Lessons Learned from the
Inaugural Voyage of the
Chick-a-Dees

Segment 1, Lessons Learned – Sunday, 10/22/2020

So, after 3 days on the CT, what have we learned other than don’t throw your back out by pushing too hard and carrying too much the first morning?

1) Biggest Lesson Learned:

You can plan and prepare for months, have all the knowledge and great equipment that’s available. But once you’re on the water, the local weather rules your day and determines timing, mileage and hours to get from point A to point B. You have to be flexible enough to accept that.

On this particular trip, all 3 days we had 13-30 mph head winds from around 10 pm at night until around 1 pm in the afternoon, 8-13 mph head winds from around 1 pm to 6 pm and almost calm conditions from around 6 pm to 10 pm. After battling 18-20 mph head winds crossing the Pensacola Pass I noticed that it took us 5 minutes of very hard paddling to pass a small bush on the shore. I had to laugh, it really was ridiculous! It made more sense to stop than to wear ourselves out. An hour later the wind had dropped to around 8 mph and we were able to make progress again. After that we started later in the morning and paddled until after dark – the second night until 11 pm. Not what we wanted to do, but it was what was required of us because there was only 1 legal campsite on that stretch.

2) Second Biggest Lesson Learned:

Saltwater has some of it’s own added difficulties including ocean-going boats, waves, tides and strong tidal currents, and finding and conserving freshwater. And these vary with location & timing – no two days are ever going to be the same. Add to that still-unrepaired damage from recent hurricanes and a lot of the logistics get thrown out the window. You have to be flexible enough to accept that, too.

Kayaks
Dena had a new (to her) 17′ Necky Looksha in fiberglass. Most importantly, it fits her perfectly altho it’s a struggle to get her C-Tug kayak cart inside that skinny boat. Deb had planned to purchase a new sea kayak for doing the FCT but Covid scuttled that idea. Nothing that fit – new or used – was available in shops, from factories, on-line or used via various marketplaces. So she went with her old river touring kayak, a Delta 15.5′ Expedition in ABS. It’s a gear hauler, but not very fast. However, both of us were really used to our boats when we started and both kayaks did really well in the choppy water (up to 2 foot seas) and the headwinds we encountered.

VHF radios
We both have Standard Horizon HX890 radios. Mostly we used them for the local marine forecasts which are much more accurate than anything we could get on the land-based radio stations (which you can also listen to on the VHFs). We both signed up for MMSIs (which is sort of like a marine phone number that uniquely identifies each boat and owner). This allows us to use the big red emergency button to transmit our GPS location to the Coast Guard if necessary and it also allows us to talk with each other on the water if we get separated (like a walkie-talkie) but we never had the need. We stayed fairly close to each other the whole way. Otherwise we kept them monitoring on Channels 9, 16 and 68 while we were on the water and listened to the radio traffic. This was particularly useful for crossing the Pensacola Pass because it helped us figure out what was coming our way. We kept one (Deb’s) on the whole time we were on the water and it ran out of charge just as we hit our take-out – a total of about 30 hours on one charge. Unfortunately it can not be recharged from a USB – it requires an AC outlet – but with 2 of them and more judicious use (or shorter hours per day on the water) it could last 5-7 days. Plus it does have a AAA battery backup which we had ready but did not use. We had gotten mixed reviews on whether we needed to carry our VHFs in waterproof cases. We elected not to get the cases for this trip and see how things went. Since the VHFs were never immersed in water everything was good. If they had actually ended up in the water at some point things might be different. We’ll have to play that one by ear as we go.

Deck Bag
The Gearlab Deck Pod is the almost perfect deck bag. Deb loved hers so much before the trip that Dena bought one. It’s low profile to reduce windage, holds a lot more than it looks like it should, and the attachment system allows you to quickly remove the deck bag for the night while leaving the straps on your perimeter lines. We kept our paddle floats, bilge pumps, and rolled maps under the outside straps. The inside of the bag is set up to hold a hoser water bladder but Deb likes her water bladders behind the seat to keep the weight low and Dena prefer bottles. Our bags carried all of the small stuff we like to keep immediately available – flares, first aid kit, headlamp, spare batteries, mask, toilet paper, snacks, lunch, sun screen, spare gloves, etc. There is a mesh pocket on the top where Dena stored her GPS and Deb stored her VHF. The bag is NOT waterproof, so anything delicate needs to be in plastic. They also dry very quickly. It comes in two colors – dark gray and pale blue. (Hint – the pale blue gets dirty quickly.)

Tents
Dena had a Marmot Tungsten 2P and Deb had a Marmot Tungsten UL 2P. They both worked well, but could use more tie downs for the 20+ mph winds we encountered each day between about 10 pm and noon. The Tungsten UL 2P flapped noticeably in the wind. Deb plans to add a couple of tie out loops on each end to fix that issue before the next trip. The first two nights there were no trees large enough to hang hammocks and the 3rd night was a choice between a motel or resort campground, so taking tents was the only way to go on this section. Definitely needed sand stakes. We carried 2 different kinds and both worked well. (Deb used the MSR Cyclone Tent Stakes and Dena used the Orange Screw stakes.) Deb has since bought a different tent – an Alps Mountaineering Lynx 2P – a double wall tent with a better fly, already set up for storm lashing, and costs a lot less money, altho about 1 lb. heavier.

Sleeping
Nighttime low temps were in the mid-60s, so inside our tents we didn’t need much. Deb used a Nemo Cosmo pad with integrated foot pump and Dena had a different Nemo along with a tiny battery pump. Deb used a home-made poly-fill sleeping quilt while Dena used a knit sheet and blanket.

Transport
We each brought a kayak cart (C-Tug). Since the cart was difficult to get inside Dena’s skinny boat we only took 1 on the water with us, inside Deb’s boat. Deb also carried the extra paddle while Dena carried two foam rollers. We only used the kayak cart once to get the boats from the top of the beach around the motel to our pool-side room, but it was very advantageous there. The foam rollers were to be used pulling the boats up onto the shore at night – way up above the high tide line – and Deb wishes we had used them because about 14 feet of KeelEazy from her hull now lie somewhere in the Santa Rosa Sound. The rough sand just stripped it off the bottom of her boat. Whether we will carry a cart or a second set of foam rollers on other trips will depend on location, but we’ve learned what works and doesn’t work with them.

Water
When paddling along the coast it is, as Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner goes, “water, water every where nor any drop to drink”. As originally planned there were places to stop along the way to pick up fresh water each day, but with Hurricane Sally many of those places were buried under 3 feet of sand or were shut off pending repairs. Not knowing exactly what would be open we elected to carry 3 days of water. We carried 1 day’s worth in our cockpit and another 2 days worth inside our boats (6-liter MSR Dromedary bags). Dena supplemented that with a couple of bottles of Gatorade while Deb stuck with the water. In truth, we could have stopped in Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach and picked up some fresh water at sound-side restaurants – a few of them have beach access – but that adds at least 30 minutes to the day and we couldn’t be absolutely certain in advance which places would be open and friendly to paddlers uninterested in buying a meal and which would not. We figured it was better to carry what we could and only beg from such places if needed. The Dromedary bags and similar are rather floppy, so Deb placed hers inside an old dry bag. That made it much easier to pack and carry.

Food
We both took too much, primarily because we had planned on 5 days and were only out for three. But also because with the prevailing winds we left late in the morning – after breakfast but before lunch – then paddled pretty much straight through until late in the evening/night. So having the traditional evening meal around the cook stove simply didn’t work. Unlike long-distance backpacking where you can usually stop anywhere for a meal, in long-distance paddling the stops are only where a good spot presents itself, and those spots depend on public/private/military ownership, prevailing winds, tide, soil composition (sand vs limestone vs oyster bars), etc. Next time we agreed that on a 5-day trip we would take maybe 2 cooked meals in case we lucked out, and the rest of the time we would “lunch” with soft taco/burrito wraps, chicken/tuna pouches, cheese, dried fruit or fruit cups, snacks, etc. Food that if necessary can be eaten equally well on a beach, in the cockpit, or in the tent without cooking. Deb wants to add, however, that for the one cooked meal we had the first night her home-dried shrimp, home-dried veggies and rice dinner was very tasty.

Spray Skirts
We found them absolutely necessary given we encountered head winds the entire trip. Salt water and spray was thrown up over our bows constantly and when taking the waves on the bow quarter or abeam it would have rolled on into our cockpits. Deb debated whether to take her neoprene or nylon skirt, but since the air and water temps were in the 70s and 80s she elected to go with the nylon (Seals Coastal Tour) and it worked fine. Dena used her zippered nylon spray skirt (Seals Sneak) but says water enters through the zipper. So while great for day trips in hot, humid Florida, she will be replacing it for the CT with a skirt without the zipper – probably a neoprene skirt.

Rain Gear
We took our jackets (Deb = Level 6 Duke dry jacket, Dena = Toadz rain jacket by Froggtoggs), Paddington Bear hats (Grundens), and rain pants (Kokatat Tempest) but never needed them. As I said the water and air temps were warm and although rain was predicted we only got a brief shower the first night after we were in our tents and we didn’t need the jackets for warmth or protection on the water. Deb is thinking about a cagoule from Kayak Academy for winter trips. (BTW, Dena DOES have a good paddling dry jacket, she just prefers something lighter unless the weather or water is cold.)

GPS and Maps
Deb’s the navigator and planner and she had plotted out all the legal camp areas and motels/campgrounds as well as other POIs along the way and provided them as well as all the Florida Topo maps on SD cards for the GPS units (Garmin GPSMap 78sc and GPSMap 79sc). The topos are nice to have in addition to the nautical charts when paddling coastal areas. She also added new places that previous CT paddlers mentioned.

We also carried a couple of paper maps from GoogleEarth and the pages for that section from the CT Paddling Guide inside a waterproof map case (NRS HydroLock). Deb had gone through the CT Paddling Guide before the trip and updated phone numbers, names and rates and eliminated motels and campgrounds that had shut down or no longer allowed tents. (Most private campgrounds in Florida are RV “resorts” and do not allow tents or hammocks to keep out the “low-budget riff-raff”. (Cue Don Groom’s “Winnebagoes” which you can listen to HERE.)

We’ve also found that local fishing charts (like TopSpot brand) actually work better than the USGS nautical charts. They are waterproof, fold up better, and are a better size to use from a cockpit. This all worked well for us altho Deb will be adding a few more POIs of recognizable buildings culled from GoogleEarth for the next trips. It’s kind of nice to recognize some of the places you are paddling past, landmarks so you can judge when you’re about half-way, etc.

PFD
We both wore them constantly while on the water. They were needed to be safe. (Deb = Astral V-Eight, later NRS cVest (good VHF radio pocket), Dena = Stohlquist Flo)

Insect Repellent
An absolute necessity for land in the evening. The saltmarsh mosquitos, biting flies, and no-see-ums will carry you away. And we left all ours in the car on this first trip since we camped the night before we launched! Never again! Next time we’ll take both a Thermocell and some spray dope.

Camera
Dena took her GoPro is hopes of getting some action shots and Deb took her trusty Olympus TG-6. We each also had our cell phones and tried to take at least one photo each day with the phone and send it to Deb’s Facebook page to let people at home know we were off the water and safe for the night. (Without identifying the exact location – see personal security.) Deb took a lens brush and some lens paper which proved excellent for cleaning her camera of sand and water spots each night. We also carried extra batteries and extra SD cards but with the winds we encountered we had our hands on the paddle most of the time and we each took relatively few pictures. Dena is working on setting up some sort of mast for her GoPro for the next trip so it will be higher and less hands on.

Personal Security
Deb has seen too many internet lurkers who fixated on female long-distance hikers. We are two ladies paddling by ourselves, so we will never post where we are each day. Our friends may be able to figure it out, but other than our one “we’re off the water and ok” message each night, all internet posts about our trips will be made after we are home. We checked in with our two safety net people each day – one at home and one local. And Dena carried a flashlight-stun gun (ViperTek VTS-195) that is impervious to salt water. (Firearms, etc. are not permitted on the military reservations we pass through.)

Gear Security
With kayak thefts on the upswing we used both a cable lock and a motion sensor alarm. Deb tested out several inexpensive alarms she found on Amazon and settled on the WSDCAM 113dB Wireless Anti-theft Vibration Motorcycle Alarm which worked quite well for us. It consists of a waterproof alarm box which Deb velcroed to the stern bulkhead (so it’s not visible with the cockpit cover on) and a remote control fob. (Although it claims to be waterproof we did not keep the alarm box in the cockpit during the day where it would have gotten wet. We kept both alarm box and remote fob in a dry bag when not in use.) The cable lock (a keyed Master lock), however, succumbed to the salt water. We could not get it to lock on the 3rd night. So we’ll be replacing it with a brass lock which will withstand saltwater corrosion better and Dena will be keeping lock and cable in a dry bag during the day on the water.

Lights
We both had waterproof headlamps, our solar Luci Lights for our tents, Kayalu Kayalites on the stern, and Dena had her stun-gun flashlight (Mace brand). Since we had to find our landing spot 2 nights in the dark the longer range of the handheld flashlight came in handy but the headlamps were much better for setting up camp in the dark.

Hygiene
Wet wipes, body powder, and hand cream in small travel containers rock. Fresh water is at a premium so we used wet wipes to clean up each night and morning. Body powder, like baby powder or Gold Bond, helps remove sticky sand. And after 12-16 hours in salt water and wind your feet, hands and face need all the TLC they can get.

Clothing
Since the temps were warm we pretty much wore what we always wear for kayaking in Florida. Quick-dry, UPF long-sleeved shirts and capri pants/long shorts. Deb wore her Chaco sandals with sand socks and Dena wore her Keen water shoes. We took long pants for night and a sleeping shirt as well as changes in underwear. Deb – who gets cold easily – also took a lightweight fleece vest which doubled as a pillow. During the day we wore our regular hats. (Deb has a blue painters cap with ear flaps and Dena a favorite purple baseball cap). The important thing is that they have chin straps for the wind. The only thing Deb decided to add for the next trip is a lightweight hinged balaclava. Having 20+ mph winds blowing in her face all day gave her a bad windburn that took several days to heal after she got home. The lightweight, hinged balaclava covers the entire head but is light enough to fit under a hat and they are more form-fitting than a buff so you don’t have to constantly readjust it.

Power
Having gotten bad reviews from salt water paddlers we didn’t try any solar system rechargers. We each carried a 20,000 mAh power bank and it fully recharged our phones and cameras each of the 3 nights and would have lasted at least 5 days, if not more. The GPS units are battery powered with 2 AA batteries lasting about 20 hours of track recording. The VHFs last 20-25 hours and require AC to recharge or you can use the 5-AAA battery pack.