Weekend Wanderings ... Mallows Bay

I've written before about our friend Marie, who celebrated her milestone birthday N (the "Big N"!) last year and put together a list of N items to do in her Nth year. And as I wrote then several items have spilled over into the next year. Which is the case with this item.

Marie had arranged for a kayak tour of the WWI Ghost Fleet of shipwrecks at Mallows Bay last year. Alas, the weather did not cooperate, and the tour was canceled.

Marie, at right in the image above, is smiling because she is in a kayak on Mallows Bay. Ginger, in front, is listening intently to our guide, Kim.

We (where "We" = "Marie") arranged our tour through Atlantic Kayak Company. That's Kim, tour guide and company owner, in the red kayak. Kim did an excellent job (as did Marie).

The Ghost Fleet of wooden cargo ships, were built for WWI efforts to transport cargo to Europe. They never made a single trip, as the war was over before they were put into service. You can read all about it here, in a much better way than I could do.

As you might imagine wooden ships, seventy plus years old, that have gone through several rounds of salvage, are not in very good shape.

This is the first one we paddled up to. In fact, the best way to tell where the ships are is to look for islands.

Here's another 'ship'. There are the remains of over a hundred ships in the bay.

As you get close you can see the remains poking through the vegetation.

Well, relatively close.

Not all the ships have turned into islands.

This shot gives an idea how wide the ships were.

Here we're looking up the middle of the ship.

And list shot shows where the rudder was attached, at the stern.

Some of the ships are in 'better' shape than others.

For very small values of better.

The ship in the background above, with the Osprey on the bow, is the same as shown in the earlier linked article (although there have been a couple of fires between that picture and mine). We went around the back as the Osprey was on a nest with chicks so as not to disturb them.  The ships have become a haven for wildlife. Both above and below the water line.

We saw plenty of birds, like the Osprey, making use of the 'islands'. Fish and plants inhabit the artificial reefs.

Turtles abound.

As did butterflies. We think this is a Giant Swallowtail, on Pickerel Weed.

Over the years, other boats have been abandoned here. Like the ferry shown above. The owners sailed it up the river and just left it to rot away.

And rotting it is. Done before the enactment of environmental laws, the owners faced no consequences at the abandonment.

We spent approximately three hours out among the fleet. And while we didn't see any ghosts, we saw a cool bit of history. After which we headed off for crabs and beer. A very nice day.

🛶  🚢  🛶  🚢  🛶

Thanks to Marie for finding this place and arranging the tour. 

Thanks to Pat and Elani (in the blue kayak) for hosting us for the weekend (great food and coffee!).