LONG ISLAND

Last February at the Roanoke I was engaged in a conversation with someone I met more than a half century ago.    A high school friend fondly recalled a canoe trip he took as a teenager around Long Island. I had never heard of that Long Island.   I had only heard of the other Long Island.  The one with lots of people and that distinct accent.   This Long Island was closer and far less inhabited.

He had taken a weeklong trip around Long Island and clearly the trip had been a good one.  Ours would be far less adventurous.  The weekend plans were in a state of flux until Thursday night when we decided to take an inaugural overnighter in our newly acquired double kayak.

The kayak is an Osprey double, designed by John Lockwood, Pygmy kayaks.  It’s a design I’ve seen for many years and the thought of building one often crossed my mind but those ideas always crashed on the reef of reality.  There has never been enough time or space to dedicate to building a 20 foot kayak.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago.  We’re not getting any younger and after Leigh and I went down to the start of seventy48 (the human powered race from Tacoma to Port Townsend), the impetus to get a double kayak ratcheted up.  So I started looking at craigslist.  And after about 6 weeks, I found it in Portland, Oregon.

I corresponded with Kim, the builder and owner of the kayak and it sounded like a good boat and the price was more than fair.  Leigh had plans that weekend, so Friday night we grabbed a dinner together in Renton before a weekend apart.  Unbeknownst to me at the moment, Kim and his wife, Fran, were also having dinner in Portland.  By candlelight with their soon to be departed Osprey Double Kayak.  Beyond building her, they had taken her to the San Juans, outside of Vancouver Island and had paddled up in Haida Gwaii.  They had taken week long trips on her.   Their paddling days were nearing an end and they were having a ceremony to say ‘goodbye’ to the trusted vessel that had taken them to so many places.  One of them, as I was to learn later, was Long Island.

Leigh and I had never paddled a double before.  In singles we’d taken overnight trips to the Gulf Islands, the San Juans, and over to Blake Island, but the tandem kayak would be new experience. 

Long Island is near the coast tucked into Willapa Bay.  Protected from the ocean, it’s a low lying island surrounded by mudflats.   Getting onto the island without being a muddy mess requires some attention to the tides.  You can launch in anything higher than a plus 2 at the refuge center but landings on the island are better at plus 5 or higher.

Leigh was a little skeptical about the carrying capacity of the double.   While the stern storage area was larger than on our singles, the bow area wasn’t that big.  The ace in the hole, however, was a cavernous region between the cockpits.  While we had struggled a little with putting the gear in our singles, this thing was a snap.  It’s a virtual station wagon.  It holds a ton.

I recall our first experience loading a kayak.  It took a while.  Not this time.  Beyond the carrying capacity of the kayak, we had done this enough to know what to bring and how to stow it.  That and getting one kayak ready to go is faster than getting 2 ready to go.  In any case there wasn’t a whole lot of time between arriving at the Willapa Bay Refuge center and launching the kayak. 

We quickly adapted to paddling the double.  The cockpits are spaced far enough apart that you don’t have to paddle in cadence but doing so is easy, it feels faster and candidly looks better.  This kayak is fast compared to a smaller single.  Leigh has been battling hand pain for a while and we were both worried about her ability to paddle.  It turned out ok.  When she wanted a reprieve, she’d simply stop paddling and I could keep the boat going nicely.  Not quite as fast, but certainly fast enough.  I sometimes rested and she could certainly keep the boat going. 

We both had some trepidation on exactly how the paddling would go and after just a few minutes of paddling, those fears evaporated.  Leveraging two paddlers in a double is, for us, the way to go.

There were a few canoes headed out along with some small sit on top kayaks.   While clearly not a racing kayak, the Osprey could outpace anything we saw on the water without an engine.

There are 5 camping areas on Long Island, each with a varying number of individual campsites.  We chose Pinnacle as it was the closest and we found a great private site with a view. 

Given the tides, we knew the afternoon would be the time to paddle with the morning being the time to hike.   After setting up camp, we took a much lighter kayak for a spin to check out the other campsites.

Kayak camping is an elevated form of camping.  We have a pretty good selection of lightweight backpacking gear (for a recent 3 night, 4 day backpacking trip, Leigh’s pack weight was 24 pounds without water).  All of that fits nicely into a kayak.  Add comfy chairs, a nice fold up table, and a box of wine and you’ve got the recipe for a great experience.

Early on, Willapa bay was called Shoalwater bay and for good reason.  It’s shallow!  To the point where much of the bay disappears at low tide.  In 1788, John Meares traded with first nations peoples in Willapa bay.  Lewis and Clark stayed near there in 1805 when they first got to the pacific coast. 

Willapa bay is now the ‘oyster capital of the world’.   One out of every 6 oysters consumed in the US comes out of Willapa Bay.

Logging started on the island around 1880 and continued until 1986, but within the island is a 119 acres of old growth Cedars.  In the morning, with low tide offering a about a quarter mile between the kayak and waters edge, we decided to go hiking to find the old growth cedars.

Hiking on the island is easy and well-marked.  The strand of old growth is impressive but doesn’t translate well to pictures.  Sobering to think that just a few generations ago the entire Northwest was covered in old growth trees.  After thousands of years what we’ve changed in relative short order boggles the mind. 

After the hike we broke camp down and as the incoming tide erased the quarter mile to the shore line, we shoved off and headed back to the car.

Fun weekend and interesting island.  Some day we’ll need to reprise John’s trip around the entire island.