paddling by the pale moon light

I woke up yesterday at about 8:00am to intense morning sunlight. It was a gorgeous day and I kind of slept in so i considered my options and with a place to stay in St. Augestine tomorrow night and knowing that there was a full-ish moon tonight, I decided to relax and take my paddling session for the day to the night.
It was nice being in a sanctioned camp ground because I really enjoyed talking to my fellow campers and it turns out my neighbors were from Swanton, Vermont and were UVM alumni too! They spend 6 months (the cold Vermont months) here in Florida. It was also really nice to have a hot shower and electricity right at my site to charge up batteries.
I walked down to check on my boat and it had rested fine during the night. I got out some breakfast stuff and my bathing suit and took a dip in the ocean which was a little brisk. Once i got in, it felt great, the waves were very big and powerful, a couple knocked me down and there was a strong rip current, I found I was using a lot of energy so I stopped thinking it was more wise to save it for paddling later. The beach is beautiful and the sand is reddish (i will try to put a picture up of this) one of the local guys told me that there is a shell that gives the sand this reddish color. I broke down camp and took another shower and put things in my kayak where they would be safe near the Ranger Station. I walked back up to High Tide to get some lunch... ended up staying there for a while, place it great, fun atmosphere right on the beach.
I got my stuff together and got on the water about 6:30pm, paddled through the sunset into dark and paddled along with the almost full moon over my back until about 11:30. I had only gone about 16 miles (roughly half way) and I had intended to go farther but I didn't know if I could navigate the inlet coming up. There were also a lot of people out last night being a full moon and a Friday, they were tearing up the waterway in boats and personal waterway, a few didn't have any lights on. I don't know if it was because of the full moon or because it was Friday but there was some unsafe and strange boating behavior going on. I think most of the drivers were pretty young, there was a lot of "whooping" and I just about witnessed what would have been an ugly head on collision with a boat that was going way to fast without any lights on at all. So I found a nice spot to pull over and slept for 7 hours.
*It came to my attention recently that the nice folks over at Clark (junglehammock.com) put up a blurb about the trip (coincidently it was the same day that I happened posted a picture of my tent on the blog. I am actually carrying two types of shelters (tent and hammock) with a combined weight of only 8 pounds. It has proved invaluable to have both. There are sometimes when the conditions only allow one to be possible for use. Clark has saved my butt many times already because it can go up so quickly and you can tie their hammock pretty much anywhere, trees, fences. Plus, its green so it blends in. To be honest,I sleep better in the hammock then in the tent but I have to carry the tent because there have been many times when there are no trees or area to put the hammock up. For example, last night, my camping site was just a hard patch of sand/gravel so there was no way I would have been able to use the hammock. I am lucky because both my tent and hammock compliment each other well. I am very grateful to the people at Clark. I love the hammock, I actually keep it past my foot-pegs, in the cockpit so I can get it out without opening either hatch and unpack things.
I have about 20 miles or so to St. Augestine, I am going to try to get there about 2pm and sight see a little bit and walk around what is regarded as the oldest town in America.