Kayaking: Haulover Canal Bioluminescence Night

A couple of weekends ago (Oct 2) I went night kayaking at the Haulover Canal in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.  I've been kayaking at this spot at night several times.  There are several things that draw me to night kayak there including the bioluminescence, fish, and night sky.

About a year ago I learned about the bioluminescence that occurs in the Haulover canal.  In simple terms, bioluminescence makes the water glow blue when it is agitated.  It looks absolutely amazing.  It peaks during the summer months at the canal.  When you scare schools of fish, you can see them leaving glowing trails as they dart through the water.  You can also see the glow as you paddle or as your boat moves through the water.  If you look very carefully, you can see small sparkles of bioluminescence along the surface of the water even while still.  Since we went near the end of the peak, I expected it to be less impressive than it has been in the past.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the bio was as bright as ever.

While the bio is truly amazing, my favorite part about kayaking in this area is the fish!  I'm certainly not a fisherwoman (I haven't fished since I was about 8), but I can appreciate flying fish.  The area is absolutely full of mullet!  As you kayak through the water and scare the fish, they leap out of the water.  I've seen them jump up to about 3 feet off the surface!  Most of them are very small, but they can get rather large.  On one occasion,  I had a mullet leap out of the water, hit me square in the chest, and fall into my boat!  I think it was about 8 inches long.  Later on that same trip, another one flew into the side of my head!  A fun experiment to try is to run a flashlight along the surface of the water about 15 feet away from your boat.  As the light hits the water the fish will start flying in droves!  Depending on where you are, you can see thousands of fish.  I really enjoy seeing the fish flying through the air.

Another great thing about the refuge is that it has very little light pollution.  I've never been able to see the night sky as clearly in Brevard County as I have in the refuge.  I don't know much about identifying stars, but I know a beautiful sky when I see one.  I like to go night kayaking as close to a new moon as possible so that I can see the best bio, but also the most stars.

On this particular trip, I went with some friends that had never been night kayaking in the refuge before.  When they saw the bio, they were like little kids!  They said their expectations were blown away by the beauty of the bioluminescence.  Watching them enjoy the experience was probably my favorite part of this particular trip.

GPS Track

In technical details, we started out at Bairs Cove Boat Launch.  It is important to note that this one of two places from where you can launch a boat at night within the refuge.  We paddled over to a cove where we like to hang out most of the time to check out the fish.  The fish seemed less active in this area than usual.  I suspect this is because there was a tour of kayakers in the area at the same time.  All of the fish had probably already been scared away.  After deciding that the fish weren't really jumping in the area, we paddled toward the south portion of the cove and found some huge mullet!  We didn't accidentally catch any in our boats, but I could tell from the sound they were making reentering the water that they were much bigger than any other mullet I'd seen in the refuge before.  A few people got pegged with fish, but I managed to leave unscathed!  We decided that it probably wasn't a good idea to stick around in that area for too long.  One of the guys in our party was new to kayaking and had a relatively narrow kayak so a good whack from a fish could have capsized him.  We paddled more toward the center of the cove and just hung out and watched the night sky for a while.  It was a beautiful and clear night for star gazing.  Unfortunately, the night was cooler than expected and we headed in because we weren't well prepared and we were getting cold.  The total distance for the trip was 2.7 miles over about 2 hours 10 minutes.

Overall, it was a great night for kayaking.  It was great to go with such appreciative guests.

New Kicks: Vasque Breeze

Thanks to my place of employment and the travel they send me on I was finally able to quality for my free flight on Southwest Airlines!  The economy should thank Southwest because thanks to this free flight I'm spending ridiculous amounts of money.  I've never been to Colorado so I decided to take my flight there.  While I'm there I hope to get the chance to summit Mount Evans.  I'm realistic in that my adventure may be halted by weather.  Summit or no summit I'll be hiking during my trip.  This gave me a good excuse to finally buy hiking boots!  I admit, I have never owned a pair.  I've always hiked in running shoes.

So last Saturday I drove over to Travel County in Orlando to try on shoes.  Their selection was pretty limited in my size, which I expected.  My feet are skis for a woman and way to narrow for a man.  After trying on a few pairs and walking around the store a few times I decided on the Vasque Breeze GTX.  Thank you Travel Country for having them on sale!

Fortunately, the Breeze comes in narrow sizes so I was able to fit into a men's shoe.  As far as comfort, these boots beat the others by leaps and bounds.  They are also lighter than most other boots.  The GORE-TEX is a nice feature as well.  Reviews are mixed as far as durability so we'll see how that works out.  Most reviewers seem content, but a few people are not impressed.

I'm trying to break in the shoes quickly before my upcoming trips to North Georgia and Colorado.  Hopefully I won't get any blisters!

Kayaking: Samsons Island

Today, Heidi, Gabe, Q, and I went kayaking in Satellite Beach.  Q just bought a kayak and he was eager to get out on the water.  It has been a while since Heidi and I have been kayaking so we were excited to go.  Everyone wanted to check out Samsons Island.  Samsons Island is a 52-acre island in the Banana River owned by the City of Satellite Beach.  You can only access it by boat and it has campgrounds, restroom facilities, picnic areas, and boat docks.  The island has some canals going through it.  It is covered by mangroves and some other vegetation.  The island used to be covered with Australian pines that had taken over.  Australian pines are a non-native tree that chokes out the native vegetation and wildlife.  There has been a clearing effort to remove the non-native trees and replant with native vegetation.  The island still has some Australian pines.  You can find more information about the island at the Satellite Beach Recreation department website.

According to KayakGuide.com, you can put in at the Satellite Beach Fire Station and kayak a short distance to the island.  However, upon arrival we found out that the ramp was closed for liability reasons.  There was an information sheet box at the previous ramp site with some other ramp suggestions.  We decided to go further south to Oars and Paddles park.  Turns out this ramp is about a 2.5 mile paddle to the island.  That is a pretty far distance going against the wind.  We took the Banana River side up the island and the Grand Canal side back.  The wind was crazy on the river.  Once we got to the Island and paddled into the inner canals it was significantly easier to paddle.

Paddle Track

Once we paddled through some of the inner canals, we docked at a clearing and explored the island.  In the clearing we immediately found 2 great horned owls in the Australian pines.  They hung out for a while before they flew away.

Great Horned Owl

The bugs were out in full force and even with bug spray we were eaten alive.  I would like to go back to the island to camp, but not until mosquito season is over!  Along with owls and mosquitoes, we also saw a few turtles, osprey, and fish.  There were a lot of good trails on the island and some nice picnic areas.  Believe it or not, the island had a very nice restroom facility.  On the south side of the island there are a bunch of dead trees with chain saw cuts about 2/3 of  the way through the trunk near the base of the tree.  I'm not sure why they are cut like that.  It is possible that is how they kill the Australian Pines.  That's only a guess though.  On the water, in the canals it is very secluded and makes you forget that you are actually quite close to residential development.

Samsons Island

The trip back through the Grand Canal was very peaceful.  The houses on the canal are huge!  We were commenting about what it would be like to have enough money to live there.  The taxes and insurance on those houses must be ridiculous.

This was my first paddle with my GPS and I really appreciated having it.  My sense of direction is terrible and it helped me figure out where I was going on the island.  I put the GPS in a small insert in my kayak seat while I was paddling.  However, I forgot that it was there when we arrived back at the dock.  As a result, my GPS took a ride on the top of my car in the kayak.  I don't understand how it didn't fall out when I was pouring the water out of the kayak, but I was just grateful it was still there when I got home.  I'll have to be more careful next time.
 
This is a great paddle.  I'd like to do it again when it's cooler and maybe combine it with a camping/geocaching trip.

Volunteering for the Superhero Adventure Race

I was first introduced to adventure racing this July.  A group of friends participated in a race and my roommate and I went out to watch them finish.  Despite the fact that they looked nearly dead I was really excited by the idea of competing in one.  I'd heard of adventure racing before and I've had friends who did it, but I hadn't ever seen the sport in action.

Yesterday, my roommate Heidi and I volunteered to help at the Superhero Adventure Race in Apopka.  I volunteered because I wanted to get a better idea of how a race works before I jumped in head first.  The race was put on by Pangea Adventure Racing.  They put on about one race a month in different locations around central Florida.  If you are unfamiliar with adventure racing wikipedia knows everything. 

There were quite a few volunteers there.  I think I counted around 11.  Most had the same intentions I did, to learn the ropes before trying it themselves.  As a volunteer I exchanged punch cards between legs of the race for the teams and wrote their times on them.  I also emptied a few garbage cans and did a few quick miscellaneous jobs.  Not only did I get to learn about adventure racing, but I also earned $10 per hour I volunteered toward my next race!

I was surprised to see that there is a wide variety of skill levels in the competition.  Some racers were in top physical condition while others were there just for fun.  Some teams were parent with their kids, others were young adults, and the ages ranged up to people in their 60s.

Some useful things I learned about adventure racing were...

• Bring your own kayak paddle.  Canoe paddles are provided, but they only have a blade on one end.  A kayak paddle is much more efficient.
• Bring extra shoes.  The teams looked soaked after the boat portion.  I wouldn't want to run around in wet shoes for the rest of the race.
• Don't lose your punch card.   You are highly penalized for a lost punch card.  Keep it in a place where you can't possibly lose it.
• For some reason no one wants to bike last.  I haven't figured out why that is yet, but there must be a reason.  The order was boat-trek-bike.  If you had to trek first you would trek-bike-boat.
• Arrive early.  Parking is ridiculous and you greatly increase your chance of getting the right sized shirt if you are early.
• Never complete the race after the race finish time.  You get points deducted for being late.

 I learned a lot about adventure racing by volunteering.  Now that I have a better idea of what is required, I'm even more excited about trying it myself.  I would recommend volunteering to anyone who wants to learn about the sport.  It is a nice way to learn and make a couple bucks toward your registration fee.  Now I just need to start training!

First Time Geocaching

For the last year I've really wanted to buy a handheld GPS.  Like all things I want to purchase, I researched it to death for a year, decided to buy one and then decided against it.  Finally, I'd said, "I wish I had a GPS right now" for the last time.  I waited for the right deal and bought my Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx from Cabela's on sale.

I bought the GPS with the intention of using it mainly for hiking, biking, and kayaking.  It was not until I started researching GPS units that I became familiar with geocaching.  For those who don't know, geocaching is a high tech treasure hunt where people hide caches containing goodies or logs and others use the given GPS coordinates to find the cache.  Geocaching.com is an excellent resource for geocaching information along with listings of registered caches.

I used geocaching.com to find a supposedly easy to find cache in my area.  Information about the cache can be found here.  The cache I chose is a microcache so it is very small.  I plugged the GPS coordinate into my GPS and set off on my bike to find the cache.  I brought my backpack with me containing my Garmin, manual, water, pen, pencil, camera, batteries, phone, and keys.  It took me a little while to figure out how the unit worked, but once I go the hang of it I located the coordinate fairly easily.  Unfortunately, by the time I biked there, figured out the GPS and started looking, the sun had set and it was starting to get dark.  I think the cache is in a tree at the coordinate site, but I wasn't able to locate it there.  While I was searching I got a few sideways glances from the few passersby.  The mosquitoes were about to carry me away so I chose to leave before I found the cache.  On my way back home I biked right by a snake lying on the sidewalk!  I have a fear of snakes so it gave me chills even though I was safe on the bike.  It was a black snake about 2 feet long.  It slithered off the path toward the lake when it realized I was so close.

Even though I was unsuccessful, I learned a few lessons from my first geocaching experience.  First, always bring bug spray when geocaching at night in the Florida summer months!  At the end of the trip they were everywhere.  Second, next time I will bring a flashlight with me.  I could have spent more time searching with a flashlight.  Also, never bike with your mouth open during mosquito season!  I ate one before I learned that lesson.  I also need to be aware of my surroundings and the wildlife that I may encounter.  I don't need to be searching for a cache and stepping on an angry snake.

Overall, I enjoyed my first geocaching experience.  I plan to try again to find the cache in the next week or so.

Geocaching Track