Day six: 11/22/1999

Today we started the long paddle from Maw Point to Raccoon Island (on the east side of the USMC prohibited area named Point of Marsh.  This paddle involved careful study of the landmass from Maw Point, using binoculars.  It was a little intimidating because we both woke up with a stomach virus type thing and could not eat, and felt bad.  Also, the target landmass was so far off, we couldn't even see it with binoculars.  So it was an anxiety filled day of open water paddling.  About 2/3 of the way,  a shrimp boat captain went out of his way to motor over to us in his large shrimp boat to make sure we were ok.  With storm squalls raining all around us, and lots of open water, we did look crazy to him I am sure.  He was obviously concerned for our health.  We did finally reach a land mass,  it happened to be part of the western side of the Point of Marsh.  As we paddled up to it, we were greeted with signs about every 20 yards prohibiting our existence there.  This area is used by the USMC for target practice and warfare practice.  Including A10 gunnery practice.  We could see with binoculars all types of things on the point, including a large ruin of some sort, probably used for target practice, and some transmit towers etc…I also noticed  down the beach a small shelter that looked like a duck blind (obviously camouflaged) I decided that it was probably a camera for surveillance.  After stuffing down some fig newtons and peanut butter, and a Pepsi.  We got ready to leave.  We then heard the ominous sound of jet planes entering the area.  We looked up to see a pair of A10 Warthogs scrambling in the lead plane screamed by us at only a couple hundred feet off the ground, and turned his plane on its port wing so could see inside the cockpit.  He then launched a flares about 100 yards away and scrambled back away, they then returned quickly were the lead plane pumped off 3 pairs of flares a couple hundred yard away and used his machine guns to fire at the ruin on the beach.  This was a pretty heavy display of fire power for us in our small kayaks.  So we quickly paddled away from the beach and toward the NW around the point (which is where he deposited another flare as if to say, paddle over in this direction).   Upon reaching the NW side of the Point of Marsh, we could see a small very low mud flat with sea grass growing on it.  Surely this wasn't Raccoon Island.  But indeed it was.  We paddled to the north side of the island because this was the only side that had even a hint of sand on it.  A nor'easter was beginning to blow in and drops of rain were felt while we were setting up our tents.  I took the time to check the direction of the next days target landmass across the Pamlico sound with the digital compass on my Casio watch and compared it to information on the map, I decided my watch was dead on.  It was a direct SE trip from Raccoon Island to Cedar Island. I had to fashion special tethers and homemade sand spikes to keep my tent from being blown away in the wind.  I cooked inside my tent, let Eric use my stove because his had stopped working, and fell asleep around 8:00 pm in order to escape the anxiety of being on such a small island with barometric readings dropping and an obvious nor'easter blowing in with an unknown magnitude (because the weather radio stopped working we had no way of knowing).  While falling asleep, two very large helicopters circled the island and hovered about a quarter mile from us (north) and I actually thought they were going to land, but they moved off and shot some tracer rounds at the prohibited area west of us.  Eric woke me up around 2 am to ask if he could transfer to my tent because the zipper on his tent had failed and the mosquitoes had taken up residency inside his tent, that was fine, my tent is more than large enough, although cheap and not high tech.