A different boating experience

After church this morning, we drove over to Gulf Coast Kayaks in Matlacha to rent a couple of kayaks and go kayaking this afternoon.  Ken and Bonnie took their inflatable Sea Eagle to kayak with us;

but when they ran into problems inflating it because of a missing o-ring on their air pump, they rented a tandem kayak there too.

After a quick lesson on how to paddle, we headed out on the water.  

We were headed into the wind which made the paddling more difficult; but after we got out of the wind a little bit, it wasn't bad at all.

But then I had a rather sad experience -- a Wilson experience.  Notice how happy I am in the picture below wearing my favorite Zup's hat (which you have no doubt seen in many of the pictures on the blog).  Zups is a fishing lodge on Lac La Croix in the boundary waters between Ontario and Minnesota.  We had been there several times in the early 2000's, caught a lot of fish, and had a lot of fun there on summer vacations.  So my Zup's hat was kind of special to me. 

But then, a sudden gust of wind came along and blew my Zups hat right off my head.  OH NO!!!!!!  :(  

I felt like Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway when he loses his best friend Wilson (an old volleyball with a face painted on it) after Wilson becomes untied from his raft.  

I tried paddling back to my hat and around it but I couldn't get to it and I didn't want to get too far back from the others in their kayaks.  So I lost my Zups hat to the sea.  :(

We continued paddling around along and between the islands of mangroves. 

The water was very shallow in many of the areas where we were paddling -- not more than about 6 or 8 inches deep.  Before we launched, we had talked about switching kayaks with Ken and Bonnie at some point (like when we get back to the boat launch) so we could try paddling the tandem kayak which Ken and Bonnie were in...

and they could try paddling single kayaks like what Chuck and I were in.  Well, Chuck and Ken get the great idea that since the water was so shallow over this sand bar and there wasn't much current, that we could just get out of our kayaks, stand on the sand bar, and switch kayaks there.  I wasn't so sure.  But they talked me into it.

Chuck manages to get out of his kayak first and then Ken gets out of their tandem.  Since the guys' shoes are sticking to the muddy sand bottom, Bonnie and I took our shoes off before getting out.  Ken helped Bonnie out of their tandem and Chuck tried helping me out of my kayak.  But, I, of course, lose my balance just as I get out of the kayak and down in the water I go.  We had already been laughing at Ken and Chuck's maneuvering out of their kayaks so when I fell in the water, we all just about exploded with laughter.  

Fortunately, Chuck grabbed my phone out of my back pocket very quickly and my camera was in a Ziploc bag so neither of those got damaged.  I just got wet.  Ha!  Ha!  :)

Paddling in a tandem is more complicated because the person in the back (Chuck) has to make sure they are paddling in the same direction as the person in the front (me).  Also, the person in the back gets wetter from the front person's paddle splashes.  I'm not the best paddler so Chuck got fairly wet too.  We did decide after paddling the tandem that we prefer paddling single kayaks.  They just seem easier to paddle and maneuver around.

We didn't see as much wildlife as we would have liked.  We saw a few pelicans and osprey as we were paddling around and on the way back to the boat launch we saw some stingrays.  It was probably not the best day for paddling because of the wind but we still had a very good time.

The kayaking was a very good experience for Chuck and me.  We learned we both preferred single kayaks and we also learned we do not want to buy any kayaks.  We contemplated buying kayaks at some point but we have decided that its probably not something we would do a lot of.  Rather than haul two kayaks around everywhere, we'll just rent them whenever we're somewhere where we would like to kayak.  

But our day of kayaking at Matlacha...was a blast!

Sunday night was "open mike" night.  We listened to several talented musicians perform who are staying in the campground and then we stopped at Ken & Bonnie's to play Sequence Dice.  The guys won the best 3 out of 5 games.  (We got to let them win every once in awhile.)  :)

Another great day at Pine Island!