WA360 2025: Day Two

Day 2 Goal Map:

One thing about camping at a county park where overnight camping is not strictly allowed… You don’t really have any recourse about the loud (also illegal) party happening in the same park. The kids were respectful for the most part, but on a sliding scale of how young adults (youths, if you will) are respectful of others. They weren’t as bad as they could have been, but they were certainly loud for many, many hours. 

The park quieted down and we got some sleep starting in the wee hours of the morning. With an alarm set for 4 AM, that didn’t leave a lot of rest.  nonetheless we got up when our alarm went off and checked the weather report. We already knew that the report looked better for sailing than it did for kayaking, but it had worsened in the hours we were resting. 

When we started planning for this year’s WA360, we did not for a second think that we might take a zero day on day two but here we are. We looked at plans for taking alternate routes to stay out of the worst of the wind and to avoid open water crossings and still decided that waiting out today’s wind forecast would be the best thing for us this time around.

Predictably, the water we could see from our campsite looked beautiful for paddling, but the forecast still looked really gnarly in the more exposed areas where we’d be crossing open waters, so we stayed put even though the water was taunting us.

While we didn’t make the mileage that others did, we might have had the best dinner of any team.

A graduation party joined the park in the afternoon, and they invited us to share in their delicious meal. The kindness of strangers is a lovely part of this experience.

What does our zero day mean for our goals? Well, it means that goal number one and goal number two are still intact. Goal numbers three and four, we can still do. Did we give ourselves a bit more of a challenge to finish this year’s race? Absolutely. let’s see where this adventure takes us.