After spending the morning working on Maya’s kayak I decided to do a little kayaking myself. It took about an hour to drive to Hingham Bay where I put in at the public boat ramp. The map pictured here is overlaid with my GPS log. I have long wanted to make this tour which included Button, Sarah, Langlee, Bumkin, Grape, Slate, and Ragged Islands. I covered 8.3 miles in roughly two and a half hours including a stop on Grape Island for a look around. I averaged a little better than 4 mph which was very respectable considering the amount of evasive maneuvering I had to do to cope with heavy boat traffic. It is safest to paddle into a big wake at right angles and this often took me off my heading. After 15 minutes on the water it occurred to me that I did not have my bilge pump on board (I removed it to size a clip for Maya’s kayak and forgot to replace it). A capsize would have been very hard to recover from and so I opted for maximum safety turning into every wake. Because the weather was exceptionally nice and and the seas were calm I decided not to use my spray skirt which in retrospect was a poor decision. A 3 foot boat wake swell looks awfully big when your cockpit opening sits only 4 inches above the waterline. About the only smart decision I made was to leave my SLR in the car. Although I missed some excellent photo opportunities, I am fairly certain either the camera or I would have wound up in the ocean if I had tried to use it while on the water.