Trip on Coinjock Bay (Bell's Island), North Carolina, September 4, 2004
Saturday, September 4th was a blustery, overcast and showery type of day in the Tidewater Virginia area. Plans had been made previously to paddle with my friend Bill and his son Billy. One of Bill's sisters from Florida was in town on vacation and she went with us. Bill's mother and stepfather live on Bell's Island in Currituck, North Carolina. I had been there once before but it was almost 15 years ago. I was extremely excited about this trip for two reasons. The first is I had paddled the Tull's Bay area recently and am very interested in exploring more of the North Carolina area within an easy hour's drive of my house. The second was the chance to paddle a larger body of water, in fact the largest I have paddled in yet, the Currituck Sound. And as always it is fun to paddle with Bill and Billy. Susan, Bill's sister, recently took up kayaking in Florida. She told us about a recent kayak trip with her father at Ponce De Leon springs in Florida where there seemed to be quite a large population of alligators. Ugh, suddenly snakes don't seem so bad.
It was still morning, around 9 AM, when we finalized our plans. The Currituck Sound was much too rough to venture out into (well for us at least). The wind was coming out of the Northeast at about 15 MPH, probably more like 20. Bell's Island is situated at the Northernmost edge of the Currituck Sound just below the North Landing River coming from Virginia Beach, Virginia. The island helps shelter a large bay called Coinjock Bay. The bay leads to the North Carolina cut of the Intercoastal Waterway. Coinjock Bay was much calmer than the Sound so we ventured to launch and paddle there. Luckily there was a launch area available to us at the Bell's Island Homeowners Association clubhouse and park. Since Bill's mom and stepfather lived there we were able to use it. The launch was a little grassy area bordering on one of the many canals in Bell's Island. In fact we were discussing how you would have to work pretty hard to buy a house on Bell's Island that was not bordering some type of water.
Billy, Susan and Bill waiting for me to quit playing around with the camera and get into my boat.
The canal we launched from took a hard left turn and was a straight shot into Coinjock Bay which now looked pretty blustery too. Undaunted we paddled into it.
We hugged the shoreline and headed in a generally Western direction. The road leading onto Bell's Island is bordered by a lot of little marsh areas with canals. We decided to explore these a bit and soon found them to be very shallow and not so much fun for paddling.
We paddled adjacent to the road for a bit and found a strange juxtaposition of water and land travelers.
Looking West towards mainland Currituck.
We left the sheltered canal area and ventured to the South and into the wind's effects. We paddled to a nearby duck blind where we rested. We were working harder to keep our boats from turning into the wind (weathercocking) than we were to paddle for forward motion. It didn't look like this paddle was going to take us very far. We ventured over to the bridge to Bell's Island hoping to sneak under it and into the area I believe is called Simmon's Pond. It looked enticing and we were hoping maybe to find a way through to the other side of the island. This would allow us to do a circumnavigation of Bell's Island at some later, hopefully less windy, date. There was a lone fisherman trying his luck at the bridge. We decided the water was too high to try and duck under the bridge. We turned and headed back towards the duck blind we had rested at previously.
Looking East. The land on the left is the Southern edge of Bell's Island and across and to the right is the spit of land that ends with Church Island.
We decided at that time to take a straight shot across the bay heading for the Southern tip of Bell's Island. This proved to be the hardest part of the trip. It was only about a mile across but the Northeast wind wanted to sap our strength with a combination of wind driven waves and northeasterly gusts of wind. Bill and Billy worked mightily in the canoe with Susan and later Bill said trying to steer the canoe from weathercocking was hard work. I present a much smaller surface to the wind and held course relatively well but only with many corrective strokes. My small boat was being hit on the side by the small 1 foot chop and this was new to me and proved more worrisome than the wind itself. I braced into the larger swells and kept paddling. We both made it and still had the strength to paddle more.
We paddled down the Southern edge of the island which is packed with homes. We arrived within a half mile of the island tip and turned around. The paddle back to the canal mouth was not extremely difficult. Our initial turn into the canal brought us directly opposite to the wind's path. It was a hard slog up the canal for about a quarter mile or so to the takeout.
The grassy area at the homeowner's association property proved to be a nice put in and takeout site. I was able to come right between the shore and the posts from an old dock and step out onto the grass. A quick tug on my forward toggle and the kayak slid easily up onto the bank where I could unload it and put it on the truck.
I figured we maybe paddled four to five miles maximum but they were mostly hard fought miles so we were worn out by the time we got back to the house. It did not shower once while we were on the water but on the way back to the house, we got rained on. Bill's mother had laid out a great lunch of sandwiches and snacks. We sat in their dining room dry and resting with a great unobstructed view of the Currituck Sound and Church Island across the way. We ate and talked and had a great time. I was very appreciative of their hospitality and enjoyed the day very much.
I had a few more surprises in store though. Their next door neighbor, Sue, is a kayaker and she recently took a paddle on Indiantown Creek in Currituck. I was very interested in this because I was making plans to paddle this area very soon. I have a new book called "Wild River Guide to Dismal Swamp Water Trails" subtitled "including waterways of northeastern North Carolina". It was written by Lillie Gilbert and Vickie Shufer and is a wealth of paddling, natural and historical information in about 294 pages. The book is available through Wild River Outfitters in Virginia Beach and is my constant companion right now. Anyway, Sue told me how she had seen a small black bear on her last paddle of Indiantown Creek. The Eastern side of the creek is unpopulated game land. I now hope to go there very soon and explore. My last surprise was that the neighbor across the street is a certified kayak instructor. In fact it just so happens that I had conversed via email with him almost a year ago after just completing my boat. He was looking to possibly build a kayak and I was looking to learn how to use mine better. Skip suggested trading paddling tips for building tips. He also commented that he had recently moved to Bell's Island and I told him of Bill's mom living there. Of course I did not realize they lived across the street from each other. It is a very small world sometimes. So as I pulled from the driveway to head back to Virginia, I saw Skip in his driveway. I stopped to introduce myself and we discussed kayaking for the next 30 minutes or so. Skip is a very outgoing guy and gave me his information in case I wanted to paddle with him sometime. He is way out of my league as far as his kayaking and outdoor skills. I plan to give him a ring and get together sometime but I doubt I'd be a good kayaking partner for someone so skilled. He talked about taking the kayaks straight across the Currituck Sound to Corolla some ten miles distant for an overnight camping trip. Sounds exciting but I know that ten miles across open water with no wind would be a challenge to me and that's just one leg of the journey! Hopefully maybe Skip will get the itch to build a nice kayak and I'll come away with some solid paddling advice. That would be worth it. I left for home excited about paddling. My arms and shoulders let me know that we would not be paddling more this weekend. Oh well, there's always yard work to be done. UGH!
See ya next time.