

>From an old "trip" report:
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 09:12:00 -0400 (EDT)
I paddled around Plum Island saturday.

I launched at 10:30 from the sea wall (high tide was sometime after 2)
Headed straight across and out the mouth.  Not a stretch for the faint
of heart, or slight of skill.  It was in incoming current with several
sections of standing waves.  Probably the toughest stretch was
rounding the end of the jetty.  The current was coming along parallel
to the beach and then taking a fairly abrupt turn to enter the river.
This resulted in a brisk current plus standing waves while making a turn.

Going down the front was uneventful, the refuge appears to be closed to 
humans.  Just small flocks of terns and shore birds for the entire 
stretch of the refuge.  

As you paddle down the frontside there are 2 hills in the distance,
one is the hill that Cranes castle is on the other is Hog Island in
essex bay.  As you get to plum island point the only one you can see
is hog island, so it looks like you've got further to go than you do.

After rounding the point I pulled over to stretch my legs and drain my 
boat (it leaks a bit)  I lucked out and pulled in between 2 boats, one
of which on of my buddies owned!  They offered me juice boxes, soda, beer,
cold cuts, chicken salad...  I sucked down a couple of juice boxes and hung
on with them for about a half hour.  

Headed up the backside was nice, slight tailwind (which had been a minor
headwind going down the front) with the current.  About a half mile shy
of the plum island bridge I was distracted by a waterskier and his idiot
friends (they didn't know how to pick up a skier and were yelling at
each other) and got lost ;-)  I found myself even with the end of the
runway, as the river branched repeatedly and got smaller.  I turned around
before it was too late.  While lost I watched 4 people parachute onto
plum island.

After finding my way back to the main channel (the fork I missed was right
where I had encountered the water skiing crew)

Just past Woodbridge island I saw a minimum of 25 big swirls from
large fish or schools taking off as I passed by.  It almost made me
want to take up fishing.

I landed at about 3:20.  

According to one of the people hanging out while I was sucking down the
juice box Plum Island is 7 miles from end to end.  I was awful tired, and
quite slow, if that distance is accurate.

+++

A couple of weeks ago I did a race from the town landing in Ipswich to
Rings Island in Salisbury, paddling the length of the backside of plum 
island. The race was billed as 11 miles.  At the finish the 2 finishing 
kayakers commented that the race had been harder than the prior 2 
Blackburn challenges...  The race announcement was "11 miles, past
participants have had problems with dehydration, navigating through the 
marsh, and tricky currents in the Merrimack. difficult".  

If you are paddling the backside of plum island it's worth keeping in mind 
that on an incoming tide the tide flows from the south up to the Parker 
river, and from the north down to the parker river.  

A couple of years ago Clyde Sisler posted an entertaining trip report 
about going up one of the side channels and discovering the local mud.  
Which is deep and thick.  Portaging across the marsh may look easy but
is quite difficult...

kirk

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