As I paddled my kayak on the Sudbury River this afternoon, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps it had all been just a bad dream. The recent bout of cold weather; frigid winds; and the ice blocking Fairhaven Bay. With this afternoon's bright sunshine and warm temperatures my water world was right again. Too bad it couldn't stay this way till March!
Reaching Heath's Bridge and seeing that the high water levels had released another batch of trash, I decided to launch an onshore raid upstream of the bridge. It took about 20 minutes to round up 45 empty containers and two large wads of fishing line. While engrossed in my trash picking, I didn't, at first, notice the 2 kayakers that pulled up under the bridge. I'm pretty sure one of the paddlers was Leon G. of Bedford, one of the area's stronger and faster paddlers. He and a fellow paddler were turning around here to head back downriver, probably to Rt. 225.
After stowing my trash booty below deck and relaunching, I proceeded towards Fairhaven Bay where I was glad to find that last week's ice was mostly broken up and gone. What remained was along the west side of the bay which is very shallow. Leaving the bay's south end I began to feel the wind that the weather forecasters predicted would eventually awaken.
As I emerged from under Lee's Bridge, I felt its full force and allowed it to turn me quickly to a downstream direction. In the area just downstream from the bridge, I recovered another half dozen containers including a 1-gallon plastic water jug. With the water jug on my deck, I now had a small sail and whisked across Fairhaven Bay with very little effort.
Between Fairhaven and Heath's Bridge, I encountered another kayaker enjoying these rare December conditions. My trip downriver was so fast that it afforded me more time for trash picking downstream of the bridge where I recovered another dozen bottles and cans.
At my takeout location, I had 87 empty containers, 20 of which were recovered from the launch site parking area. This brings my YTD total to 2461
1 comment:
With any kind of a sail you could rig a bottom net and still maintain your time schedule. Who knows the wonders of the ephemera lurking below?
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