Derelicts on the Columbia: Introduction

My right shoulder is mostly feeling ok, and I "graduated" from physical therapy a couple of weeks ago. Every medical person who has reviewed the file on my rotator cuff surgery has exclaimed, with raised eyebrows, something like "wow, they did a lot of work in there!" I've suffered quietly with bad shoulders for a number of years, but it was the Derelicts on the Columbia River trip of 2010 that did me in.

Dry Bag Dave, or sometimes Dryden. D. "Drybag" Dave, is my paddling buddy. Paddlin' Paul is my on-water moniker for our adventures. We had talked for many years about paddling the Columbia River from Portland downriver to Astoria, near the river's mouth, a distance of about 90 miles. One day in early 2010 Dry Bag mentioned that he was thinking seriously about paddling from Portland to Astoria that spring. I informed Dry Bag that he surely wasn't going to do such a trip alone, and that, after all, we had been talking about it for years. And so we began to plan together.

the lower Columbia River, Portland to Astoria, Oregon
Map Data 2013 (c) Google

Overview of Columbia River from Portlsnd, Oregon to the Pacific Ocean. The flag "COLUMBIASL" is the starting location for the trip (Columbia Slough ramp) near the mouth of the Willamette River. Other flags are waypoints entered into my GPS along the way (see other posts). In this image, north is to the right, west is at the top. The Columbia River flows north/northwest from Portland until it turns westward (past SANDY ISLA in the image).
screenshot of Google Earth image
(c) 2013 Google
Image (c) 2013 TerraMetrics