It rained some again during the night, but things were fairly dry by morning. This morning’s departure had been in question because of the surf being still a little bit rough the evening before. It didn’t look as bad this morning, so we carried the kayak over the dunes and I tried to get myself through the surf without looking too silly. In spite of initially getting turned around backwards after I got my sprayskirt fastened, it was more wet than it was necessarily sloppy. The sprayskirt did great, and of course conditions were much better a little ways out. Paddling in the 2-3 ft swells with a light wind, my only aggravation on the open water part was that I forgot to unlock my rudder before I started. The next trick was to find where to cross over into Tabusintac Bay. I had marked a relatively narrow section in the dune, but wasn’t sure if I could find it on this long beach that appears mostly featureless from out at sea. Mostly by dead reckoning and watching for subtle variations (and divine grace), I stopped only about 50 yards beyond the place where the sea washes over in high water.
I thought my surf landing was fairly decent, until I noticed after a while that half of my break-apart spare paddle was no longer on the kayak. My first significant equipment casualty. It was pretty easy to carry (drag) the kayak over the dune to the bay. But then I had to deal with the shallow bay waters. It was a couple hours past low tide, but it was still really low here. I walked through the muck a little bit until I had enough water to float, paddled a few hundred yards in about 4 or 5 inches of water. Even when I was at least a half mile away from land, I got stopped by water too shallow to move in. Although it finally got better as I got close to Bayshore, Tabusintac Bay never seemed to get more than a couple feet deep.
I stopped briefly to talk to some oystermen shortly before continuing in to the somewhat deeper Tabusintac River. There were lots of small boats going up and down the river, almost always by men in full wetsuits. Whatever they were doing, they obviously intended to spend some time in the water. Although I was a little later than I’d said, I waited a while at the Tabusintac highway rest area just in case one of the pastors might show up for prayer. At 3:00 I arrived at the campground dock, and made the long climb up to our campsites. After they’d packed up from the Val-Comeau campground, the Vances had gone to resupply our groceries, courtesy of one of the Pokemouche church members. They also made arrangements for him to drive them back to their train connection in Bathurst after their PrayerPaddle time is done. God is so good!
After some time relaxing at the campground and scouting out river access points, I went back on the river for a paddle up to the Cains Point area. It was an extremely beautiful and peaceful paddle. Along the way, I met the first kayaker that I’ve seen since I started: a teen-aged girl spending the summer with her family at their summer camp. She said she was Catholic, but not interested in the Gideon’s Bible that I had with me. Hopefully the strangeness of a kayaker carrying Bibles will at least get her to thinking. The Vances were somewhat more successful at distributing Scripture in the campground, although one child was told by his mother to return his New Testament. When Kevin met me at the bridge, he told me that he’d been watching a beaver, and then we saw a couple of moose on the drive back.
Incidentally, we heard a report on the CBC news while driving that this June had the least sunshine ever for New Brunswick. So far we have yet to see any indication of the sun in July either.
Partner churches: Eglise Evangelique de la Pentecote, Eglise Chretienne Evangelique Baptiste de Tracadie
No comments:
Post a Comment