2015: Post 8 – Ice Paddle

Gerard suggested a paddle in Tors Cove for today... maybe around the islands and on to Lamanche.  The last time I paddled with the G-man was back in October!!!

Its been cold the last few days and during the drive down this morning we could see the bays were caught over with a thin layer of ice.   I began to wonder what ice might be waiting for us at Tors Cove...

Standing on the beach we could see the ice around the islands.  We decided we would put in and see what the paddling would be like.  If nothing else, we would spend a couple hours in the immediate vicinity; time on the water is always well spent, even if you can't get very far.

We paddled around the outside of Fox Island...

And then headed over to Great Island...

The closer we got to Great Island the thicker the ice became, causing us to have to paddle harder to try to get through.  The ice became thick enough that we had to finally concede to "Uncle" and then turned our bows toward Ship Island where the ice thinned out as we paddled farther away from Great Island...

We skirted the southern end of Ship Island and made a bee-line to Pee Pee Island...

From Pee Pee we crossed over to the mainland, then over to Seal Cove....

Green ice hung peculiarly to the cliffs
on this St. Paddy's Day weekend

We paddled to Bauline East before heading back to Pee Pee Island and decided to paddle around it and then headed back over to Ship Island, where we go out for a lunch time snack...

I didn't take any more pictures after we got back on the water, but we decided to paddle around Ship Island, passing our lunch beach again.  From Ship Island we paddle back over to Fox Island and a circumnavigation of the little island before heading back to the cars.

Well we didn't paddle very far as the crow flies.  If you draw a straight line from the put-in to about the point where we turned away from Great Island, then to Bauline East, and back to the take-out it is only a triangle of seven or eight kilometers.  But with the weaving from island to island, and our circumnavigations of the three islands (Pee Pee, Fox and Ship) we covered a respectable distance of sixteen kilometers.

It was a fantastic way to spend a few hours on a chilly morning with good paddling buddies.