Not having the first clue about what it takes to go Kayaking, off we went to Outdoor Recreation and signed up for the Sea Kayaking course here on base. While not an official course in any way, it's a prerequisite to being able to rent a kayak or participate in any of the kayaking trips offered by Outdoor Rec. Even though we don't have much time left to enjoy kayaking here, we figured this would be a good way to learn the basics of kayaking so that when/if we decide to buy our own we won't be starting out from absolute scratch.
After 3 hours in the pool on Thursday evening, it was out into Lake Ogawara for a leisurely paddle. A little history here, Lake Ogawara was used by the Imperial Japanese Navy to practice the attack on Pearly Harbor. The lake was chosen based upon its resemblance of Pearl and the depth of the water allowed pilots to practice launching torpedoes in conditions they could expect in Hawaii. Anyway, back into the water...
Since nobody had anything pressing to do today, we went for it all and set off to completely cross the entire lake, return back towards a northern point, and then follow the coastline all the way back to the base beach. It looked a little something like the map below and covered about 5 miles by my rough measure.
We were fortunate enough to have perfect weather throughout the morning. No wind, plenty of sun (too much sun for me), and a water temp that was quite refreshing when we ended up playing around with the different rescues. Below are some pictures of our trip around the lake.
At the end of the day we were plenty exhausted but we're both eager to see what the Virgina waters will have to offer us...oh, and Thailand too...I've read about some beautiful kayaking/canoeing trips that we can take advantage of in December.
