NANCY and BILL: Our Maiden Voyage with the Sea Eagle

It’s Saturday morning and the weather is perfect to take our blow-up kayak, a Sea Eagle SE-370, on our first trip. We’ve had the kayak for a couple of weeks and have been anxious to try her out. Well, today is the day!!

We put the kayak in the car with our life jackets, a small cooler for water, keys, camera and cell phone, just in case! We drove to the Oyster Recycling Center on Hwy 17, about a quarter mile north of the entrance to Huntington Beach State Park.

It was only 7:30 and I was surprised to see at least a half dozen cars with boat trailers already there. I guess they started fishing at sunrise.

We pumped up the kayak and seats with the foot pump. It actually took less than 10 minutes to pump up the kayak. Using a little leg action before we use a little arm action to paddle. It makes for a complete workout!! Actually, it is really easy to set up.

The Oyster Landing is a very easy place to launch the kayak. We carried it to the water’s edge and got on board and off we paddled in the salt marshes of Murrells Inlet.

View from Front Seat

View from Back Seat

It handled beautifully! Nancy needed to put a couple towels under her seat as she was sitting too low to paddle. We will have to figure a permanent fix for that problem, but otherwise, the kayak is really easy and fun.

The Captain!!

Nancy had printed an overhead photo of the area, but it looked different from water level. So we just paddled around until we got to dead ends or we recognized landmarks. We saw quite a bit of wildlife: lots of fish jumping, egrets and other birds along the shore, tons of oyster shells and several fishermen. It was low tide, so the route was very shallow in places. We got out of the kayak once, as we inadvertently ran aground. No big deal, but I was glad it was sand and not mud!!

Murrells Inlet from Oak Creek

Oyster Beds at Low Tide

Egret

We paddled for about an hour or so. It was a great start and a fun morning!! We’re glad we bought the kayak. I can really see us using it more when we start full-timing. However, we probably need to be putting a little more free time into preparing the house for sale and a little less time testing all our toys or we’ll never get to our FULL-TIMING DREAM!!

4 comments:

owensontheroadMay 22, 2010 at 9:30 PM
Great pictures! We are interested in getting a Sea Eagle as well.
JulieMay 22, 2010 at 11:01 PM
Way to go, Mom and Dad! Looks like you had a great time on a beautiful morning! See any gators?

Julie
TravelwithwhippetsMay 23, 2010 at 7:35 AM
We have a Sea Eagle, too. One permanent fix for her seat problem would be to swap out your seats for the "deluxe" seats. We have those, and actually have to let a little air out of the bottom cushion after we inflate them, because we were sitting up so high it made it a little "tippy." By not inflating the bottom cushion fully, they are just fine. We have friends with chairs like yours, and they seem to think our chairs have more back support than theirs. Just an idea FWIW....
Nancy and BillMay 23, 2010 at 9:59 AM
Thanks for the idea. Actually, we didn't get the deluxe seats on purpose as they seemed to upright when we tested them at the rally. However, we might have to reconsider or we can just let Bill do the paddling!!! By the way, we loved Dianne's cleaning outfit :)