First paddle of the year. Helpdesk and Gusto made a trip to the Charleston area to get in a few days of paddling. Unfortunately the first day was a bit delayed due to multiple accidents (involving others, not us) on the drive down. This put us a couple of hours later than we expected and therefore messed up our timing for hitting the tides correctly. We looked for a couple of other solutions but with little water at the put in for Capers Island we decided to just settle for a paddle in the lake near the cabin we had rented in the Mount Pleasant KOA campground.
On Saturday we got up took a walk ate a little breakfast and then headed to Paradise Island Boat Landing on the Wando River. From there it's a short paddle down to Cat Island and the tide took us down river nicely.
The paddle down was pretty fast. We did the ~ 3.7 mile trip in about 45 minutes. We did decide to go on further to the Ship Yard Park area. There is a marina there and a few places to eat. We weren't planning on lunch or anything but wanted to get out and stretch our legs and look around. Well, seems that is a private marina and they weren't too keen on us getting out on their docks and leaving our boats. So we got back in (almost fell in) to our boats and paddled against the tide back to Cat Island. That short paddle against the tide took about as long as the entire trip to that point. Back on Cat Island we found some shade on the beach were there was some breeze and had lunch. It was busy that day with a number of boats showing up with families and some college aged kids as well. We agreed we like the mid week crowds, or lack thereof, better. I didn't take a lot of shots this trip but got a few. There are some nice homes on this part of the river.
I did take a very short video. It was nice and quiet as we moved away from the homes and closer to the island.
Here are a few sunset shots from near the landing.
Overall it was a great time and I can't wait to get back down for some barrier island paddling.
Helpdesk and Gusto
