emilie

Unfortunately, we had a conflict come up, so Tyson and I will be missing the solstice paddle

Tyson and I will be joining you.

In addition to ski season barely being over, the good rough water usually isn't until the summer. http://magicseaweed.com/Cape-Ann-Surf-Report/370/ Emilie

Tyson's and my photos. Nice day playing in the rocks.

Tyson and I will join you also. I'll be doing some rock play, especially as I'll bring my plastic Avocet that I need to remember how to use before taking it to Cobscook next week.

There weren't that many waves, so I had limited opportunities for hull damage.

Tyson and I are interested in the L3 trip, though we are keeping an eye on the weather.

More on the tandem: There is a whole lot of maneuverability at the front of the boat too. We got much better at surfing once I really focused on managing the bow and placing it where it needed to be. I have found a bow rudder quite effective in rough water.

I went and looked up the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. Under visitor oportunities, there is a link to the canoe and kayak regulations. Amongst other things, it says That being said, I have seen regulations change over time at other wild life refuges, so it is probably worth checking back occasionally. Emilie

date?

That can be fixed with a spray skirt so you don't have to worry about a little splashing.

Ok, I redid the plots all in EDT. Wind speeds at Isles Of Shoals from noon to 6pm: 7Kts to 24Kts Wind speeds at Western Maine Shelf from noon to 6pm: 9Kts to 15 Kts Wave height at Western Maine Shelf from noon to 6pm: 1ft rising to 3ft (see EEL's above note about this being an average) Wave period at Western Maine Shelf noon to 6pm: 2 seconds rising to 4seconds

Ah, thank you Phil, it looks like I was in error. "Both Realtime and Historical files show times in UTC only." from NOAA http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/measdes.shtml and the gulf of Maine buoy plots clearly say "From 2010-09-16 0:00 to 2010-09-17 0:00 UTC" So I need to go redo my analysis.

I went back and looked at the buoy data for Sept 16th. All the buoys are available from http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ I used Isles of Shoals for wind. To get wave data I used the Western Maine Shelf buoy which is half way between Isles of Shoals and Kennebunkport. Since that isn't quite where you guys were paddling, I got wind from that buoy too as a consistency check. What I found is that on the afternoon of the 16th: Isles of Shoals wind was between 5kts and 20kts. Western Maine Shelf wind was between 3kts and 15kts with a similar profile. So things may have been a little calmer at the western Maine shelf buoy, but not by that much. See the two graphs. The ticks on the x axis of the Western Maine Shelf plot correspond to hours. Midnight is on the left, noon in the middle, and midnight on the right. The Western Maine Shelf buoy reported that from noon to 4pm the waves were variable 1~1.5 ft high. And from 4pm onward they steadily increased in strength such that by 8pm they were at 2ft. (Since you guys said nothing about getting back after dark, I'm assuming you weren't out past 8pm.) These are average wave heights, so the higher ones will be slightly higher than 2ft. The Western Maine Shelf buoy report for period has enough noise between noon and 4pm that I'm guessing there was not enough consistent wave to measure the period. From 4pm to 8pm the period went from 2s to 3s. Based on all that data it looks like local wind blown chop. For those who want to recreate my data here is the Isles of Shoals weather station and the Western Maine Shelf buoy. For Isles of Shoals, go to the link at the bottom for "Real Time Data" and then "Real time continuous winds data". For the Western Maine Shelf buoy use the "Search historical meteorological data for observations that meet your threshhold[sic] conditions" widget to plot data from sept 16th.

This is part of why the length of open water crossings on a trip matters for the level. Things that can be fun near safety, can be harrowing farther out. Add to that the fact that the sea and weather change over time. Longer crossing just lead to higher risk probability.