[Leica] Paddle Boarding at Promenade Park

[reid at mejac.carlsbad.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

Last August (2020) I was sitting with my mother on the front porch of 
her beach house in Maine, on Hunnewell Beach, at the mouth of the 
Kennebec River (15 White Spot Way, Phippsburg ME 04562 if you'd like to 
see it on a map). We saw a young couple launch their paddleboards from 
the beach in ebb tide and head southeast away from the beach. They had 
not considered the tide, and they were quickly caught up in the river 
current and swept past Wood Island. Realizing they were in trouble, I 
got her 10x50 Nikon binoculars to watch them. They were able to paddle 
back against the current towards the beach, but a strong rip tide 
carried them rapidly eastward into the full-bore river current and they 
didn't make it to the beach.

I telephoned the Coast Guard and the Phippsburg rescue squad as soon as 
I looked through the binoculars, but it wasn't soon enough. I lost sight 
of them as they passed Seguin Island. Their bodies were never recovered, 
but their paddleboards turned up 2 weeks later near Boothbay Harbor.

I'm glad the Mediterranean near Alicante is calm and not treacherous. I 
have been at Hunnewell Beach in Phippsburg every summer of my life and 
at least half of the winters of my life, and I know how incredibly 
complex and dangerous its riverine and tidal flows are. I wish there had 
been some way I could have warned these once-happy visitors that this 
was a bad idea.


On 2021-01-08 12:17 pm, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
> My daughter does this a lot, in the Mediterranean she impresses me by
> going really long distances along the coast.