Paddling on the York River from Williamsburg to Yorktown

Woo-hoo! It may not seem like a big deal to some, but I am excited: on Friday I paddled from New Quarter Park to the Watermen's Museum, Queen's Creek to Yorktown. It was so cool!

Over the years, I've stuck the nose of my kayak out into the York River on several occasions and I've always wanted to paddle on to Yorktown or cross the river to Gloucester. But the York River is deep and fast moving. And, okay, I'm 55. Also, although I love to hike, bike, and kayak, I'm timid, not usually the adventurous type. But boating is in my blood. I come from a long line of watermen and there is nothing that feels better to me than being out on the water.

Karen took this picture of me while we considered the conditions. The weather was gorgeous, but the problem was the wind. It was coming out of the NNW at 15 miles per hour, so there were white caps on the river. Honestly, in the 5 years that I've been paddling Queen's Creek, I've never seen it this rough when planning to go kayaking .

But once we got out there and underway, I felt okay. My old Carolina is especially seaworthy. The tide was going out and with the wind at our backs, the paddling wasn't difficult. You could roll with the tide. You can see in this photo of Karen and Laura that the swells were one to two feet. We rolled and surfed down to Yorktown in two hours. Laura had a GPS and said that when we weren't paddling the tide was taking us down the river at about 2 miles per hour. When we were paddling, she was getting readings like 6 mph.

I need a rudder and a spray skirt if I'm going to do this again, though. When I rolled over the front of a swell it would sweep my boat sideways. I had to work pretty hard at times to keep the nose pointed toward the York River Bridge.

The occasion for this paddle was to meet up with historic watercraft made by members of the Watermen's Museum. They were taking three days to paddle from the Pamunkey Indian Reservation to Yorktown before the Maritime History Festival. We waited for them at the appointed time and at our rendezvous spot, but when they didn't show and since we were rocking and rolling, we decided to proceed.

It's a good thing that we did, because they hadn't shown up when we arrived at the Museum. The folks at the museum were concerned too, because there was no way to reach them. I can't believe they didn't take a cell phone or a VHS radio. Not smart. We didn't see them on the river on our way back to Williamsburg.

I suppose there will be a story to be told tomorrow! The Maritime History Festival at the Watermen's was today, but I didn't go down to check. This day was just too nice and I met the Bird Club for the walk at NQP this morning. If it's anything truly exciting, I'll let you know. I'm guessing that they had some troubles with the seas. As I said, the wind was blowing at 15 when we left. But it was under 10 mph about an hour into our paddle. The midday winds could have easily swamped a skiff.