Mangroves Again

I know you all tire of reading my multiple posts about my haircuts and mangrove flat kayak trips but I had to post this experience I had last weekend. There were so many incredible things I saw it is worth note.

My Italian co-worker and boat owner, "Il Capitano" and I planned a second kayak trip, this time with fishing gear, food and cooking utensils as a longer day of exploring was anticipated. The security guys at the launch point amazingly recognized us from the previous excursion and waved us on as if we were long-lost cousins. I guess we made some kind of impression before.

That hurdle being jumped, we ventured out into the bounding main and set a course for the same area as last time. Once we got there, we noticed that the tide was running into the estuary this time and the environment looked completely different. What was bare sand on the previous trip was now covered in water.

So it was decided to take a narrow slough which opened up into a wide flat covered in a few feet of water. The strong tidal current was at our backs which made progress easy. Eager to wet the hooks, we beached on a small piece of dry ground. Il Capitano jumped out of the boat and immediately sank up to his knees in soft sand. After pulling him out with the aid of a paddle, we settled down to catch lunch.

Easy paddling with tide at our backs

Acres (hectares) of shallow waters in high tide mode

Initial landfall at this island...it was covered in the high tide 45 minutes later and we had to go.

"Il Capitano" enjoying a frosty malt beverage

We spotted this covered walkway within paddling distance

The buildings in the background were our launching point, a lot of real estate was covered

So when we no fish were caught and the dry land we were beached on was rapidly reclaimed by the tide, we thought paddling to the mysterious walkway would be a good idea. with the aid of the incoming tide, we made it there in record time. Somewhere along the way my camera ingested some salt water and refused to record any more images.

We reached the wooden walkway and made it our base of operations for awhile. It seemed about 2 kilometers long and was of extremely high quality construction. We fished for awhile and caught nothing so the charcoal grilled burgers tasted good. On three occasions I saw wild gazelles prancing around in the area......and my damn camera was shot. Their hoofprints were everywhere in the sand. Abu Dhabi literally means "Father of the Gazelle".

The snakelike, palm frond covered walkway we found. This became Base-Ops as no one was around...wild Gazelles were abundant though! We fished at the main channel in the center of this Google Earth view

An interesting thing happed during the time I was on the elevated walkway fishing and eating hamburgers, The tidal current slowed, stopped and the reversed all in a couple of hours. That meant an almost effortless trip back as we had the tidal current at our backs once again. The equivalent of going downhill both ways. I have never seen tides change that much in so little time. I would estimate the current at about 5-7 knots due to the narrowness of the channels. I was pleased at this as I am a lazy bastard and did not relish paddling back that far against the strong current we had at our advantage on the way in . The return voyage ended up a relaxing sightseeing trip.

We got skunked fishing, but I did have a stone crab on a hook when I pulled up my line when it was time to go. I let the poor fellow go. He was quite agitated!

The main thing I regret is that my camera failed on me. To be fair, it was not waterproof, it was 4 years old and it had less megapixels than my mobile phone, but I missed some of the best photos in my life. It served me well as a secondary device lately. I don't take my good Canon SX10is on such trips.

The last image of my Canon A510 PowerShot. My right foot in perfect macro focus, faithful 'til the end! It freaked out after this!

The Dearly Departed......I took thousands of photos with this

I now have an excuse to get a new toy....a waterproof camera. that is always fun although I regret missing some wonderful shots last weekend. 

The weather and water temperature were perfect and I didn't have to swat one insect the whole time. How cool is that?! It will be incredibly hot here in the near future which will make such voyages very uncomfortable. I hope we can squeeze another in by then!