09/08/2011 - Petit Bois Island and Sand Island

Launch: Bayou Casotte near Pascagoula, Mississippi, USA
Launch Cost: Free
Destination: Petit Bois Island and the island just to the west, Sand Island.
Distance: 25 miles (round trip).
Trip Rating: Difficult due to distance. Dangerous due to Open Water, Big Fetch, Possible strong current, wind and big waves.
Time Paddling: 7-1/2 hours
Weather: Mostly sunny and warm - 70 to 78 degrees. Winds out of the north 10 mph decreasing to 0-5 mph in the afternoon. Crossed at High tide and came back during falling tide. Current 0.5 to 1.5 mph. Waves 1-2 feet.
GPS Track: To view or download the GPS track of this trip, Click Here.

Header image - Pelicans on a peninsula of Sand Island.

Sunrise in Bayou Casotte with a tugboat connected to natural gas barges. No smoking in this area!

Ship Honourable Henry Jackman is one of the longest ships I've ever seen measuring 800 feet long. Wow!

I planned this trip using EarthNC and created a route to stay near the ship channel markers. The route was sent to Google Earth and from there I converted it for upload to the GPS. It is amazing how this ship stays upright.

With a north wind blowing while kayaking south and 1-2 foot waves to surf on, it took about 2-1/2 hours to make the 9-10 mile crossing. This is a navigation platform. Petit Bois Island is on the left, and Sand Island (Mississippi) is on the right. In between the two islands is the Pascagoula Ship Channel aka Horn Island Pass. Saw quite a few dolphin in this area.

After tropical storm Lee, I expected to see Petit Bois Island littered with tar balls and stunningly, I found none. There was a tar ball removal crew working the islands.

On the south side of islands (sheltered from the north wind), the seas were calm and despite all the recent rain, the water was beautiful looking.

Saw quite a few Figure 8 jellyfish in the water.

There were even more of them littering the beach.

I had planned to spend some time exploring Petit Bois Island but the Al-Qaeda flies were seriously out for blood. The persistent little Bleeps ruined the return crossing because there was no wind to keep them away. 3-1/2 hours of swatting flies...

Light puffy clouds formed and they did not seem to move. Navigation markers serve the Pelican community well.

Speaking of pelicans, this one had what looked like sores on is pouch.

An unknown dark variety of shore bird picks away at a deceased stingray.

07/07/2011 - Bayou Casotte

Header image is of a stream of pelicans on a journey. There were a lot of pelican clans headed west to east in this fashion.

1) Sunrise at the Bayou Casotte public boat ramp in Pascagoula, MS. It is the first time I launched from here.

2) Bayou Casotte plays host to a wide array of huge man made objects that dwarf a kayak.

3) Off the southeast tip of Bayou Casotte is the dreaded billion dollar Gulf LNG Energy terminal. Huge 160,000-cubic-meter ships will be transporting Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from Angola to this facility. It's been said that if a LNG ship is rammed by another vessel (terrorism), the resulting explosion would be equivalent to a small nuclear bomb. Operations of this LNG facility are expected to begin this year.

4) This couple is fishing near the Chevron Refinery effluent channel which flows into the Mississippi Sound.

5) A shrimp jumps through the air. Much of the Chevron Refinery property is undeveloped wetlands. There are many little inlets that wind around in the wetlands. The objective today was to go up one of these little streams with hopes of reaching a large salt flat southeast of the refinery, but it got too narrow and shallow. Objective aborted.

6) So, I removed all the shrimp that had jumped into the kayak, turned around and headed back to Bayou Casotte.

7) This oil tanker was pumping out a powerful steam of water. All the more reason why to stay far away from large ships. I should have been farther away myself.

8) I was surprised to find dolphins up in this major shipping channel.