Kayaking the Pamlico....

My family’s little corner of the Pamlico River, our side of the 3 ½ mile wide flow though Eastern North Carolina, can be described as a small community of houses in a large bay with a point of land jutting into the river a upstream and a large creek digging into the shore downstream.

The community is called Rest Haven, where my Grandfather built a small cottage after The War. The jutting spitz of low marsh and pine trees is called Gun Point and the tributary goes by Sinker’s Creek.

It’s technically St. Clair Creek, according to topozone.com, but we all call it Sinker’s.
I’ve got a map on the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com….

I had a few spare days this summer when I was able to piddle around a little in my family’s kayak and enjoy poking round the old places again.

The craft weighs almost 60 pounds. So it’s not a whole lot of fun to tote, but one person can still store, carry and launch it. This makes it a whole lot easier for everybody else who doesn’t want to store, carry and launch it.

I started out just paddling near our house, then venturing farther afield as I toughened a little until I covered a few trips of four or five miles, which is something of a workout for someone who doesn’t spend too much time on the waves.

Going to Gum Point one morning I got into the boat with some water, my camera, a life jacket, some sunscreen and a hat and started going. I set off pretty straight across the bay to try and make time while I still had the energy and the waves hadn’t developed too high yet. I figured I’d poke around the point’s marshy little coves on the way back if I had energy.

In about an hour I made it to the tip of Gum Point, sharing the river with gulls, ducks, osprey and crabbing boats checking their crab pots. I hear a lot of Maryland’s vaunted crabs come from our North Carolinian waters these days, and I get some variety of pride out of that. I turned around and started heading back, getting a good view of the ferry along the way.

In Eastern North Carolina there are a few places where not a whole lotta folks need to cross a whole lotta water. Out in the sound, between the mainland and the Outer Banks, you can actually be inside our state and out of sight of land. Where a bridge might not fit the bill, ferries sub in. We’ve got a free ferry crossing our river every half-hour or so all day long and it works better than driving 20 miles to the nearest bridge, and spices up a kayaking trip.

I made it back the Rest Haven without too much hassle.

Getting back from Sinker’s Creek was not as easy.

But that’s another column....