Mariners' Lake Open Newport News VA

 01 Jul 23:

The 167 acre lake at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News has been closed to boating for several years while efforts were undertaken to clean up pollution from local runoff. Remediation efforts have been successful thanks to the time and talent of the Mariner's team, and today the lake was reopened for educational programs during the week, and public paddling and fishing on the weekends. 

The Museum provides facilities to rent single, tandem and youth kayaks. Paddles and PFDs are provided. We can bring our own PFDs, but for the time being the Museum is only allowing their kayaks and paddles to be used to prevent introduction of invasive species of marine life from other bodies of water.

We had never used a tandem kayak, so today we tried one out. It proved to be a small challenge because we launched with the aft seat in the wrong spot, in the photo below it should go further aft. To us trying to kayak tandem was like trying to bowl or canoe tandem, a good deal of time was spent deciding where to go. But the big benefit was one person could paddle while the other goofed off. So Skipper paddled a lot while I looked for prizes. 

The launch float has a wonderful ADA capable Board Safe system, which includes grab bars, handhold straps and a sliding stepped seat to embark and debark the kayaks. One other good feature is that the kayak float has Starboard High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) thermoplastic style skids to cradle the kayak versus rollers, this keeps the kayak from moving while folks are getting on and off.

Blair Brothers and Crofton Marine Construction are two local businesses that did the fine work for the road access, fixed dock, ramp, floating dock and Board Safe system.

The Museum provides facilities to rent kayaks and jon boats. Rentals are for 3 hours and fishing (catch and release) is allowed with appropriate fishing licenses. In the future the lake may be opened for use for private kayaks, and for now we enjoyed the ease of letting someone else handle the boat storage and maintenance.

We had a great time and were "the second group to return safely." Many thanks to the Museum for seeing this long term project to fruition, especially Miss Erica.

Huzzah!

FMI: Mariners' Lake