I only had a few days left to complete my circumnavigation, so I decided to cut the trip in half.
I would drive to the North Shore and start heading back to Brooklyn from there.
That is how Deb Larson and I ended up paddling through the Huntington Harbor Marina on August 9th.
We received some strange looks paddling our junky boat through the marina,
but I was determined in our plan to round the point of Caumsett State Park,
and see what the water was like out in the Long Island Sound.
The wind was blowing from the direction we wanted to go,
but at 10 am, even that seemed surmountable.
After an hour though, we needed a break,
and we found a pretty spot on a private but unattended dock.
Then it was time to get serious.
As we rounded the peninsula, I kept expecting the wind to change directions,
but it always seemed to be coming directly at us.
We decided to walk and pull the boat along,
and for miles one of us walked on shore,
while the other dragged the boat.
We passed some kind of an old fort,
and miles of pretty beach.
We noticed swallows nesting in the sandy bluffs,
and every time we rounded a turn,
the wind was there to meet us.
We came to a section of beach,
that was like a sculpture garden of nautical waste.
I was impressed with the collection of debris,
natural and man made.
It was pleasant to walk along the pretty beach,
but my feet under the water were scraped and bleeding.
Now that we had come this far though, we couldn’t go back.
Caumsett State Park is a huge undeveloped peninsula, and we were going around the long way.
There was not even a road out to where we were,
just miles of sun and wind and waves,
and luckily, ice cold drinking water; thanks to the brilliant method of freezing the bottles the night before!
We decided to get back in the boat,
where the water got deep again,
and we struggled to keep the boat away from the rocks.
We abandoned the boat a few yards later.
We realized that we had seen a car pulled up along the beach. A road! we thought.
Deb found an amazing walking stick with an old man head, and it seemed to suggest that our luck was finally turning around.
We found the road, along with a friendly local beach-goer, who agreed to drive us back to our car.
Stepping into the car after walking in the sun and waves all day felt like stepping into a space capsule,
and my body melted into the seat as we sped along.
Back on the beach an hour later we saw the sun set,
the moon rise,
and I found the most perfect horseshoe crab that I have ever seen.
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