I love simple ideas that can capture your imagination and your spirit of adventure, and that’s what we have with the recently announced Puget Sound Challenge.
Here’s the idea: Everyone who loves to kayak is challenged to paddle from Belfair to Allyn, a distance of less than five miles as the crow flies.
What makes this challenge interesting is that Belfair is in southern part of Hood Canal and Allyn is in the southern part of Puget Sound. To complete the trip by water, you must paddle about 150 nautical miles — all the way through Hood Canal, around the tip of the Kitsap Peninsula and then south through Puget Sound.
You don’t have to do it all in one trip. You can go at your own pace — a day here and a day there throughout the coming summer. Olympic Kayak Club, which is sponsoring the event, has laid out a schedule for those who wish to travel as a group, starting in April. See Seabury Blair’s piece in the Kitsap Sun, or visit the Olympic Kayak Club’s Web site for details.
A $25 donation will get you a Challenge boat decal, a T-shirt and a reservation for October’s end-of-the-paddle celebration, plus $5 will go to the nonprofit Washington Water Trails, which is working in support of camping sites and other waterside facilities throughout the region.
