Our Kayak is back on the Water!

Over a month ago, our beloved inflatable Sea Eagle kayak ran into a mean oyster bar that punctured it. We called the man that sold us the boat six years ago, asking for advice.  Even though selling us a new one would have been to his financial benefit, we really have to respect the fact that he first wanted to help us repair it.  He asked for pictures of the damage, and he forwarded them to the Sea Eagle company for advice. They thought our best option was a product called "Air Stop."  We drove to five different stores in several cities before we finally got smart and started calling first. We finally found this elusive product in Houston, and found out we had to sign a waiver not to sniff it before we could purchase it. It took a while, but Mark found the time to make the necessary repairs.  He put several layers of Air Stop on the small puncture that is circled, and a patch over a deeply scraped area.

He also did some preventive layers on other areas that the sharp oysters scraped.

After all this dried and cured, we had to find the time to blow up the boat and allow it to sit overnight to make sure it was holding air.  This really shouldn't have taken a month to accomplish all these steps, but we are pretty busy with all our retirement fun and it's hard to get these projects done!  The good news is that the boat stayed inflated, so we were looking forward to putting it on the Ross R. Barnett Reservoir, north of Jackson, Mississippi, that we are camped beside. It felt good to finally be back on the water! 

We got too close to this group of coots, and they started flapping their wings to relocate away from us.  Their take-off looks more like they are trying to walk on the water,  and we could see their "foot prints" in the water as they made their exit.

We are enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures for this area, and we almost reached 80 degrees this day. We also came upon a flock of white pelicans, lazing along a shallow water peninsula.  We counted almost 60 birds in this one frame.

Some of the pelicans took to the air, and we loved to hear the sound of those huge wings beating the breeze as they took off right over our heads.

There was a breeze, so we paddled close to the grassy areas at the edge of the water to stay out of the wind. That was where we saw a BIG splash, that couldn't be attributed to anything as small as a turtle or a bird. We continued to row to a new spot, and Mark spotted movement at the edge of the water. He saw it again and confirmed that it was an alligator tail. But are there really alligators this far north in Mississippi? Now we felt sure that the earlier splash was also made by an alligator.  That's when we both spotted another gator in the brush not too far from our boat. If you look in the middle of the photo below, you can barely see him from tail to nose at the edge of the tall grass.

The picture above isn't perfect, but Denisa was more concerned about keeping some distance away instead of getting that close-up shot. Mark offered to take the picture, but Denisa decided his expertise with the oars was more important than his expertise with the camera. This was especially important when the gator started moving towards us.  Then there was no doubt that we were seeing a Mississippi alligator!

We have enough sense to head for the dock in our newly repaired kayak, leaving the alligators to enjoy the beautiful weather. It's been good to be back on the water, sharing it with lots of God's creatures!