So an odd related story.

Like many of the contributors here, my wife and I paddle wood kayaks and usually they draw a crowd. One of our first longer trips was to a place called Cypress Island. We stopped for our first night on Pelican Beach and per usual, a handful of people came over to admire our boats.

The evening wore on, fog rolled in and with came the oddest looking boat I have seen to this day. It was a twenty foot row boat, with two people, one was rowing with these enormous oars. It was in fact a burlap boat. It was incredibly light and I could believe how crazy it was that they were out there. The next day he setup a canvas hoping the wind was going to take them further into the San Juan Islands.

Cypress Island sits along the Rosario Straights, one of the more dangerous places to paddle in Washington State. Needless to say, they created quite a little stir on that little beach, but he had been rowing that crazy boat for years.

Eric M.