Trip Report: Little Assawoman Bay, DE

I’m up in Delaware for a short while and found some time this weekend to head to the coast for a kayak lesson and short trip. For the amount of water here I was surprised at the lack of outfitters, but after a bit of searching I settled on Coastal Kayak and signed up for a Bracing and Edging class. The folks there were super nice and very accomodating since I didn’t have any of my gear with me. I even had the privilege of taking the lesson with Mitch, the owner of Coastal Kayak. If anyone is in the area and wants a place to rent or take instruction from, I would highly recommend these folks.

After getting our gear together, we loaded up and went to an area that was a bit less windy. Our location for the morning was the Little Assawoman Bay on the Delaware coast. After a bit of stretching and on-shore instruction, Mitch took us out into some of the tidal creeks to show us the finer points of edging and bracing sea kayaks. I already had some practice with these techniques, but Mitch did a great job of expanding my knowledge and cleaning up some of the bad habits I had started to form. After the lesson was over, I thought we were simply going to load up the boats and head back to the shop, but Mitch generously offered to let us paddle back. He was even surprised when we showed back as quick as we did. This was a great offer considering we only paid $50 for the 2 hour lesson and this included all the gear.