lewes inlet

Stories of Luck and Grace

Lewes Inlet

My husband and I kayak in sit-on-tops (Ocean Kayak Prowler 13’s). We took them

with us on our latest summer camping vacation at Cape Henlopen State Park,

Delaware (August a year ago). We put in next to the fishing pier in adjacent

Lewes. You can watch the ferry to Cape May come and go there. There is a

lighthouse in the inlet, and we are told the water near the lighthouse is up to 100

feet deep.

Even in our personal flotation devices, we were a little leery of that depth, so we

paddled along the shore and out along the point, which is a birds-only beach

across from the lighthouse. But that didn’t take very long, so with a “what the hell,”

we cut across the channel toward the lighthouse.

There was a point in the water that looked like a wall beneath us--this was where

the currents met. We have been told since that that’s a pretty dangerous area.

Kayakers have had to be rescued, or have even died at that spot. But it was calm

at that particular moment, so we paddled around, even paused to sit and float for

a while.

My husband saw them first, a pod of dolphins perhaps three hundred feet away.

They were lively, diving this way and that almost at random. We watched for a

while, and when we no longer saw them, we decided to paddle into shallower

water. Suddenly my husband called out, “Did you see it? One of them was next to

you!” Sure enough, they had approached. Within a few moments a dolphin

surfaced maybe three feet away, just long enough to look me right in the eye. We

sat in the water for twenty minutes while this pod of perhaps a dozen dolphins

fished in the waters around us. More than once we were inspected. One dolphin

swam directly beneath my kayak. Eventually we paddled in, and they came with

us into shallower water, maybe four or five feet deep, fishing all the while. Then,

they drifted off for deeper waters. I was so entranced that for the entire time, I

neglected to get my disposable waterproof camera out of the hatch.

We recounted our story to the staff at the local bait shop and were given this

priceless nugget of information: the third week of August of every year, the

dolphins follow the flounder into the inlet. Sometimes people see the dolphins, but

rarely that close up.

That’s a story of luck and grace.