Jim Snyder Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 Jim Snyder, Nick and Allie Pearson in their Valley tandem, the "Bismarck", and John Dowd. Calm winds, swells ranging from under a foot to occasional 2'-3'. Air temp low 30s, water temp mid 40s. We launched from the State Park beach just north of the harbor as I had been told they were dredging the harbor and it would be unavailable. It turned out that the dredging operation was taking the day off but our launch was probably easier anyway. Heading South towards Hampton was a stretch of coast I had yet to paddle. As we paddled on both sides of a fairly high tide, there was not a lot of opportunity for surf or rock play as the waves were breaking very close to the beach. There were a fair number of board surfers catching nice short rides. Even so the calm day was very enjoyable and we were all happy to be out on the first day of the year. We landed, almost without incident at Bass Beach for a stretch and lunch. The Bismarck can apparently be a bit of a trick to land. As the launch after lunch was fairly steep we all tried variations of a seal launch from the slots between soft rocks. After successful launching we decided to paddle out to some exposed rocks that were the inside margin of Rye Ledge. For me this was the highlight of the day. If the water had been warmer it would have been fun to explore all the breaks and features that were mostly still submerged. As the water wrapped around the huge submerged ledge it formed a spectacular zipper along the narrow spit that uncovers at low tide. I got a little surprise ride passing over the zip. Coming back to the launch it looked much as we had left it, having passed through the slack at high tide and dropped back down. It was a good thing we had four people to get the Bismarck back up to the parking lot. Happy New Year everyone. Hopefully by the time the water warms up we will be back to something like last year (2019)! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prudenceb Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 Glad you had a good day, Jim. We did too. Could you be more specific about where you launched. What state park? What harbor? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Snyder Posted January 2, 2021 Author Share Posted January 2, 2021 Rye Harbor State Park. The green line is us. For reference, the red line is from a large group including you on June 27th. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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