On the beautiful sunny, but hot, Saturday morning of August 6, 2022, I accepted fellow tennis club member Jon Segal’s gracious invitation to paddle on the Trent River. We launched from a private grass and sand landing in River Bend and went up river to an historic area that now just looks like a swamp pond. But many years ago, boats came up from the ocean, through Pamlico Sound, up the Neuse River and then up the Trent River to pick up loads of rice, hence the name Rice Landing. On most trips I post a GPS location for the route, but am not doing so now to protect the privacy of our landing.
The trip was calm and in general uneventful. Jon set a friendly pace that was conducive to talking about geography, history and other items of local interest. We went a couple miles upstream, although I could not discern a current. Even though some parts of this river adjoin River Bend town, this area is too low lying and swampy to be developed. Hence, most of the route was between natural forests without any development in sight. Upon reaching Rice Landing pond, the entrance from the river was partially blocked by floating grass. Jon was able to glide over the grass without much trouble. My boat is designed more for the open ocean, so it had a deeper draft and sharper keel. I got hung up on the grass and had to use my paddle like a pole and push off from the bottom to move forward. After that struggle I was significantly tired out.
Jon then led us around the pond and into the swamp behind it. We saw a blue heron. We wound through the cypress trees, Spanish moss, grass and black water for a ways. The area in the swamp was calm and shady.
On our way back to the put-in we had to push through the same floating grass blockage. I hit it with considerably more momentum and powered through more quickly. Then we re-traced our route a couple miles down stream on the Trent River. A few times we had a mild problem with motor boats passing us going fairly fast, leaving a large wake which rocked our boats for a few seconds. I learned to take one of two tactics: (1) turn my kayak to face into the oncoming waves; or (2) put one end of my dual bladed paddle in the water in a low brace on the side of my boat away from the approaching waves. Both tactics worked fine.
On our return trip I developed another problem. My seat back was not positioned correctly; the bottom frame was not seated in the groove at the back of the butt seat, so it did not give me proper support. My body was too big, due to a thick life jacket and a big fat belly, for me to turn around and fix the seat. So, for the last mile or so I was in considerable pain from over-stressed back, stomach and arm muscles caused by pulling the paddle from a bad angle.
Back at the take-out sand and grass landing, I encountered my next-to-last problem. After running the nose of the kayak onto the landing, I tried to get up out of the cockpit, stand up and step out. My body fit so tightly (see above regarding thick life jacket and fat belly) that I could not get out. I used my arms braced on the back of the cockpit to do a backwards pushup, but my arms were so tired from paddling that I could come up far enough. After teetering on the edge of the cockpit and being out of balance for about a minute, I slowly rolled over and fell into the river.
The water was nice and cool, and only about knee deep, so there was no danger. Jon and I shared a good laugh. But when I tried to stand up on the river bottom, I ran into my last problem. My life jacket is designed with more floatation material in front. That makes a water accident victim float on their back, so their face is out of the water and able to breathe. Each time I tried to roll over onto my stomach so I could get my feet under me and stand up, the jacket pushed me back. After drifting out to deeper water, I finally stood up and pulled my boat out of the water.
All’s well that ends well. We had a good time. Thanks Jon.
