Tag Archives: Cape Cod

Still

By Vladimir Brezina

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The perfect stillness of an early morning…

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(A Paddle Among the Islands, Cape Cod, May 2013)

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A contribution to Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge, Still.

On the Way

By Vladimir Brezina

Underway off Cape Cod, Massachusetts—

On the Way(story and more photos are here)

A contribution to this week’s Photo Challenge, On the Way.

Travel Theme: Dry

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Dry.

As kayakers, we like Wet. We don’t like Dry at all!

“I don’t believe this!! There was water all the way up to these rocks yesterday!?”

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Denial

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Anger

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Depression

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Acceptance

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(A day on Cape Cod Bay in 2011.)

Travel Theme: Illuminated

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Illuminated.

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Sunrise at Waquoit  State Park, Cape Cod, May 2013 (story and more photos here).

Travel Theme: Stones

By Vladimir Brezina

IMGP6389 cropped smallAilsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Stone.

Kayaking along the glaciated shores of Long Island, Block Island, and Cape Cod, it’s hard to miss the many glacial erratic boulders that dot the shoreline. Some are cool green stones awash in the sea. Others, more exposed, are the favorite perches of cormorants and human fishermen…

(click on any photo to start slideshow)

A Paddle Among the Islands

By Vladimir Brezina

IMGP3727 cropped smallFor kayakers, islands exert a special allure. There is the attraction of  a circumnavigation, returning to the very same place from which you started from the opposite direction and completing the magic circle. But even more romantic is the idea of paddling out to that remote, preferably deserted, island that you can see on the horizon—or just on the chart!—which can be reached only by boat…

In New York Harbor, we have plenty of islands—even apart from the world-famous ones. But there’s no denying that they all offer a decidedly urban paddling experience. No matter what remote corner of the harbor you are in, the city is always there when you look up. And the city is exciting. But sometimes the country calls.

So in mid-May, we drove up to Westport, MA, on the south coast of Massachusetts just past the Rhode Island border. While Johna was enjoying a couple of days of surfing and rock-gardening (which I hope she will write up, as she did last year), I set out to paddle to my favorite deserted islands.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Resolved

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Resolved.

Cape Cod Bay, July 2011. We are Resolved!

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Resolved to reach the water, no matter how long it may take

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and to set out over the turquoise sea

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to “fresh woods, and pastures new.”

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And that makes a fine resolution for this New Year as well!

(The story of that day on Cape Cod Bay is here; more photos are here.)

Kayaking Gold on Cape Cod Bay

By Vladimir Brezina

We really can’t set off on this summer’s kayaking adventures before we’ve written up all of last summer’s!

So, here is the last of them.

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The previous days of our 2011 New England kayaking vacation (see here and here) were exhilarating, but by the same token just a tiny bit tense—although we had good conditions, they were exposed trips on which you can never really relax until you are safe home again.

In contrast, this leisurely trip on the protected, warm Cape Cod Bay was pure gold.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Sun

By Vladimir Brezina

This week’s Photo Challenge is Sun.

Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

Philip Larkin, Solar

(Cape Cod Bay, July 2011; more photos are here)

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My second interpretation of “Sun” is here.

Other nice “Sun” posts:

Circumnavigating Monomoy

By Johna Till Johnson
(With additional text, charts, and photos by Vladimir Brezina)

This happened in July 2011.

The day dawned clear and bright, and we were excited: This was the day we were going to circumnavigate Monomoy Island. Located at the “elbow” of Cape Cod, Monomoy juts out some eight miles, dividing Nantucket Sound from the Atlantic Ocean. It offers a nice spectrum of paddling opportunities: The protected, shallow water of the Sound on one side, and the deep swells of the Atlantic on the other.

And then there is Monomoy Point, the very end of the island, where the two waters meet.

“Kayakers have died there,” Vlad informed me cheerfully over breakfast.

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