BREC Sunset Paddle — May 8, 2015

The full weekend of paddling began with an excellent Sunset Paddle on University Lake with BREC Outdoor Adventure.  We’ve enjoyed these before, and this was no exception.

Mike and I headed to Wampold Park right after work Friday in order to get a nice pre-event paddle in.  We rigged up my solo canoe with the PaddleBR sign and lights and shoved off early for a quick trip around the lake.  If you’re going through the “trouble” of setting everything up, you may as well get some extra advertising out of it, wouldn’t you agree?  We got quite a few looks and even a honk, wave, or greeting here and there.  Then it was time to head back for the actual Sunset Paddle.

We met up with Ben and company from BREC Outdoor Adventure around 6:30pm, and a few people slowly trickled in for the paddle.  The last BREC Sunset Paddle had such a high turnout that all boats were used and gear even ran rather low.  This time things were much more casual, with a smaller turnout and some no-shows.  The nice weather may have scared people away, unlike the ominous weather of the previous event.  (Go figure.)

As we paddled our circuit around the lake, sunset slowly approached.  The clouds, however, were coming along a bit faster.  Around the halfway point, we made a note that sunset was now upon us, albeit hidden somewhere behind the now unbroken cloud deck to the west.  Still, you don’t have to actually see the sunset for it to be a sunset paddle.  It was still quite a nice paddle, and the winds were a bit less than some of our other paddle events on the lakes.  (I suppose that doesn’t affect a kayak much, but it does let me get a bit more exercise controlling the world’s most poorly designed sailcanoe… which, incidentally, means I get to have fun.)

BREC Outdoor Adventure does an excellent job with their Sunset Paddle series, and we’re quite happy to join them out there on the water.  If you haven’t been yet, we highly recommend them as a great way to have an easy, enjoyable paddle on a Friday evening.  The next one is scheduled for Friday, June 12th, and we’d love to see you there.  Bring your own boat, or sign up and reserve one of BREC’s.

And so concludes day one of “What we did this weekend.”