As promised, I awoke at 4:30 (lie) okay 5:00 on Thanksgiving day with a mission in mind. I had heard that the HMS Bounty was in town. I had seen her pass my house a few days earlier and she was lying in Charlotte Amalie harbor Wednesday. I was hoping she would still be there, and hoping that rumors were true that it was the 1961 built replica of the Bounty made for the movie, Mutiny on the Bounty.

I had the kayak loaded the night before (see previous post, "Scorpion in my kayak, ACK!"). I am happy to report that there were no other critters found, though I did do a very thorough scan with the flashlight before getting aboard. I had the kayak in the water by 5:35 AM, just in time to be out to sea by sunrise. Seas were calm, but I was a bit surprised to find 3 to 4 foot ground swells from the south. Usually this time of year everything comes from the north. I worried that later that day my salvage mission might have to be scrapped. The mission: To recover a 15' spruce boom from a wrecked boat that has been abandoned for quite some time now. The boom is lying on a beach near shore and getting wet and has a little damage allowing water infiltration. There's no way it can be salvaged as a boom, but I am hoping to salvage some spruce for a SOF.

Paddling to Charlotte Amalie Harbor from Bolongo Bay is deceptively easy, but I knew all too well that the current and wind would be against me on the return trip, and I worried a bit about making it back by my committed time of 10 AM. The plan was we would go diving before turkey dinnner. That eventually got scrapped. I was so tired when I returned there was to be no diving for me!

I made good time to the harbor, surfing a few swells in my favorite spots and just mostly enjoying a nice morning paddle. The Bounty is quite a beaut. She stands 114 feet tall, 180 feet long, and is very stately and majestic. I got a lot of shots, although my camera lens was wet and I had nothing dry to wipe it down with, so the pics weren't the best. I paddled around the Bounty for a good 15 minutes, inspecting the structure, checking out the beautiful aft transom windows, and just trying to imagine the ammount of work and talent that went into building a wood vessel of this size, with this much rigging. All the running rigging was neatly belayed and the sails neatly furled. I just thought of all the work to rig all those lines, and even just to unfurl those massive sails must take ten or fifteen people.

After snapping some shots and a few mental pics, I chased down a local gaff-rigged schooner, "Bones" and raced her through Government Cut, past the old stone structure that used to be where they would haul out tall ships back in the sailing days. I paddled past two massive anchors that still lie half-submerged at the base of the "railroad tracks" where they would haul boats on dollies for repairs and bottom cleaning.

On the back side of Hassel Island there is a boom from a modern day wreck lying on a beach. It's 15' long and has a big chunk out of one corner that is waterlogged and dry rotted, but I am hoping to salvage the remainder for some gunwales for a SOF kayak. I hitched up to the boom, which floated quite easily, and tied a buoy to the aft end mostly for visibility but also floatation. Folks, if you have ever towed another kayaker, you know that towing something with a kayak is not fun. I thought this would be hard, but had no idea of just how hard. I would say it's about 5 miles from where I was back to the beach where the truck was parked. It took me about 2.5 hours to paddle that 5 miles. When I say paddle, I do mean PADDLE my friggin' butt off for those 2.5 hours. Resting for just a few seconds took a few minutes to get back to where I had stopped. The current can be 5 knots along the south shore. I figured today it was between 3 and 4. I was paddling about 4 knots, so I was going from st andstill to one knot headway!!! I tried at one point to side-hitch thinking that might give me an advantage over the constant springback I was feeling from the tow line, but that just caused the boat to veer sharply to the right to the point I could not corrective steer.

FINALLY after 2.5 hours of hard paddling I made it to shore to some very strange looks from the guests of the local resort where I put in. I got a lot of questions, but this time not about the kayak- this time they were about that thing I was towing!

Geting home with the boom, it looks like a good bit of dry rot, but I still hold out hope that I can get two good 15' gunwales. There are still two masts about 60' long on the beach that are too heavy to even lift one end by myself. One day I shall find a way to recover those. I can't imagine the ammount of spruce they would yield.

Amy and I calculated that I burned about 2,000 calories on this little journey. Later that day I packed on about 3,000 of turkey and dressing!