Sea Kayak - Long Island

An absolutely beautiful day - sunny and very little wind, mostly at our backs! With the forecast of light northerly wind and a larger tidal exchange in the afternoon, we elected to go counter clockwise around the island. This proved quite favorable as the tide height was high enough along the east side of the island that we could see more of the large marshes, instead of just the banks as in previous trips. We also had less current against us most of the day and a little wind at our backs on the return down the west side of the island.
We launched on time at 8:55am. The parking lot was pretty full - likely by bow hunters on the island. The temperature was pretty brisk - my hands stayed pretty cold for the first hour or so. At the tide levels on this first leg, we had little trouble navigating the shallows. We had up to a knot of adverse current, but mainly around points and we made good time to the north end of the island by 11am. The beach on the south side of the point was sunny and we enjoyed a leisurely lunch, deciding to take off layers to keep from overheating on the rest of the paddle.
After lunch at 11:40am we headed out around the point and down the west side of the island. We followed the shore for a while and then headed out to the tip of the sandspit at Jensen Point. Just around the outside of the spit, we encountered an enormous flock of small shore birds on the beach making for some great photos. We continued along the outside of the spit past the rotting tractors left from oyster harvesting and then past Sandspit Campground. Just a little south of the campsite, we saw a very large cow elk at the top of the bluff looking out at us. She turned back into the brush, but emerged again for a few seconds to check us out before disappearing for good. We then continued on to Smokey Hollow campsite where we stopped for our last break. We decided that hiking up to the cedar grove would push us too close to dusk getting back so decided not to do the hike. After a break, we continued back to the launch, much of the time on mirror like water it was so calm. Interestingly, the outgoing tide actuall pushed us back to the launch once we made it around HIgh Point at the south tip of the island. We arrived back at the launch at 3:05pm.
Total distance: 13.81nm
Average moving speed: 3.0kt