Thursday, June 18, 2015

Capers Island Mini Excursion - Saturday and Sunday

So, for those of you who frequent the beach, particularly those who have stayed the night right on/just off of the beach, you know what two of my complaints probably are.

1) The noseeums (spelling). These little devils are only here on Earth to make our lives miserable, and they do a damn good job of it. They are also so tiny, that the slightest crack in your "defense" allows a flood gate. I woke up several times swatting and scratching Friday night that I was more irritated by the bugs than I was by the heat. Seriously, why were these little boogers put on this planet?

2) The sand. Just like the little bugs, sand can come from anywhere and it will get everywhere. You might as well not even try to clean it out of the room (or in my case tent) until you are ready to leave. Seriously, a losing battle.

But despite all of that, I wouldn't trade camping on the beach this past weekend for anything because the sunsets and sunrises mixed in with the sound of the waves crashing really make up for it. Despite the little bugs and the sand in places it shouldn't have been, I was really relaxed.

Something that I really like about camping is that, depending on where you are and who you are with, you go to bed when the sun goes down and you wake up when light starts breaking. It really helps you maximize your day, I feel. Anyways, we woke up Saturday and Sunday just before sunrise. Both days we wanted to get out with the tide. Seeing as high tide was around 6:30 each morning, it wasn't too much of a problem. So we took our time eating breakfast (freeze-dried scrambled eggs with bacon bits for me) and then packed up. We decided to pack up all the valuables and just leave tents, sleeping bags/pads and clothes just in case. But, really, we never had anything to worry about because there were plenty of people around to watch our stuff.

So, Saturday we had all day to kill, but we really wanted to get most of the paddling out of the way before the heat of the day. So, below is the route we took. The yellow dot attached to green line is our campsite, then we went out through the one channel and out along Bull Island. We may have made it further, but I'll get into that in a second. We then turned around and back-tracked into the intracoastal waterway and then back to our camp.


So, why the backtrack there along Bull? We had originally planned on going all the way around Bull Island, timing it just right to use the lowering tide to carry us out and around, and then the slack and incoming tide to take us into the intracoastal waterway and back along the back end of Bill. However, just a little ways into the first stretch Dave noticed a change in the winds. It was enough to somewhat spook him, and for good reason. If the right or wrong wind pops up, then we could have been facing larger swells and even whitecaps.

Not a pleasant paddle.

Instead of risking it, we decided to turn back. Now, while we were out there paddling both out and back we noticed an ATV on the beach. Every so often, it would stop and we could see 1 or 2 people getting off and going up into the dunes a bit. We guessed that these were people looking for turtle nests, and probably helping preserve or track them. So, as we rounded back into the channel (which I'll describe in just a second), we decided to hike up and meet the people doing this to ask a few questions.

Now, when I said we rounded the channel, I mean we came in like a wrecking ball... that was suddenly stopped. We got to practice our surfing and riding waves a little bit... until we hit the newly formed sandbar. At low tide, it really is an extension off of Bull Island. So much so, we had to get out and walk our kayaks in to where we could paddle again. But all we needed to do was just beach them for our short hike.

And that's what we did. We made it only a few dozen yards before the ATV came up and we talked with the gentleman and lady on it. Turns out we guessed right. They were tracking and monitoring the loggerhead turtle nests along the beach. We didn't really get to ask them too much because they seemed to be on a time crunch but we were able to see where two nests might have been due to the tracks from the mommas.

Only problem was, neither looked in tact. One had raccoon tracks leaving it so it might have been robbed, or the would-be-thief may have spooked the momma and she decided to try again another time. The other, we couldn't really tell at a distance what was going on, but we also decided to not intrude on the area.

Seeing the nests reminded me of a few pictures I've seen recently by the Charleston/South Carolina Aquarium when they have released animals back into the wild. I really want to make it down sometime to witness that because I think it would be so awesome to see.

Anyways, after a little bit more of walking, we went back and got into our boats and decided to take on the intracoastal waterway. We made our way inland for a while and along the way saw one large ship with a white dome on the front. We're not sure what it was, but I'm guessing it was some sort of research vessel.

It's also interesting to note at this time that traffic was really picking up. We saw lots of boats with families and friends racing out to claim their areas for the day on Bull and Capers. I mean, it was Saturday, after all, and the summer, so why not load up the boat with food and drinks and hit the beach?

Once we hit the actual intracoastal, we turned around and slowly made our way back. This is where one of the cooler moments of the weekend happened. I had just turned my GoPro off when something surfaced right off the port/left side of my boat and exhaled. It was a huge head, probably one of the biggest I have ever seen in the wild. Dave saw it as well, so I have my backup, there. This thing was a huge loggerhead turtle with about a 6" wide or bigger head. He/she was up just long enough to exhale, inhale and then gone. Too. Stinkin. Cool. I absolutely love kayaking for these moments. Sure, I could get a better look at a turtle on the Discovery Channel, but how many people can say that a turtle blew its nose on you (ok, it wasn't THAT close, maybe).

By the time we got back to where we starting a crowd was starting to form on both Bull and Capers. It's a really popular place for people to motorboat out to, if you hadn't figured it out already. There were a lot of people around, so we beached our boats on Bull again with the intent of hiking along one of the paths on the interior of Bull. But, to our dismay, we found that these trails have been closed off, at least on the south end. They may be open still to tour groups, but we weren't about to risk getting into trouble, so we took an even longer walk along the beach collecting sea shells (sand dollars were really abundant here) and talking about various things. We made it about a couple miles away from Bull's bone yard - which is quite the hike! - and then turned around.

Once we got back, we ferried across to our campsite, which was quite crowded, and hung out in the water the rest of the day. Again, no sense in overworking ourselves in the heat of the day and the water was really refreshing.

Another cool instance Dave, Ian and myself had came just a short while before dinner. I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I caught a glimpse of the action. Just inside the channel, there was a huge splash and a flash of gray/brown (dark). Turns out, it was a huge ray jumping out of the water. I know it was big, but Dave was staring right at it and says it had a wing span close to his own, and the wings were even curved under. Damn. What could make something like that jump out of the water? And I had no idea we had rays that big just inside our waters like that.

Again, why would you rather sit on your couch?






Sunday morning was very similar to Saturday except for the fact that we completely broke down our campsite and were headed home.

Now, before we get to that, we did get to witness a little drama the night before. We were joined on the beach by a group of teenagers or people in their early 20s. They were down a ways, but apparently at some point in the night, one of the girls got mad and decided to walk it off. They went looking for her and she came by our area hollering that she was coming back (and apparently had a dog with her, too). She was met right at our tents by a couple people and her boyfriend.

Now, none of us left our tents, but we were able to listen in as she explained, with a drunken slur, that she had talked to her mom for 3 days and the relationship with the guy was an unhealthy one. The boyfriend was pretty foul-mouthed and obviously drunk as well and they kept interrupting each other. I was about to yell, "Better not dump him until he takes you back to the mainland!" when Ian piped up with, "There are people here trying to sleep!" That got them at least whispering and moving back towards their camp.

I'm slightly, only slightly, interested in knowing how the rest of THAT night went for them.

Anyways, there's your bit of beach drama. Now, back to the fun stuff. Below is the map of our course for Sunday. Blue is the first bit of our trip, the yellow dot in between is where we stopped for a few hours to let the tides even out and to get some lunch, and the purple bit is our "home stretch."



So, to get back out into the open waters you know we have to go through that channel. Well, this particular morning, as we were making for the channel to break through the breakers, I caught a glimpse of a dolphin. Then another, then another pair and another... There were six, including one whose dorsal fin had been chopped/bitten off. Makes you wonder what happened to that poor guy, but he swam just fine, it seemed. The pod stayed with us and surfaced and swam amongst our three boats as we made our way through the breakers and out of the channel.



The above picture is a screen grab of video I took during this awesome sequence. Again. So. Stinking. Cool.

Once we broke through, one of the dolphins stayed with us for a while as we made our way down Capers. He/she even swam next to me for a second after I repositioned my boat closer to the inland.

After that, it was really hard for anything to top my morning.

We continued south and went in between the north part of Dewess Island and the south beach of Capers. Because the tide was still going out, we decided this would be a great place to take a break until the tides changed. As we were heading down, we noticed two campsites and their campers so we began walking up the beach to see if those people were around to just chat with. Two guys were breaking camp further up the beach and were actually paddling as we were walking their way. One was in a whitewater play boat (very small and loaded down) and the other was in a Pelican boat (not as small, but just as little room for gear). It seemed quite silly for them to be fighting the tide in those boats, and sure enough, they stopped to take a break eventually.

We walked down through the bone yard again and turned around, and once we got back, thought about hiking some more, but ultimately decided to stay on the south beach and just relax. Why push it, right? Just like on the north end of Capers and south beach of Bull, this area became a very popular place around 10:30-11. There were a bunch of families just out enjoying the day and even a tour boat flying a jolly roger. Also, we had a group of 8 other kayakers show up and a family of 3 also joined in. It really is cool to see so many people getting into kayaking.

Around noon, we decided the tides were about to turn, so we headed in, using a slightly different route from Friday. We continued our cut between Dewess and Capers and made our way into the intracoastal waterway. This was extremely busy with lots and lots of traffic and we were constantly fighting wakes from various boats and jet skis.

FYI for those motor boaters out there, we don't mind a little wake, but all we really ask is that you acknowledge us. Wave, give a big nod, flip us off for all I care. We just want to know that you see us kayakers and small boaters. I can deal with your wake after that.

The only really exciting parts of this last stretch were when we also almost got run over by a ferry from Dewess that came around a corner, never slowed down and just headed out into the flow towards Isle of Palms (jerk). If we hadn't been paying attention and slowed down, we could have very well been right in that thing's way as it came into that intersection.

Another FYI, kayakers and man-powered boats are SUPPOSED to have the right-away followed by sailboats and THEN motorized boats. But, as you can see, motorized boaters don't seem to take that into consideration.

The other really cool thing was we saw two feeding frenzies of dolphins fishing. It was really just cool to see them jumping, flipping their tails and churning up the water to contain the fish.



All-in-all, this was an awesome trip. It was only my second time camping out of a kayak and first time tackling the ocean in a kayak. While you could possibly do it in a smaller boat, you need to consider using the right boat, a long sea kayak, for this. Unless you're just looking to drag it out there and play in the surf, you'll be miserable trying to "cut" or rather push through the other stuff. And camping out of a kayak is always a challenge. Having to figure out what all you can take and need versus what you can live without can be a bit of a headache. Dave says 1 gallon of water per day is a good start, I went through 4 gallons in roughly 2 days (half a day of kayaking and camping on Friday and another half on Sunday with a full day on Saturday). You also learn it's not so bad to drink warm water, as long as it's fresh. But, that first sip of ice cold water once I got back to the marina and changed felt so good going down.



No comments:

Post a Comment