[Paddlewise] Surprise Present

Yesterday was my 50th birthday.  What better way to celebrate than with a sunrise paddle.  As usual I was late getting things together so it was about 8:00 am before I launched at the floating dock at the L-head in the Corpus Christi marina.  The wind was almost calm and had an unusual westerly direction.  The light wind and westerly direction resulted in mirror-like water with almost perfect reflections of the docked sailboats and yachts.  It reminded me of some of the paintings of New England harbors that I had seen.  Freed from the confines of the seawall and docks, the wind increased slightly as I paddled out toward the breakwater entrance.  I was relieved to feel the breeze since without it this was going to be an uncomfortably hot paddle.   
 
A combination of light fog and haze obscured the view of the causeway that crosses the northwest end of the bay.  However, its position was clearly marked by a line of flashing reflections as the rising sun bounced off the windows of the morning commuters.  The brilliant sparkles were like a giant diamond necklace stretched across the neck of the bay.  As I crossed the breakwater entrance I swung wide to avoid disturbing a couple fishing from their boat at the end of the rocks.  Just as I started to turn back south along the breakwater, I saw the fin rise and quickly disappear some 50 yards beyond the couples boat.  I watched for a few seconds and the dolphin surfaced again.  It appeared to be heading north so I swung the kayak around hoping to parallel the dolphin and get a closer view.  After a couple of minutes it failed to reappear and I was just about to give up and turn back on my original course.  Then suddenly it surfaced almost right in front of my kayak.  It was not where I was looking and was almost directly into the sun so I only got a quick glimpse.   I thought it might be heading back inside the breakwater so I turned so that I could watch the water inside and outside of the breakwater as I continued paddling generally north.  After a few minutes of no sightings I decided that this dolphin was on a mission and that I should just turn back on my original southerly course.   I swung around and took a couple of strokes and there it was again.  It was a little farther out in the bay, but still seemed to be heading north.  I paddled a little farther out into the bay and then turned north to parallel the dolphin.  Again a few minutes went by with no sightings.  Just as I was ready to turn back it surfaced about 5 yards to my left completely on the opposite side of the kayak from where I had been expecting it.  We played hide and seek for another 15 minutes and with several course reversals gradually worked our way farther east out into the bay without really moving that far north or south of the!
  breakwa

ter entrance.  Eventually there were no more surprise appearances and the drone of an approaching shrimp boat engine convinced me that my dolphin had headed out into the bay for a breakfast buffet of by-catch as the shrimpers sorted their haul.   It was a nice surprise birthday present.
 
I resumed my southerly course along the breakwater toward the Holiday Inn Emerald Cove.  The wind was starting to swing slightly to the southwest and provided a welcome cooling headwind without much resistance.  As I approached Emerald Cove I began to notice more and more of the jellyfish that we call cabbage heads.   A couple of weeks ago we had paddled through thousands of these sting-less jellies that were only quarter to golf-ball size.  These were now baseball to softball size and as I turned southeast along the bays south shore their numbers increased from dozens to hundreds to thousands.  Most were just a plain translucent to milky white but a few were a beautiful maroon.  These had a dark blood red band near the tentacles that lightened and then turned into a series of little red dots toward the middle of the bell.  On most the colored area was only an inch or two wide, but on a very few almost the entire bell was maroon colored.  Paddling through this living water was a little like running through a room full of balloons.  You knew that they were not going to stop you, but it was hard to take a normal stroke in normal rhythm with all the little bumps.  First I got the surprise present and now I was getting the surprise balloons (and none were black with 50 in large numerals). 
 
I continued past Cole Park Pier to Oleandar Point enjoying my party paddle through the cabbage head balloons.   About 9:15 I turned around and retraced my route.  With the wind (what little there was) now at my back I was not getting any of that pleasant cooling and I quickly began to overheat.  Once I reached an area with fewer of the jellies I laid over for a few seconds of sculling braces on each side for a little cooling.  The water was not much cooler than the air, but the slight evaporative cooling from my now soaked shirt did help a little bit.  I got back to the dock around 10:00 am, had a soda, and sat around for few minutes to dry off before loading the kayak and heading home.  It was a pretty good way to start my second 50 years.


Mark Arnold
mjamja_at_earthlink.net
***************************************************************************
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/
***************************************************************************