THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407030165
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AROUND THE BAY IN 50 DAYS
ONE MAN'S JOURNEY AROUND THE CHESAPEAKE
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
It began as a low hum over the miles of water at our backs, built to a rumble, then within minutes became a roar.
``Get together everybody!'' Kim Whitley yelled. ``We need to be more visible for this thing, whatever it is.''
Five of us bobbed on the Chesapeake Bay's oceanic swells in kayaks, bound from Norfolk's Willoughby Spit to the Eastern Shore. And now, with the nearest land a hazy blue lump on the horizon and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel a spindly silhouette miles to the east, a Navy hovercraft was headed straight for us at high speed, its big pusher props whipping the water into mist behind it.
On it came, its gray fuselage barren of visible life, on an air cushion that skimmed the water so quickly that paddling out of its way wasn't possible. Five hundred yards. Four hundred. Three hundred. I raised my paddle and waved it.
``He's got to see us,'' someone said.
Two hundred yards.
The engines dropped an octave and suddenly the big landing craft veered right and passed 100 hundred yards to the east.
``Well I don't know about anyone else,'' Whitley said, ``but that woke me up.''
For five years I have lived on the beach at Ocean View, the Bay a few yards from my door, the hiss of its surf a constant, soothing companion. I've enjoyed swimming in its shallows and the sight of dolphins breaching just beyond reach. I've been awed by its menace during northeasters.
But, most days, the Chesapeake has been little more than a view to me, a picture on the wall. I might stare at the Thimble Shoals Light, a rust-colored knob on the northern horizon, and know that the distance between us was a tiny fraction of the Bay's width, but I had only an abstract understanding of its real massiveness.
I might notice that the tide was low or high, but I knew nothing beyond that of the Bay's rhythms, or their importance to watermen and wildlife.
I knew that condominiums were fast replacing crabbing shanties along the water, but I didn't recognize the drama this evolution has visited on countless Virginia and Maryland hamlets.
And while I'd read of Capt. John Smith and the Bay's other explorers, their adventures amounted to dotted lines on textbook maps to me. I could not picture the Chesapeake they had seen, as they saw it.
So earlier this year I set out to change that. I began plotting a journey around what Smith called the Virginia Sea, one that would take me up the Eastern Shore, to Cape Charles and Belle Haven and Onancock and Saxis, then across the state line into Maryland.
After rounding Love Point, northeast of Annapolis, I'd start down the western shore, past the Calvert Cliffs and across the mouths of the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the York and the James rivers.
I would travel along sandy beaches and among marshy islets studded with monuments to the past, with ruins and shipwrecks and names from 400 years ago. I'd sleep among the ghosts of Smith and Robert ``King'' Carter, and generations of lesser-known settlers lain shoulder-to-shoulder, and century-to-century, in mossy bayside cemeteries.
I'd witness myriad ways the Bay has changed in the years since those first Europeans settled here: towns withered by the decline of menhaden and oyster, Bay waters so poisoned that only the hardiest marine life has survived, crabbing communities suffering the loss of their city-bound young.
My vessel: A sea kayak, a speedy, unobtrusive, completely self-contained craft that would enable me to glide through waters without disturbing the fish and birds living there. Its deck rising less than a foot from the water, the kayak would not only give me the means to truly explore the Bay, it would make me part of it.
But beginning the trip meant reaching the Eastern Shore, and the most straightforward means was a roughly 20-mile paddle east-northeast to the Sunset Beach Inn, just beyond the bridge-tunnel toll plaza on the Bay's far side.
The coming morning had been a faint coral glow to the east when we pushed off at 5:40 a.m. Friday. Four others accompanied me on the first day's long crossing: Whitley, an instructor at the College of William and Mary and the paddling expert who taught me how to save myself if my kayak rolled over as the slender craft are sometimes wont to do; Mike Connors, a kayaking teacher and family counselor; and Linda Elleson and Mark Williams, experienced paddlers and staffers at Virginia Beach's Wild River Outfitters, where I bought my boat and received a wealth of much-needed advice.
A Navy tender towered above us as we crossed the Thimble Shoals Channel an hour into the trip. The sun reflected golden against its narrow gray flanks. An hour later we encountered the hovercraft. In between, the outgoing tide and gentle southerly breeze eased us toward the bridge-tunnel. By the time we reached the Chesapeake channel, the rip rap islands bracketing the bridge-tunnel's northern gap were only a couple of miles away.
Meanwhile the sun climbed. By 9:30, the cockpit had turned into a sauna. The floppy hat I wore shielded my face, but its fabric didn't breath. My brain baked. And hours of hand-over-hand paddling began to take a toll. For the first few hours out, we'd taken a break to eat and gulp water once an hour; as the Virginia Beach shoreline vanished behind the swells at the confluence of Bay and ocean, we found ourselves stopping twice an hour, then three times; and, as the bridge-tunnel's high-rise span slipped by, every 10 minutes.
Several miles from shore, a dolphin broke the surface in front of us, then disappeared, and whoops went up from our flotilla. A few minutes later, what I mistook for a yellow-green crabpot float popped into view near Kim's kayak - a sea turtle.
By 10:30 a.m. we could see bushy trees on the shoreline of Fisherman's Island, and farther off, the little bridge linking it with the narrow Delmarva Peninsula. The final few miles were torture. Our fivesome, which had completed most of the crossing in a knot, stretched into a quarter-mile-long caravan.
Finally we glided through flat surf to sand behind the hotel. I pulled my spray skirt loose and eased out of the cockpit as my bow scraped onto the shore and had to balance briefly atop the deck, my legs too weak to support my weight. The others staggered around in the surf, chugging the last of their water.
We dragged my boat up the beach and carried the other four to a trailer Mike and I had left in the hotel parking lot Thursday night. Then I watched my fellow paddlers drive slowly off toward the bridge-tunnel and home. For the rest of the trip I'd be on my own.
I didn't dwell on what lay ahead. I walked stiffly to the hotel's restaurant and ordered a double cheeseburger, fries and ice cream.
``Better leave the menu,'' I told the waitress. ``I'll probably be ordering more.'' MEMO: Wednesday: Onancock.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Staff writer Earl Swift prepares his kayak for a Chesapeake Bay trip
that will include stops along the Eastern Shore.
Photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Earl Swift, center, sets out for a 50-day journey around the
Chesapeake Bay. Four companions accompanied him on the first leg of
his trip.
Graphics
JOHN CASERTA/Staff
THE BOAT & SUPPLIES
Map
EXPECTED COURSE
by CNB