The decision was made easy today when I was tipped off in an e-mail from Jim, whom I paddled with the other day. He had heard rumor that kayaks are not allowed in the fifteen mile long C&D canal. I dialed the phone number that he gave me for the canal operator and learned that Jim was indeed right. No non motorized boat is allowed to travel the canal. Even sail boats must have a motor to go across. The ironic thing is that I’m actually faster than a lot of sailboats that commonly have underpowered motors that aren’t really expected to do much more than push the sailboat from a dock to open water. For a moment I considered trying to coordinate a ride on the back of a motor boat or something like that but in the end decided it just wasn’t worth the trouble. The Chesapeake is just another area is being added to my ever growing list of places I intend to visit again in the future.
Kevin's much slower pace (fishing all the way on a sit on top kayak) has given him an incredibly intimate knowledge of the places he has paddled through. Kevin is a literal warehouse of information for the waters he’s paddled and it was a treat to be able to get that kind of information first hand. As we talked it was funny to see how we both had developed the same selection criteria for what makes a good camp spot and how we’d shared many of the same experiences in our travels. Some of his experiences I’m happy to have not had such as a very real shark attack and when an alligator sounded it’s displeasure with his camp site selection in the middle of the night. It’s worth taking a look at Kevin’s web site he has had some amazing travels in his kayak.