Want to know everything we saw on the water the other day? Here you go!

ESNWR kayak ramp

Just thought I'd list every single critter my group saw or heard while paddling in the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge the other day...bald eagle, osprey, black vulture, willet, lesser yellowlegs, laughing gull, herring gull, clapper rail (heard but not seen!), great blue heron, little green heron, snowy egret, great egret, double-crested cormorant, common loon, American crow, American oystercatcher and tree swallows...that's all as far as birds go. Of course, we also saw plenty of periwinkle snails, mud snails, oysters, clams, ribbed mussels, fiddler crabs, ghost crabs and minnows. I love this time of year on the water! -Margaret 4/21/13

Kayaking and Hang Gliding on the Eastern Shore

There's a new sport on the Eastern Shore of Virginia: Hang gliding! It takes place at Campbell Field, which is on the road to where we launch SouthEast Expeditions' kayak winery tours.

I'm pretty sure Stephanie and Emily from Richmond are the first ones to do both adventures in one weekend. We really should make it a package!

After I took them to historic Chatham Vineyards by kayak, they stopped at nearby Holly Grove Vineyards and met Jonathan's amazing "fainting goats."

The next morning, at the Eastern Shore Hang Gliding Center, a plane towed them in tandem with an instructor to 2,500 feet and then let them go! They spent the next 25 minutes floating silently over the Eastern Shore's farm fields, vineyards and waters.

Their ES adventure weekend also involved biking, visiting Assateague lighthouse and staying at the iconic Rittenhouse Motor Lodge.

Thanks for truly experiencing the Shore, ladies! You are awesome and we'd be honored to have you back. There's still kite-boarding, kayaking to barrier islands and an overnight stay in a watermen's cabin to try! Just give SouthEast a call: 757-331-2680

For more Eastern Shore adventures, visit ESVA Tourism: "You'll love our nature."

Salute our Troops Onancock Creek Kayak tour

SouthEast's Onancock guides Bill (far right) and Mary Burnham took three Navy couples on a tour of Onancock Creek. They were among 52 winners in the Eastern Shore Saute Our Troops B&B Getaway Contest who received complimentary getaways of lodgings, dinners and even massages from our generous hosts.

Thanks for your service to our country!

Aerial video of Onancock Creek

Check out this cool video from an ultra-light flyover of Onancock. It shows the north and central branches featured on the Historic Onancock Creek Tour of this 1680 Colonial port.

Onancock Kayak Tours begin for the season!

SouthEast's guides on the "upper shore", Bill and Mary Burnham, are offering something new this year:

An Onancock Historic Creek Tour at 10 a.m. every Saturday! Of course, folks can still book a trip for any time that suites their schedule from SE's growing itinerary of cool paddling places like Saxis, with a visit to a soft-shell crab shed, the Great Machipongo River from Quinby, the seaside barrier islands, the Eastern Shore Wildlife Refuge, and SouthEast's signature Kayak Winery Tour!

Call (757) 331-2680 to book a trip.

See you on the water!

A kiteboarder's take on the debate over competition formats and tours

Aside from helping the manufacturers and sponsors quantify their return on investment, why does it matter to any of us who is crowned the king of kiting? Kiting is an innovative sport with innovative riders doing innovative things with innovative equipment. Why are we trying to cram it into a traditional box? Ask 10 riders "Who's the best kiter?" and you're bound to get a dozen different responses.
Kiteboarding has already lost a number of marquis players to the brutal schedule and tedious demands of competing on the world tours. Lou Wainman, Adam Koch, Martin Vari, and Felix Pivek are a few riders who come to mind when I think about guys who still had tons of room to grow as riders when they dropped the tour limelight. They're still out there, taking the sport and their equipment to new levels. But they're doing it on their terms. I don't even know if Ben Wilson ever competed in a sanctioned event.
I'd like to think that these guys are pushing our sport because they are passionate about kiting, and that the sponsors who have stuck with them understand that. I respect riders who can't stand not kiting when the wind is blowing. Guys who still remember dropping into a perfect wave for the first time. Riders who can still relate to the elation the rest of us feel when we boost a huge air, or land a new trick, or just score a session when we didn't think it would be windy.
But the sponsors still need a way to measure their ROI right? Then let's give them a simple foundation to work from. Look for magazine placements of your logos, and media placements beyond our core publications. Look for mentions of your athlete's names in the forums. Look for the "riders choice" winners at multi-faceted events like the SPI Kite Roundup, the Real Triple S, and the Red Bull Kite Punks (which I just discovered - Thank you YouTube!). These are innovative events being put on by core kite shops that are run by kiters who have worked their asses off to support and build our sport. These are events that reach out to average kiters as well as the pros who are doing things that the rest of us struggle just to understand. By tracking these performance metrics, sponsors can see which riders are pushing the sport, expanding it to new markets, and reaching out to and relating with your customers. Aren't those the goals of sponsoring athletes?
For those riders who think that the only way kiting will be "legit" is to become an Olympic sport, all I can say is that I feel sorry for you. Kiting is legit because it keeps me up at night. It's legit because my friends will drop everything to get out on the water. It's legit because once you've started kiting, you can't comprehend giving the sport up. And if it's not "legit", who cares?
I've had the privilege of riding in beautiful places, and with a few of the guys we see in the magazines. At the end of the day, they're all just like you and me. They're kiters. They don't care who's the best in the world. They care that everyone got the best session today.
A fellow kiter sent me the new Hadlow video today. It blew my mind, but I enjoyed shooting a few pics of my friend kiting under the setting sun last night much more, and I enjoyed my session in the middle of the day even more than the 20 minutes behind the camera. So tonight in front of my computer, the best kiter in my world was Aaron Hadlow. Last night at the Cape Charles beach it was my buddy Erin. Yesterday afternoon it was me. I hope that tomorrow you have the chance to be the best kiter in your world.
The guys on my local kiteboarding forum know I can get a bit long winded, but after reading several pages of PKRA vs. IKA vs. ABC vs. DUI commentary on the various forum pages, I felt like a little perspective is needed on a lot of levels in this sport, or at least the computer surfers do. If kiting is going to continue to grow and succeed, I believe we need potential sponsors to see kiteboarding as a sport that has a very dedicated following of active athletes who live to ride, and who understand that we are so much luckier than all those suckers who sit on the beach and just watch. They also need to see a sport that is somewhat accessible to the rest of the world. If kiting doesn't sell cars, the car companies won't sponsor kiters.
The guys in the red shirts like to say that "Windsurfing's Been Canceled". In reality I think that Windsurfing Committed Suicide. Or at least it wandered off into the desert for a while. Let's not make the same mistake by focusing solely on the tip of the rider pyramid. Kiting allows the average athlete to fly. What could be more legit than that?

SE Kayakers Help Bottle Wine!

Dave (right), owner of SouthEast Expeditions, invited us kayak guides along to help Holly Grove Vineyards, a new Eastern Shore winery, bottle the final batch of 2008 Sunset Rose.

I envisioned pouring wine through funnels and applying labels by hand. Oh no! Owner Jonathan Bess has a shiny new bottling assembly line that fills the bottles, corks them, affixes the foil cap and the labels. All we had to do was load the bottles and box them at the end.

Oh, and quality control tastings. Lots of that!

Like many Virginia wineries, Holly Grove is a small, family-run operation, and each bottle truly gets individual attention. The family built their own house here. When the kids get out of school, they help with chores. A pair of pet goats, geese and couple of dogs roam the vineyards.

But the results are anything but home-grown. Bess’ Chardonnay and Merlot have been winning awards in international blind tastings. The new Rose we bottled is a drier style that is very refreshing for summer porch sitting. The label features sunset at the mouth of Nassawaddox Creek.

Each wine's label features a different waterfront or sunset scene from the cove in back. Another new wine, the 2008 High Tide Traminette, may just become a summer favorite for our wine porch: the label has kayaks on it!

Jonathan welcomes tours and tastings at Holly Grove daily. Pay him a visit, and then proceed on to nearby Chatham Vineyards, another family-run, award-winning winery here on the Eastern Shore Wine Trail!

YOU can 'paddle your glass off' on SouthEast's signature Kayak Winery Tour!