[Paddlewise] Ye shall Reap what ye Sow

Motor Boater gets his due for harassing kayaker (me)....

Sunday, I was paddling in Lloyds Bay, which borders the Plum Tree NWR
here in the South West side of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.  There
was a little cut through - about 200-300 yards long and 40 yards wide,
that leaves Lloyds Bay and empties into the Chesapeake.

Most of the area is marsh, and not suitable for landing, but with a low
tide, one side of this cut through is sandy and very suitable for
landing.  

I had been out of the boat for about 15 minutes, and decided to get
going again.  I've got a new boat with an Ocean cockpit that I am trying
to get used to, and a new Brooks spray skirt that is tight and still
difficult to get on, so the process takes me a couple minutes.  I had
everything ready to go, but a power boat was heading towards the cut
through, from my rear, so I waited on the edge until they passed.

Sound carries on the water, and the conditions were just right to hear
the driver tell his passenger over the noise of the engine "watch this".

All kinds of bells and whistles started going off in my head, so I
turned around in time to see the driver position his boat so that he
could come at me, turn just in time, and thereby throw me one hell of a
wake.  He did it and it washed me clean up onto the beach and I had to
get out of the boat and re-launch.

As they passed, they were looking behind them and laughing the whole
time.

Well, I got the last laugh.  That area is very shallow and it was near
low tide.  These were either kids in their late teens or early twenties
and apparently weren't familiar with the area.  As they were looking
behind them watching me, he ran his boat WAY and I mean WAY up into
shallow water.  It was up there to the point of leaning over to one
side.  The "motor boat" channel just abruptly ends and the whole area
just outside of that cut through was only a few inches deep at this tide
level.  But, there was a winding path that shallow draft boats could
follow about 10 feet off of the shoreline that was about 2 feet deep,
but not more than 10 feet wide, and with the turns it made, you had to
go very slow.  These are my home waters, so I knew the path was there,
and it easy to visually follow.... if you can't see the bottom, you're
still on the path - if you can see the bottom "turn"!.   Clearly, they
didn't know about the path.

Air temps were in the 60's, but I measured the water temps just an hour
earlier at 40 degrees F.  I had on my wet suit, but the boaters were in
jeans and sweat shirts.  As I was leaving, one of them took his shoes
off, rolled up his pants, and jumped over to try to push the boat back
into deeper water.  Just about instantaneously with his feet hitting the
water he was jumping back up into the boat with a "YEOOOOOOW!"

I simply paddled by on the path at a distance of about 30 yards and
wished them a nice day, all the while with a HUGE grin on my face.  

If they waited for the tide to do all the dirty work for them instead of
getting their feet wet and cold, I figured they would have had to wait
at least another 2-3 hours, and it would be difficult going unless they
left by backtracking. If they went forward, they'd have lots more
trouble in front of them for the next couple hundred yards.

Ain't justice sweet  :-)

Rick
***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed
here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire
responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author.
Submissions:     PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net
Subscriptions:   PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net
Website:         http://www.paddlewise.net/
***************************************************************************