Melissa Waage's Blog
Guest blogger: Margo Pellegrino's message in a bottle for healthy oceans--Day 7
July 7, 2008
Posted by Melissa Waage in Reviving the World's Oceans
NRDC is partnering with Margo Pellegrino as she paddles 500 miles from New Jersey to Washington, DC, in support of a new ocean protection bill, Oceans 21 (H.R. 21). On Day 7 Margo pulls in to Baltimore's Inner Harbor, having completed nearly half of her journey.
Margo's Blog: July 7
Right now I'm enjoying a day off in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The last couple of days have been real adventures. I'll spare some of the details involving our dockage in Essington, PA, and leave that to Carl, my husband, and now my weekend "chase-car driver."
The paddle from Essington, PA, started off early, around 6 am, to take advantage of a swiftly flowing outgoing tide, and under the threat of thunderstorms. Distant rumbling served as a motivator better than any cup of coffee to get me paddling as fast as possible down the Delaware. Being alone in this busy, industrial part of the River further jacked up my adrenaline, and in about four hours I later I found myself at the mouth of the C and D (Chesapeake and Delaware) canal. There my luck turned, as I quickly discovered I had made an error in tide calculation. The tide I was looking forward to riding in to Chesapeake city was incoming from the Bay, not incoming from the inlet. So I slogged it out for 12 miles against a fairly tough current. I was pretty happy, given this discovery concerning the tides, that no one had joined me for this portion of the paddle. Boy, would they have been mad at me!
Andy Upp, dockmaster of the Chesapeake Inn Restaurant and Marina, graciously allowed me to store my canoe there overnight. Wearing my night-time reflecting running vest, I paddled out in the morning under cloudy skies and foggy-ish conditions. Visibility was limited, but I was pretty intent on crossing the shipping channel to the Aberdeen side of Maryland rather than waiting until further south to do so, where the bay is wider. Fortunately for me, all was quiet as I paddled by the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Still, crossing my first bit of relatively open waters, I had to rely on the GPS and my sketchy dead-reckoning, as the land in front of me was lost in the mist.
After paddling by Aberdeen, the fog made way for dark skies. It only got worse as I paddled by Pool's Island. Pool's Island apparently has the Pool family graveyard by the lighthouse, and it is only visible at low tide, according to Dr. Bernie Kalpers, of the United States Power Squadron, who I met in Baltimore. As I paddled past the island, it started to rain, thunder rumbled loudly, and I could smell an acrid, almost electric odor in the air. I don't know if this was from the boats, or if this was my over-active imagination, but it did add to the tension I was feeling, especially as boats zoomed in from across the bay to get back to harbor. Soon I was pretty much alone on the bay. Just as I finished paddling past the island, and almost came to the point of land I had my eye on, I decided I better not chance it. I turned around and paddled into the strong North wind and chop, going toward the river entrance. Once at the mouth of the river, I felt the push of the outgoing tide.
I sat there a moment, taking stock of the situation. It seemed the storm was moving north and west, going to the "safe harbor." It would be over me if I tried to paddle to any dockage up river. It looked as if the skies south and east of me were clearing, or rather, they didn't look as dark as what I was paddling in. So once again I paddled back south, going past Pool's Island for the third time. So I basically added about 2-3 miles to a 50 mile day. But it was worth it--to keep going. Once I hit the point of land I had my eyes on, I paddled across fairly open, rolling, water to an island made of dredge spoils from the Baltimore Harbor. The sun was out, the sky was blue, a complete and polar opposite to the weather by Pool's Island. Everyone and their mother seemed to be out in the cove by the dredge-spoil island. As luck would have it, not only did I have a nice following wind at my back going south on the Chesapeake, but once in the Baltimore Harbor the eastern aspect of the wind helped push me in, too. It was a good day to be on the water! Let's hope the conditions hold.
After a press conference on Tuesday, at the Baltimore Aquarium, it's off to Annapolis, where I'll be staying with my paddling/windsurfing cousins. Outdoor adventures come naturally to the Putschers. Their mother, my dad's oldest sister, was once dared to climb the water tower in New Brunswick, where she attended Douglass College. So she did, at midnight, all dressed in black. Last year, during my Chincoteague to Ocean City, MD, leg of the trip, my cousins Andrea and Laurie Putscher joined me on the water, and ended up paddling in the dark past the inlet. It must be something in the genes!
Actually, I owe my existence to my Aunt Dot. When my father was younger, and living in Somers Point with the rest of the Howard clan, he went out rowing in his row-boat in the Great Egg Harbor Bay. Unfortunately, he did this immediately following an appendectomy. When it was apparent he was in trouble, my Aunt Dot jumped in and swam out to rescue him. So thank you, Aunt Dot!
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Andrea — Jul 8 2008 02:45 PM
go Mar go -
I must remark that family stories just get better with time and the fond embellishments of each new adventurous generation . . . Thanks for taking a stand, or a paddle as it were, -- in hopes that Billy and Julia and all their cousins may have many more safe, healthy, sustainable adventures on the waters in the years ahead. You know I usually paddle on the flowing fresh waters, rather than the tidal reaches(and except with a full moon, would usually do so in daylight). I did so on Sunday in your honor. Had the pleasure of sharing the end of my Sunday journey (on the lower reaches of the Shenandoah R., just upstream of where it tumbles into the Potomac R) with Jim Surkamp, a gentleman and a scholar, who is a County Commissioner in Jefferson County, West Virginia. It was special sharing Jim's first kayaking experience on those waters, which are on several levels the lifeblood of his County. As he was a first time paddler, it was interesting in the course of our trip to watch Jim instinctively figuring out how to read the water and listen to the messages it sent and to go with the flow, working with the currents and the other elements to get where he wanted to go, rather than ignoring or fighting against them. Jim is a motivated and caring elected official, who is searching for ways to balance all the competing interests that make up a watershed. I hope many others like him in the halls of Congress will step forward to do what's needed for the Oceans bill. Those of us in the upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay watershed are working hard to help all of our neighbors realize that we, each and everyone of us, have to think about what we do on land, everyday, as well as what we do when we're near, in and on the waters themselves to ensure that the water that flows to the endangered Bay and Oceans arrive there as chemically natural and physically unburdened with sediments, flotsam and jetsom as possible. The protection of our oceans really starts way inland and we all need to be ever mindful. To all those other paddlers who plie the waters with Margo, wherever you are, you've now paddled with one of the best, it's time to introduce the rest of your watershed neighbors to the wonders of the waters --through first-hand experience in working and playing with the tides and currents. . . Find someone new who is even just a little interested in trying paddling, and do what it takes to give them that first mind-expanding personal experience and the confidence to return again and again to the water so they understand passionately and directly that the waters must be protected; that even right now, after more than 30 years of consciously trying to do better, we're still asking the river,estuarine and marine waters and ecosystems to bear more human impacts, more rapidly, than they can assimilate.
Every paddling trip, no matter how long or short is a mixed blessing with good moments, (the spotted fawn taking its first hesitant drink of river water from an isolated little beach while the mother doe watches carefully from within the treeline of a good riparian buffer. The excitement of a child's first sunfish catch and learning to handle and release the small young fish without disturbing the mucous on its body scales, which help protect it from disease) and sobering moments too, and some moments when you just don't kow whether to clap, laugh or cry - (when bottom feeding fish are caught, clearly intended to feed hungry human mouths and one doesn't know whether to warn of the chemical perils likely accumulated in fish tissue or be glad that a teenage sister can proudly feed her family; or when the trails that lead from the river bank to an historic site have to be maintained by volunteers, because the agency that manages the lands is understaffed and underfunded. clap for the volunteers, cry for the agency, laugh at the irony in understanding that the tax dollars saved may feed that family that can't eat the fish from the river) The waters need our conscious respect every day in every way, wherever we are, take care all of you, and keep up the good work. The next pages of the history of the waters is ours to write. Andy