I got some nice responses to my mountain bike and trails post that it made me think that one about kayaking would be fun to do. So here goes.

Diane and I made our very first kayak excursion while on a cruise. We rented two single sit-on-top hard kayaks. We were in Labadee, Haiti at the time. The water was crystal clear, and the air was very hot. There was a big smoke smell on the water coming from the charcoal making fires scattered throughout the hills, behind and around the Royal Caribbean island getaway. Charcoal making was one of the things that the very poor people on the island did to make a bit of money, and work in the resort. Folks also paddled out to the Kayakers and tried to sell them carvings and jewelry, things like that. It was easy to see that the inhabitants of this island were not in great shape financially.

Diane and I enjoyed our kayak float in the bay and around most of the island but we didn’t fall in love with the sport. It was years later before we ventured out in a kayak again.

It was in late March of 2017 that we made our next trip in a kayak. A tandem kayak to be exact. We were staying in Brooksville, Florida at Belle Parc RV resort. We were taking advantage of a week’s stay for 99 dollars coupon we picked up at an RV rally or show somewhere. We decided to rent a tandem and paddle up the Wikiwachee River. I do mean paddle up, the Wiki is a fast-flowing, spring-fed river, that flows from its headwaters inside the Wikiwachee State Park to Rogers Park. The Wiki is a beautiful river, with water as clear as a well-maintained swimming pool, for most of the river anyway. Some sections inside residential areas are dark. It was on this river that Diane and I had our very first encounter with a Manatee. We followed it for quite some distance, while I videoed it. I think that this is when we first discussed getting our own kayak.

At the time there were quite a number of kayak owners inside Belle Parc. Many of them owned inflatables and of those Sea Eagle Kayaks seemed to be the most popular. I asked about and received many opinions of which one to have and what benefits an inflatable had over a hard kayak. The number one benefit was storing it in an RV. It rolls up and goes into a bay. Plus you don’t have to have a rack on your car or truck. We saw how hard it was to lift hard shell kayaks off and on a vehicle and not having to do that seemed very attractive to me. I did know one thing way in advance, we wanted a tandem, not two singles.

With that in mind I started researching inflatable kayaks, already leaning towards one, and wanted to affirm that one was the best choice for us. When we arrived back on our RV lot in Virginia about a month later, I was ready to order it. I discovered that many kayak club sites and review sites had chosen the Sea Eagle 370 Pro to be the number one or number two boat on their list which made it the number one or number two kayak on the market. The other kayak happened to be the Advanced Elements Advanced Frame kayak. And boy is it, expensive. The two boats are really not much alike except you fill them with air. In my opinion, the AE is over-engineered. It has two many rail cells, that make up the sides of the kayak and the cells are in a nylon cover which you have to open to let the boat dry out. It is not a versatile kayak, not good for moving water, especially if it is whitewater. The boat tends to sag in the middle and water gets in without much effort. The Sea Eagle 370 pro, has a rigid floor (not drop stitched) and stiff rails, each is one cell. It has inflatable splash guards in front and rear, a whitewater drain in the rear, and unremovable double skegs. It has a payload of 660 lbs, more than the AE. It is not as fancy looking as a lot of inflatables, it doesn’t pretend to be anything but an inexpensive trustworthy kayak with the most comfortable seats on any kayak on the market. Did I not mention that? It is true, and the fourteen-plus boats that we have been responsible for helping to sell, that is one of the biggest reasons folks fell for it; the seats. They are inflatable and made of canvas, with a tall back and a thick bottom, you don’t sit with your butt in the water as you do with a lot of kayaks.

I bought my Sea Eagle from Amazon, they sold it and shipped it. Turns out that was not a good idea that never got any better. The kayak arrived in a busted-up box with a slit in the side and in the box was a filled-out return slip. The boat was damaged at some point, returned, put back in stock, and then resold. We were the folks that got it. I called customer service, and after fighting all the bot questions, finally talked to a real person who promptly sent out another boat. It arrived and also looked used the pump, and paddles, in the kayaking box looked used, so I kept the original paddles that came with the damaged boat, and the air pump, packaged all the rest up, and sent it back to Amazon on their dime of course. We received a refund on the first kayak very quickly, which was a good thing. I only hope they finally put that boat somewhere so it could not be sold for the third time. It is obvious to me now that ordering direct from Sea Eagle is the only way to go. Here is the link to Sea Eagle’s website.

Once we got through all that shipping, re-shipping, and Customer Care stuff, we were able to put the boat out on the grass and pump it up. It was not all that difficult, took about twenty minutes from unpacking it, rolling it out, assembling the paddles, and inflating the boat and the seats, until it was ready to hit the water. Now the question was, where do we go, to launch in the New River and be able to get back to our car and drive home? That would require a shuttle service, and the closest rental place to get that was in Fries, Virginia, and Paddle Adventures. The trouble was they had a two-boat minimum and on the day we wanted to hit the river, they had no bookings. We paid the two-boat minimum. That is how badly we wanted to travel down the river. We arrived, paid, inflated our boat and it was loaded onto their trailer. We followed their van to the take-out spot, dropped off our car, and then went to the launch site, six miles away from the take-out. We pushed off for our first trip over rapidly flowing water with lots of rocks in our path. The New River in Virginia is a technical whitewater river, meaning you have to maneuver around and over many rocks, none that will dump you out of your boat, but you can get stuck on them, so you have to learn to read the river, look for inverted Vs, the point of the V telling you where the water is flowing the fasted and the deepest and that is where you want to go. We had to learn this, and Diane did very quickly. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of our first trip, I was too busy figuring out the best path to take. I did make one short video just to get a taste of the river.

We enjoyed our trip very much. We did make one mistake. We were told to look for blue barrels in the river, in front of an old abandoned quarry. The takeout would be just past them, it’s small so don’t miss it! We missed it and had to paddle back upstream. That was not easy, the river flows fast but doesn’t look like it where the water is calm. It took a while to paddle back and if I had not seen our car up on the hill it could have been a lot worse. We both felt that our first trip was a success. We didn’t clack paddles too many times and at some point, we figured out how, as a team, to paddle straight instead of in a circle. We wanted to go out on the river again right away. We did a few weeks later, and due to a mixup with another booking party, we were not charged for our shuttle. We took the same leg of the river, and this time we got out at the right place without a problem.

Before our second trip on the New River, we made a trip to Williamsburg, so we could attend our Grandson Austin’s High School Graduation. While there we took a trip on the water of Watermill Lake which was located across the street from Anvil Campground where we were staying at the time. It is a big lake actually two lakes, divided by a road. There is a tunnel under the road from one lake to the other. We took our Cocker Spaniel (no longer with us) Teddy Bear in the boat. He really enjoyed the trip, and I did all the paddling. We learned that we could definitely deflate our boat, dry it out, pack it up, and be in the car in less time that it took most of the hard kayak owners to put their boats or boat up on a rack. That fact has never changed to this day. I did do something stupid, however. While packing up I stepped on a paddle and broke it. That made me mad, but we ordered a new one, and we still have a spare paddle head.

We didn’t make it out on a river again until January 2018, while in Florida, just way too many other things to do in the Mountains. We did go out on a lake in Clermont with our new friends Jim and Katleen. They had an inflatable as well. Later we met them on the Wiki, launched from Rogers Park, paddled a bit upstream, and back down for lunch at the Upper Deck Bar and Grill. They have really good Conch Fritters. Sadly Jim and Kathleen both are gone now. Both died suddenly about a year apart. We miss them very much.

In February 2018, we went on our first and last large group kayak tour with the folks in Belle Parc. There have not been any more trips like this. None that I know of anyway. The leaders of the kayak group no longer live here. There are residents who kayak together but not like it used to be. Anyway, this is about the rivers here not so much the people.

The With, as we call it, is a tannin-filled river, not spring fed. It is long and it is dark. It is not my favorite river to be on, although many like it. I took a few shots of the group. I also had to help pull a waterlogged Advanced Elements kayak out of the water at the local tiki hut dive, the River Ratz, which is also the river takeout. The AE had almost folded itself in half. There were a number of Sea Eagles on this trip, and they performed very well.

To learn more about the Withlacoochee, just click this link: The Withlacoochee River.

The Chaz and the Crack. The Chassahowitzka River, better known as the Chaz, has a beautiful spot called the Seven Sisters Spring. The spring is actually composed of seven “wells” that are interconnected. You can dive into one and come out another if you don’t get lost in the process. Yes, you can get lost in the spring, there is a warning sign posted saying just that.

The Chaz is normally an out-and-back paddle trip. You launch from the Chassahowitzka River Campground, where you also can rent kayaks and canoes at reasonable rates. If you paddle to the right and a bit upstream you will have a short trip to the Seven Sisters. You turn around and head downstream, which is a relative term, depending on whether the tide is coming in or not. About a mile or so is a tributary off to the left called The Crack. Actually, the Crack is at the end of this tributary, named Baird’s Creek. The Crack is a very deep spring. It takes a bit of work to get there, but well worth it. You reach some clear blue water which is very shallow with a sandy bottom. We beach our kayak and walk the rest of the way to the spring which is also a popular swimming hole. It is a great place to go to, but I suggest not doing so on the weekend. There are way too many boats heading up the creek, and some are almost too wide to do so. There are too many boaters playing loud music and drinking also. It can get rowdy.

The images posted are of the Seven Sisters and the Crack. To learn more about this river check out this link to The Chaz and The Crack.

About an hour north of Brooksville and Belle Parc is the Crystal River. It is another major spring-fed river, one of the top five in the state for sure. The three biggest springs are inside the park and are named The Three Sisters. This area is closed from October to April first to serve as a Manatee Sanctuary. This year is will remain closed to be refurbished. Due to so many swimmers, including the Manatees, and kayakers, the banks of the spring are eroding, trees are falling into the water and allowing way too much dirt to enter the spring vents. The river is very developed with homes on both sides of King’s Bay except for the state park side. It is a large area, and KIng’s Bay is not so bad in our kayak unless the wind is blowing, and it can do that at times quite hard. Our kayak tends to be pushed around by the wind due to its high rails. We have to paddle a bit harder if the wind is in our faces.

Here is the link to learn more about the Crystal River and The Three Sisters Springs.

This ends Part One of the Rivers we paddle. I will post information, pictures, and videos taken on the Silver River and Diane’s Favorite, The Rainbow River, soon. I have a lot more pictures and some videos to post of Manatees on the Crystal River as well, and more, so come back here and check for Part Two.