kork4

>I've done it twice and I put in at Pavillion Beach both >times. Concensus is 19 miles by map, 20.8 by donperry with a GPS. Last time I started at the breakwall in Newburyport, went through the mouth, down the front, then up the sound. I prefer going through the one possibly challenging section, the mouth of the merrimack, while fresh. It adds challenge figuring out the tide for the sound when you do the sound last. >Have fun! Hope you have a good day for it ;-) Any day paddling with no one getting injured is a good day.... thanks for the help. Kirk usually on a yellow/red mako millenium

>It's more than just lots of water on the backside. Be sure >to get the tidal currents right, as they run up to nearly 2 >kts in lower PI Sound. Which can be harder than it appears at first glance. On an incoming tide, the water flows north past pavilion beach to the Parker river and south from Joppa Flats to the Parker River. A few years ago, doing the 3 rivers race (which I believe has disappeared) we had an incoming tide. I told fellow racers that they could tell if they ever took a wrong turn, north of the parker river, because if the tide was ever going in the same direction they had taken a wrong turn and were headed up a creek. I was playing in the lower PI sound yesterday, as the remnants of Charley went by. It took us 75 minutes to paddle from pavilion beach to the metal garages, in the refuge, and 45 minutes to get back. It's definitely nice having the wind and current with you....

Can someone give me a time/distance estimate for going around plum Island? I vaguely recall it taking me 5 hours when I did it a bunch of years ago. Using some rudimentary map skills I measured it, on mapquest. Either my distance measurements are really off (16 to 17 miles) or I'm a lot more casual when paddling than I think. I realize this sounds highly naive ;-) Everyone planning to join me has done the Blackburn repeatedly so anyone fearing a newbie skill set need not be fearful for us. I'm trying to judge tides to make sure that we have lots of water on the backside for the second half of the trip. Kirk