Stonington Kayak Camping
Michael and Rebecca Daugherty started Sea Kayak Stonington in 2019, naming the business after Michael’s wildly popular blog of the same name. Since 2010 they’ve both been guiding and instructing kayaking in and around the Stonington Archipelago. The deep love and respect they have for the area comes through most profoundly in Rebecca’s art—her paintings and drawings, on display in her studio-gallery next to the kayak shop, are not only inspired by the naturalistic beauty of Stonington’s wild and rugged islands, but often composed on them. Michael, too, is well-accomplished outside of his guiding, authoring both AMC's Best Sea Kayaking in New England and Upwest & Downeast: Meandering the Maine Coast by Sea Kayak. Both tomes are considered authoritative sources for sea kayak explorations. On assignment for a local tourism board, I gathered some friends and headed to Stonington for a kayak camping trip with Rebecca as our guide. We spent a night on Russ Island—tents right on the beach, our dinner cooked over an open fire on the tideline—and paddled around dozens of islands in the Stonington Archipelago the next day looking for swimming holes on old, abandoned stone quarries.
