Hello friends. It looks like the Fishhugger will float again this year! A quick refresher or intro for folks who are new to the journey: My goal is to paddle the Intracoastal Waterway from Alexandria, VA to Key West by my 60th birthday (April 7, 2027). I take as much time as my job and domestic calendar will allow each year and continue my way South. I started in Alexandria in 2016 and keep making my way down the coast each year. I’m doing it because I love fishing and camping and kayaking and to raise awareness about plastic pollution – how pervasive it is and the damage it causes. I’m also doing it because I have to believe that we can all have epic adventures no matter where we are in life.
The next leg of the journey is
scheduled to start on June 12, 2021. The planned
route for this year’s tour starts at the Cedar Island Ferry Terminal and ends
about 120 miles later in Hampstead, NC. Due
to the geography of the North Carolina Coast, a lot of the leg will be more in
the East to West direction than North to South.
One of the key points of interest
along the route is Cape Lookout on the southern tip of South Core Banks. A lighthouse at Cape Lookout dates to 1859
and is still operational. The islands
were used for fishing and whaling for centuries, and the surrounding waters
have long been known for their dangerous shoals. The coast of North Carolina is known as the “Graveyard ofthe Atlantic” because of its many shallow water shoals and related shipwrecks. I will pass by the lighthouse and hope to see
it, but not from the ocean side. I will
be paddling on the Sound side, not the ocean side.
June
1718, Edward
Teach—better known as Blackbeard the pirate—ran his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, aground near present-day Beaufort Inlet, NC
which I will also pass this year. In
fact, I’ll be camping right by it.
 |
| Blackbeard's Flag |
The route this year includes some
great-looking camping spots on isolated beaches, an Air B&B, and a couple
of legit campgrounds. As always, I’m
excited to see with my eyes what I have been looking at on Google Maps for
months – that’s part of the point of this journey.
The last year has been tough for all
of us, but it feels like the fog is starting to lift. For me, COVID, work pressures, and difficult
logistics for the trip made it seem like the Fishhugger might not come together
this year. But a lot of things fell into
place in the last few weeks and it’s on!
More to come, and thanks for
following!
In the meantime, petrochemical
companies continue to ramp up facilities for plastic production. They are relying in plastics to fill their
dropping income from oil as automobiles make the transformation from internal
combustion to electric. Facilities that
manufacture plastics produce toxic emissions.
So, naturally, they look for locations where the population is poor or
black or both. When we all use single
use plastics, it has impacts on people’s lives somewhere. A major fight is going on over one now…
The parish, often referred to as Cancer Alley, has one of the highest densities of petrochemical sites in the U.S. That’s a major reason that its residents also face the nation’s highest cancer risk from air pollution. That seems fair, right?
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