By Peter Clayton

The ’23-24 Marsh Creek Kayak season officially got under way today with near perfect weather, two new paddlers and a new rest stop on Trout Creek. Eleven of us participated with Gus Reeve and Kit Kiefer joining us for the first time and hopefully becoming regulars. Our new half-way take out was the dock for Shearwater, a huge new housing development going up on SR 16A. It has a couple of self launch kayak stations and an elevated area with a bench – 2.8 miles from our put-in. Our time from launch to pull-out was just under three hours.

Kit made a great spot of a red shoulder hawk in a tree along our route and Marty got a nice pic of a large turtle. A pileated woodpecker flew over us and we heard others in the woods hammering on trees – while a kingfisher escorted us for a short stretch on the inbound leg. Our other excitement was provided by John Sullivan who self launched his boat at the Shearwater dock without being in it, but he made a diving save before it got away, and, Bud Clarke who decided to run John’s boat over in the parking area he was in such a hurry to get to Woodpecker’s – no harm done. Ned decided to bring home extra water in his boat from a leak somewhere.