June ?, 2007 Sea Kayaking near Port Aransas, Texas
By Catherine Young
Photos Pending
While vacationing with my family at Port Aransas, Texas, I made arrangements for my niece and me to go kayaking in the channels, estuaries, and bay separating Aransas Pass, Texas from Port Aransas, Texas. I had read about the Aransas Pass Light House Station, which is only accessible by boat and wanted to see it. It predates the Civil War. My niece is 16 and is very athletic and was very excited about the trip. I hired a guide and made arrangements to meet him on Saturday morning. We were staying at a hotel on the Gulf side of Port Aransas about 10 miles from the ferry landing on the bay side. As we finished breakfast looking out at the Gulf, it was raining and there were many white caps visible. I called the guide, who told me that once this set of squalls went by, we would have about 4 hours before the next set would be coming through. So we headed to the ferry. Knowing we still had about 45 minutes before the squall was through, we found a coffee shop with homemade cherry cobbler and pigs in a blanket. So fortified, we went and got in line for the ferry. Once across, we found the little road about a mile down from the ferry, just before the first bridge and followed a road back toward the Halliburton docks that had potholes in it that were large enough to lose the car in them. If anyone would have watched the erratic driving as I attempted to miss the worst of them, they would have been convinced that I was the world’s worst driver (or very intoxicated!).
Once we located the guide, we stashed our snacks and water in the waterproof soft sided coolers that were strapped down on the backs of our kayaks, put on our pfd’s and pulled our kayaks out into the ship channel. I gave my niece a quick lesson on how to correctly hold her paddle (Thanks to my instructors at the Y, I knew how to hold the paddle) and the guide hooked her boat to his and I hooked mine to the back of hers and we headed out to cross the channel. I kept my eye on the large tanker at the dock hoping it wouldn’t be pulling out before we got back. I really didn’t relish the idea of trying to get by a huge oil tanker and a pilot boat. The guide led us across the channel between fishing boats running down the channel. The waves generated by the speed boats took a little getting used to angling across them.
After crossing the main channel, we unhooked the kayaks and we followed another channel and stopped to pick up sea shells on an island. There was a lot of garbage on the beach. It’s illegal to dump garbage from a ship or oil platform in the Gulf, but it still happens and a beach cleanup was really needed on that little island. There was a lot of grass and it probably had seabirds nesting on it, but we didn’t get off of the beach since snakes are always a danger. As we followed the sandbars and islands around to the light house, we passed a lot of people fishing from their boats, and the guide made sure that we stayed away from their casting area. The tide was flowing out and so it carried us down the coast easily and we didn’t have to do a lot of hard paddling. The sky was overcast and the clouds blew by quickly. We kept a close eye on them to make sure we didn’t get caught out in a bad storm.
We finally turned down a small waterway that led back into the estuaries and found ourselves next to the light house. Since it is now private property, we couldn’t land to get a close up view of it.
We then proceeded down the waterway, back into the estuaries, which are the nurseries for crabs, fish and shrimp. There were lots of oyster beds, and in one section, there were a lot of commercial crab traps. The Red fish were in feeding. My niece and I commented that if my brother, her Dad, had been with us, he would have been out on the oyster shelf, fishing the first time he saw the red fish back there.
Because the tide was going out, it was very shallow in some places. We found ourselves poling the kayaks over some of the oyster beds. The deepest areas were right next to the vegetation and so we tried to stay there. The guide asked us not to feed the alligators since they would then follow the kayaks. My niece and I assured him that our idea of a good alligator to be close to came as a purse with matching shoes, otherwise we would admire from afar. I was amazed at all the butterflies on the flowering plants.
We went through some large open bodies of water that were very shallow and you could see the bottom in areas were the sea grass was absent. My niece was watching some creature and the end of her paddle was resting on the bottom in the grass. When she went to resume paddling, there was a crab crawling up it.
The guide realized that the storm was moving in and we had been out over three hours, so he found a short cut out of the estuaries and back to the main channel. Just as we began paddling up the channel the first part of the squall hit, and we paddled about a half mile battling the wind and the current. We got back to the landing area and pulled our boats out just as the rain hit. The guide paid us a compliment, telling us that we were in good shape to have paddled that last piece as fast as we did. (We just didn’t want to be out on the water in a squall)
All in all it was a fun morning. My brother told me that my niece is still talking about it and is ready to go again.
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