I’m winding down my two-week vacation at the Rhode Island shore. This was our 5th year at a cottage on Great Island near Point Judith in Narragansett, RI.
http://goo.gl/qzDG5U
or copy this
http://www.google.com/maps/place/Great+Island,+Narragansett,+RI+02882
This is pretty much the only time that I paddle in salt water, and there are so many great places to paddle in the area. I was lucky this year that Narragansett Bay was basically dead flat for the entire second week. No waves at all – that almost never happens, and it allowed me to paddle in places that I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise like Dutch Island and Fort Wetherill in Jamestown. If I had more time, I would have liked to paddle around Newport Harbor, or the salt ponds down in Charlestown. I guess I’ll have to save those for another year. Few trip reports here:
http://eckilson.blogspot.com/search/label/Vacation%202016
Very nice!
I've always found Narragansett Bay to be a very special place and I have been to many of same venues you recently paddled over the last 12 years. Fort Wetherill is one of my favorites. Lord willing I hope to get back there in early September.
Fort Weatherill is great
Sea kayakers like to go west to play in the rocky shore down to Beavertail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILwtAnE5tko
I went east around Bull Point to the Dumplings.
Good read!
Cool writings and pictures. Thanks for sharing. Looks like a really nice place to paddle and get some history.
Thanks for posting…
Outstanding photo journal of your trip; outstanding scenery. I’m envious; we don’t have scenery like that in the Midwest.
BOB
Don’t dis the cornfield drainage ditches
Bob 
Looks like you had a great vacation
Thanks for sharing !
We have been paddling around Plymouth, Duxbury and Kingston the past week and a half
They had several Great White shark sightings near Duxbury and then a few more at Bug Light.
We saw one seal near Bug Light and figured that is why the Great Whites were in the area.
Jack L
Great place to paddle from
There’s lots to do from there, and just about every skill level depending on the conditions. I try to get there at least 2-3 times a year.
Used to lead the circumnavigation of Jamestown paddles (20 miles) from there. Launching there allowed us to round Beavertail Point early in the day when we were all fresh.
Beavertail
Even Beavertail looked relatively calm this week
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10208334630075055&l=dd44085878
Sharks definitly follow the seals…
Hope you and Nancy are having a good time in New England Jack.
Portsmouth
I was lucky to have parents with a house just south of McCorie Point. It was wonderful paddling on the Sakonnet River. Early mornings you could wake the fish sleeping on the surface. Beautiful paddle a bit over a mile to the Tiverton side.
Hope RI was a wonderful experience.
Newport harbor is lots of fun. Everything from the smalles of sail boats to the largest yachts to view.
Sakonnet
Believe it or nor, I have never been to the Sakonnet River. I know there is some great paddling there. Need to get down there sometime - I think I would launch from Gull Cove
http://www.exploreri.org/siteReport.php?siteID=186&src=criteria
I think the sea kayakers are more likely to launch in Middletown
http://www.exploreri.org/siteReport.php?siteID=255&src=criteria
or Little Compton
http://www.exploreri.org/siteReport.php?siteID=228&src=criteria
McCorie Point
Is open for parking for free. The northern side is protected from the north eastern wind and current.
Sandy Point is open off season and another nice place to start. At the southern end by the Sakonnet Point National Wildlife Reserve is an open boat launch area but they charge for parking on season. That is the southern point closest to the open ocean. Beautiful spot. Winter habitat for Harlequins and Eiders. Great fishing.
Oh I miss it! Hope you can get some paddling in there!
thanks for sharing,
I always enjoy the variety of your different adventures and environments
Thanks E-Squared of the R.I. Shared
Missed my chance to fly up to R.I. with the Misses and kids two weekends back, for a ferry ride out to Block Island on Sunday, and the prior day’s clam bake reunion with Coventry childhood friends at Johnson’s Pond. The friends (Californians now and for the past three decades, although that left coast hasn’t been able to instill in them a presence of word-ending ‘R’ consonants) will soon be selling their family “camp”, and I fear I’ll be loosing a fine venue for launching my canoe when I am able to drive the I-95 torture track northward. Much as it has been for about five years since Jane’s friends the Walpoles closed up their South Pier Dive Shop in the old railroad building of Narragansett, when we paddled from the 1A bridge up into the Narrow River, or snorkled in July off same said South Pier, amazed to see the tropical fish that “Gulf Streamed” their way past ravenous blues and stripers and mackerals, only to appoint themselves a chilly early autumn demise.
Anyway, your Bell View touring images brings back fine memories of Jamestown, Fort Wetherill, Beavertail, and Galilee shoreward perambulations, and gives me hope to one day dip a paddle into some of those Ocean State becalmed saltwaters (Mike B’s old pic of him surfing a Mohawk or MR through granite wave breaks in same environs just left me filled with trepidations and visions of myself bathtubbing midst the barnacles!)
Love those shots of the cantankerous cormorants, too! Come on down to the Susquehanna someday, midst the boulder islets twixt Holtwood and Conowingo Dams, and you can witness the cormorants sharing rocky respites with black vultures. Approach too closely and the vultures will give you that hairy, E.A. Poe eyeball, before they unhappily flap off. The cormorants? They’ll gargle-squawk and sloppy-hiss at you before indignantly beating their low flight departure. Sort of like a kingfisher on steroids and regurgitant fish oil.
TW
A cormorant
comes cackling, scoffing,
regurgitant
he’ll soon be doffing,
at core
my rant is for the birds,
coarse fettered crap
in so many words
Sounds like you know the area well…
Let me know if you ever make it back this way again. It would be fun to get a crew of open boats out into the open water of Narragansett Bay.