I found the harbor ice-free when I went down to paddle yesterday morning. The Fahrenheit temperature was headed for a high in the mid 60s. I gleefully ditched the wetsuit pants for some lighter-weight tights and removed the pogies from my paddle. You have no idea how much I prefer paddling without pogies.
And the river was on the rise after sitting below zero on the Memphis gauge for quite some time. Yesterday's reading was 12.4 feet, opening up a lot more paddleable real estate. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I decided to ferry over to the Arkansas side of the Mississippi and up into the Loosahatchie Chute.
There was a pretty good breeze blowing from the southwest, and it had picked up considerably by the time I was coming back downriver. The river was quite choppy and icy water splashed into my cockpit. Suddenly I didn't feel so smart for not wearing those wetsuit pants. I went a little bit into self-preservation mode, trying to avoid a flip until I was back in the harbor. Once there I had the wind at my back, and yet it was blowing hard enough that it still had a chilling effect. I got back to the dock and put on dry clothes as fast as I could. I went home shivering and it took several hours for me to get comfortably warm again. Even with the balmier temperature, it was still January.
Today's high barely made it out of the 40s, and that took the guesswork out of today's attire as I met Joe for a loop of the harbor. The pogies and the wetsuit pants were back on, along with some better upper-body layering.
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