Playing with the Loon 138 on the Ocean

Playing with the Loon 138 on the Ocean ~Playing with the Loon 138 on the Ocean~
Date: 2 days during the first couple weeks of August, 2000

After I got over the tendonitis, I took the kayak out on the ocean a couple times to see how it would do. The people at Olt Town Canoe told me that the "Loon 138" would not be good on the ocean or in Penobscot Bay but I wanted to find out for myself. My father wanted to try wind surfing on the ocean so I went with him and took the kayak. We went to a place on Mount Desert Island, I think it was Otter Cove or something like that. The loon handled pretty good, a little tubby feeling but very stable. The ocean was much different feeling than lakes and rivers... it seemed to move a lot more, like walking through an open field that constantly undulated with small hills. Deffinately much much more interesting than paddling on a lake.. the currents were much more subtle than in a river but almost as fast moving. The swells made things interesting... I could sit and watch the swell, like a small hill moving towards me... the horizon would be out twenty feet away for a couple seconds and then I would be on top of the swell, and a few seconds later, down between the swells again.

A couple weeks later I went kayaking in the ocean again... this time off the tip of Schoodic Point. I had my first experiences with taking off from and landing on rocky shorelines... the sort of thing where a big wave comes in over the rocks, you wait for it to go back out then pull the kayak down to the rocks as fast as you can, get in it, and be ready before the next big wave comes over the rock.. then the wave sort of picks up the kayak, tosses it around a little and sucks it out to sea. Lots of fun, ja. This time I was out longer than I was at Otter cove... I felt alot more confident with the Loon 138's handling on the ocean. The weather was a little worse and there were some small, one or two foot, waves on alot of the swells... and the swells seemed bigger, with less space between them. I kayaked down around schoodic Island and stopped there to look around. The underwater rocks in the shallows on one side of the island were kinda fun... they'd poke up out of the troughs of the swells making it a pain in the ass to get through. Lots of sea gulls, lots of rasberries, blueberries, and other junk washed up on the shore that could keep me alive for at least a month. I think I was out for about five hours that time, some of it spent wandering around on the island.

The park rangers piss me off... they wouldn't let me come in on the rocks where I had taken off from... they had heard the horror stories from some lady who saw me leave... apperently the waves had rolled over and bashed me into the rocks.. must have hit my head pretty hard cause all I remember is the wave coming in, moving me aside a bit, and washing me out... but after the she told the park rangers what SHE SAW, and I did not come back for five hours, the parkrangers decided to call out a coast guard ship from Bar Harbor to look for me... then my father spotted me about a quarter mile out coming into shore... park rangers piss me off.. they were just trying to make it look like they were really doing their job cause a couple days before, some old guy fell off a cliff and died in another part of Acadia National Park, I think it was Beehive Mt.

No pictures of me kayaking or my dad windsurfing out there, but either my mother or sister took some pictures of the rocky coastline. Every time I see pictures like these, I stop and stare longingly for a while... they make me want to go kayaking.. just about any picture of the ocean makes me want to go kayaking. The movie "The Perfect Storm" made me want to go kayaking.