On July 28 Janet Smith and Bob Laney took a nice paddle on Rice’s Creek in southwest New Hanover County. As usual, I was testing another of dozens of configurations of kayak gear, deck bag, PFD, GPS, cell phone, knife, whistle, paddle float, self-rescue stirrup, pump, drinking water, map, and what seemed like nearly endless pieces of necessary equipment. I knew that I wanted each item with me, but I was having a hard time figuring out where to attach them to me or the boat.
On this trip I was trying out two Army surplus pack pockets, one each attached to the front straps of my PFD. Occasionally my gear ideas work brilliantly. Most of the time the practice does not match the theory. Just like Thomas Edison tried over 1,000 elements for the filament of a light bulb before one worked, my dual pocket invention was a bust. They flopped around badly, stuck out too far for me to swing my arms to paddle the boat and made me frustrated.
Janet could tell that my paddling experience was causing me stress and suggested I try to enjoy the trip. In desperation, I yanked the pockets off my PFD and clipped them to the top front of the deck bag. There they worked well until it came time to exit my boat at the end of the trip. The pockets blocked my feet from pulling out of the cockpit and swinging over the sides of the boat to the ground. Sigh…Back to the drawing board.
Oh, well, while still on the water Janet and I had a nice trip. We paddled upstream a mile or so. Due to the many recent rains, the creek current was flowing abnormally fast downhill. In Janet’s sleek, efficient Wilderness Systems Tsunami 135 and in my sleek, efficient Eddyline Sitka XT we sliced through the water and easily moved upstream. When it came time to head back to the launch ramp it was a casual float with the current.
The happy campers had a good time.
