Kayaking in front of the Saint Petersburg skyline

Since I have been in Florida I have yet to be on the water. I take that back. I went out on the Deep Sea Fishing adventure the one time that I made a blog post about. I also was able to go Jet Skiing one my girlfriend’s neighbor’s jet skiis one time. I felt bad though as I did not know the neighbors and did not want to drive their jet skiis too ferociously.

This particular weekend however I had friends in town. And I wanted control of the boating to show them the best of times.

Weatherby doing his thing

Fortunately for me, I made the best of efforts the previous weekend to borrow a friend’s truck and drive to Dick’s Sporting goods. I had my heart set on a particular kayak. I get there and of course its sold out. Its not as if I own a truck and can come as often as I please so I knew a decision was imperative. My girlfriend Leslie was also in the market for a kayak but she wasn’t as picky as me. After a few hours of kayak shopping we eventually made some cheap purchases and headed home with two solo kayaks.

Best photobomb ever. I worked really hard on photobomb this.

Leslie has a beautiful house located right on the bay which makes a kayak launching opportunity perfect. Unfortunately we only bought two solo kayaks and we had two guests coming into town. Like I’ve said before though, I am a chess player and always thinking of the next move so with over a week in advance of their visit I locked up a tandem kayak to borrow.

Leslie couldn’t join us the day we decided to go kayaking as she had a very important Coast Guard event to go to. So my two friends and I ventured off on our own. This was my first real time navigating on the bay by myself. It was exhilarating. So we packed a 12-pack of Cigar City and ventured out.

She did however recommend to us that we go into the inlet where the Coast Guard boats were moared up as we would have a high probability of seeing dolphins. So we paddled up current for two hours to get to this particular inlet and what do we see? No fucking dolphins. I did see a Devil Ray jump straight into the air though. It was so fast there was no way a picture could ever be taken of this kind of moment. I swear it was 5 feet away from my kayak and jumped 6 feet in the air and belly flopped. Knowing that this creature killed the alligator hunter Steve Irwin I increased my paddling tenfold.

I have never been so disappointed with a kayaking trip. As I have only done this one that logistically makes sense, but that was a definite buzz kill on the dolphins. Who am I kidding? I am only exagerating. It was a blast. But we decided to head back as a storm was approaching and the sun was quickly setting.

A picture of Leslie’s dock on the bay.

The paddle back was simple as we went along with the current. It felt like the returning trip was less than 20 minutes. It is amazing to see what the current of the ocean can do to a kayaking trip.

I must appologize to my readers for the shortness of this article but there truly is not a lot to say for the beauty of kayaking on Tampa Bay. It must be experienced by all.