Adam Bolonsky

I'll buy you two pair if you model them with your matching pink Speedo pickle suit. Bob Budd: what a stud in a speedo! A sight seen by only a few, and when seen by those few, fewer survive...

Check in with the kayakers over at wtpaddlers.org. They have plans afoot for an overnight to the island sometime this summer. Apparently the trip will involve lots of beer once they reach the Vineyard. Also one of their members has crossed to the Vineyard about eight thousand times, including an overnight circumnav with poach camping somewhere off Lucy Vincent Beach/Katama Bay. He knows a lot about the crossing and is one who will drop crossing plans if conditions don't look right, for example good tides and low winds but heavy local fog.

Willis and Brown discuss the Scottish Canoe Association's role in revamping the BCU rating scheme. Simon's blog holds lots of podcasts and archives routes in the UK. He's a BBC reporter who produces crisp audio material. direct podcast link: http://homepage.mac.com/simon.willis/Podca...ry/Coaching.mp3 It opens the podcast direct.

Hi Jason, I left you a voice mail message this a.m. (2/12/07) Adam

Kieran's Japan kayak blog has a post on portable desalinators. A Scotsman in the North Sea is using one to keep himself in drinking water during a truly sick-puppy passage. Kieran's blog: seakayaking.wordpress.com No ads.

Hi Don; I've got a boatload. Send me your email address so we can discuss them. Essentially I need to know the differences between some of the software available, issues on eps files vs. other formats, etc. Anyhow, let's take this one off line. adambolonsky at yahoo dot com

Hey Don - can you get in touch. I have some questions about map-making software. adam adambolonsky at yahoo dot com

What I'm saying is.... ...how do I make the interactive image and all its info available to those who want to read it online and open the pushpin info! Also, how do I save the file someplace safe other than a Google server. Putting these images together is a lot of work I wouldn't want it flushed if Googles loses the file.

Anybody know how to save Google Earth KMZ files to a hardrive? I can't find a simple layman's terms answer anywhere through Google Earth or online. In short, I can't find a way to save an entire interactive image, which is the most valuable, as the pushpins open up to extensive navigation notes I've written and collected over the year about paddling Monomoy. Here's a new image link to the KMZ file I'm creating for Monomoy. You can't interact with the file, however, because it's a jpg, not a kmz file:

I've used Google Earth to pinpoint and describe the three or four ways to cross from Monomoy's western flats and shallows over to the Southway between the two Monomoys and South Beach. I'll put the jpg up and host it on a link. Meanwhile, if you want the 4gb Google KMZ file I created(the KMZ reader is free, so is the file), I can email it. The numerous ghost stories and myths about Monomoy notwithstanding, you can always pass between the two Monomoys, no matter how low the tide. I can't find a way yet to save the entire interactive image, which is the most valuable, as the pushpins open up to extensive navigation notes. Anybody know how to save Google Earth KMZ files to a hardrive? I can't find a simple layman's terms answer anywhere through Google Earth or online. Meanwhile, here's a new image link to the KMZ file I'm creating for Monomoy:

Dan Sheehan's giving a talk on his Greenland kayak the Seal Bear. Event's at the Hull Lifesaving Museum. Link: http://www.jonesriver.org/

Derrick, who writes this blog, always seems to have a unique view on kayaking and always seems tapped in with world wide kayaking issues. It's not commercial.... http://kayakwisconsin.net

Forecasts still link hinky as of 5:30 Thursday, so let's call this one off. Winds look northerly 20-25, gusts to thirty. Oh well, maybe next year.

So far we five for this trip. If anyone else wants in, chime in here.

An old tradition, known at times as the Bob Burnett I ain'd Dead Yet I Just Moved to the West Coast Annual Memorial Day After T-Day Paddle. Usually goes to Misery Island from the Police Station in Manchester and includes leftovers passed around. I'll be in Gloucester that day and am posting the trip from Granite Pier in Rockport at 10:00. Let's go to Thachers and eat on the ramp, in the sun. Island's officially closed, but what the hell, it's only the ramp. One year we had some hairy rescues, other years fog, still others charcoal briquets. Post interest here. If none, trip won't happen.

It took most of the morning for us hemming and hawing over the northwesterlies forecast this past Sunday for Mark, Karen, and I to finally head down from Karen's house in Eastham to Pond Village in Truro to take a look at the water. There were ripples and no waves, and the whitecaps that had been spilling all morning off Eastham had lain down. The air was cold and as we unpacked our gear I had to square my shoulders, put on my jacket and hat, and borrow a pair of gloves from Karen to hold off the Reynaud's. Backstory: Friday night, in heaving chop swell and warm air, Mark and I launched into some brisk and wet soutwesterlies off Eastham. We fished all of ten minutes, sailed downwind a while in the building gusts, then headed back in to pack the boats and drive out to and surfcast from Coast Guard beach in the driving mist and shorebreak climbing off the sandbars. The skunk was out and we came back with no catch. And ditto last weekend for me and John Huth and Linda and Diane off Monomoy, not only the flats but also the Southway. So Mark and I had agreed Sunday morning that were we to get skunked once again here on the Cape, let it be someplace new for once. Karen didn't care. She just wanted to paddle some place new. It's a four mile crossing from Pond Village to Long Point Light off Provincetown, and since the wind was light we made the trip in less than an hour, trolling the whole way. About half a mile from the low beach that makes that massive recurving turn west then north then east from Long Point out to Race Point, we saw three or four flocks of birds working the shallows. We hustled over and, in those gin-clear waters running out with the tide over the glacial till off the beach, picked up about a dozen schoolies. The humps and bumps off the Provincetown tidal race squirmed on the horizon about a mile out, in the deepwater, and so we let the outgoing tide carry us around the corner to Wood End. There, in a recirculating backeddy, the water black with depth, Karen took Mark's rod and trolled it. Whack! The tip bent down, the reel submerged, and Karen was up to her wrists with a fish on. She reeled in: a bantam ocean bluefish thrashing off her bow. We landed it and bled it. The backeddy released us and we began to drif out with the tide towards Race Point. The fish steadily got larger the closer we got to the Race, and soon they were breakingon the surface, emitting that distintive fresh-cut watermelon smell of a feeding bluefish school. The afternoon wore on: I picked up a bluefish too, Karen a striped bass, and so we loaded them into her back hatch for the paddle back while Mark deal with sciatica on the beach, stretching like a tired dog. Dusk approahced; I hustled on back to Truro as Mark and Karen hung back, off P-town, and fished some more. The wind backed and died and then it backed some more into south. I landed at Pond Village in the near dark, then called Karen and Mark on the VHF to see if they had a landmark. I rolled my car down to sand's edge, turned the headlights on over the water to beacon them in. For nearly all of the crossing from P-town to Truro you can see the steady five-one-thousand spat of Highland Light just north of the FAA radar dome on the oceanside scarp, but come in close to the Truro shore and each dips below the land and becomes invisible. Using my car lights as a beacon Mark and Karen landed; we packed and headed home. Karen's boat has now been christened: her aft hatch sticky with fish scales and eviscera, the stern weighted down on the backcrossing. Mark caught several fish, too; but perhaps best, it was nice to have for once eschewed Monomoy, Chatham, the Nauset Inlet, Billingsgate and all that.

Hey Brad; any interest in writing a story about either how you set up your kayak cam or simply publishing some of your kayak surf pictures with detailed captions? adambolonsky at yahoo dot com

Hey Brad, were the blues breaking on the surface or were they down deep? Last time I fished Pebble Beach off Rockport they were in thick, thick, thick off Milk Island, but mostly below the surface. Hey, nice fish, a 36"-er.

Thanks Jeff. I'd just heard that rentals no longer happen.

Anyone know of specific web pages related to VHF regs and licensing for the following countries?: Shetlands Scotland United Kingdom Mexico Google has been useless.

Anyone know of a dealer or outfitter who rents folding boats for takeaway on trips far away or abroad?

Hi Brad, nope, not a Santini but some Spag's knockoffs I picked up at about $4 per. Yup, mono, but a couple of 1/2 oz barell weights at the leader for weight. Had to use stainless steel ball bearing swivels to hold off the line twist. I was probably trolling at 8-10 feet, deeper when I slowed down. Don't know about Ipswich Bay, but Leon reports things are pretty sick right now off Halibut Point in the area of the bell buoy, though not as hot as this exact same time last year. There is SO MUCH bait in the water! If you want more info on the bite at Cape Ann and thereabouts, read the heavily-trafficed message boards at newenglandkayakfishing.com

Hit Pebble Beach in Rockport yesterday around 3:00, parked and looked. Lots of surface boils just outside the shorebreak, then the entire bay essentially exploded. The whole area off is loaded with bait in a rough triangle from the beach west to Salt Island, east again to the west side of Milk, then all along the back side of Milk over to the southeast side of Thachers, wrapping around even as far as Londonder. Schoolie stripers close to Milk, the rest was all blues and much further offshore. Topwater stuff didn't work, nor kastmasters nor plugs. Fished an unbaited tube (lost two to break-offs), hooked a dozen-and-a-half blues, took home the day's bag limit and am ready to fire up the smoker! Reminds me of last August, off Halibut Point, same time of the year. Wow what a lot of bait in the water, wow what a lot of bait in the blues' stomachs. Had to gut them fast to hold off the enzyme rot. Had to troll deep to get the blues to respond. Casting was fruitless, oddly enough.... Water is warm. What a fine day to fish!

Thanks much for the info, especially the info on radio usage and the transcript snippets from the CG log.

I keep hearing of a large circulating eddy, north and east of the south end of Plum Island, by Sandy Neck in Ipswich, Massachusetts, that ramps up powerfully enough to hold paddlers off the beach and keep them stuck in the bars and shallows to the northeast, east/southeast. Makes sense: all of Ipswich Bay (and Rowley, etc.) flows out past there, as does the Ipswich River -- all of that fast flow off Pavillion Beach, and past the day beacon off Sandy Neck, that we've seen during NSPN trainings. Add in heavy storm surge and large waves that need to run back off the beach...and there you have the ingredients for both an eddy and a rip current. Anyone know more about it? I've kayak fished there but plenty but only on calm days among the mosquito fleet of powerboat striped bass fishermen working the sandbars outside the approach channel. Benign enough on a calm day, typically intoxicating views of the sandy bottom and large fish flitting past. But graphs out as the recipte for a re-creation of the raft scene in Herzog's Aguirre[i/].