Fading sunlight filtered through magenta clouds formed a partial rainbow late Tuesday afternoon as our group of kayakers bounced over rolling waves beyond Palmer Cove into the open waters of Fishers Island Sound.

As we gazed at the iridescent sky I wondered: Is there any place on earth more stunning right now than this very spot?

It was a perfect seasonal conclusion to an informal, weekly series that for more than two decades has attracted paddlers to various launch sites along the Connecticut shoreline in May through October. This week about a dozen devotees of the Tuesday Night Paddlers group took off from my favorite location, Esker Point in Noank, which offers a cornucopia of destination choices.

The last time I chronicled a TNP gathering in June, which also departed from Esker, most of us steered east past Mouse Island and Morgan Point into the Mystic River, then headed north up all the way to Mystic Seaport Museum.

For many local kayakers, Esker beckons supreme: Last Sunday, my buddy Phil Warner and I launched there and paddled across a choppy sound into Fishers Island’s West Harbor. Esker also is the best place to begin and end an 18-mile Fishers Island circumnavigation; alternative itineraries include paddles to Bluff Point to the west, and Ram, Enders and Barn islands to the east.

This week, our group meandered southwest past Clubhouse Point into a stiff breeze, and I called out to no one in particular, “What’s the plan?”

Someone replied, “There is no plan.”

Of course — TNP has no official leader.

Soon we found ourselves amid gentle combers about a half-mile off Groton Long Point, where most paddlers were happy as seals bobbing around and surfing the waves. Dave Fasulo and I, though, decided to venture farther offshore.

“Let’s head for North Dumpling,” he suggested, so we left the main group and pointed our bows toward the two-acre island, a familiar landmark with its own lighthouse and spinning wind generator.

Though only a mile off the Connecticut shore, North Dumpling, owned by inventor Dean Kamen of Segway Human Transporter fame, is in New York waters. Years ago I kayaked out there to interview Kamen, who was simultaneously being filmed by a crew from “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

Kamen established his reputation for eccentricity by threatening to secede from New York because of that state’s high taxes, declaring the island the "Kingdom of North Dumpling," referring to himself as “Lord Dumpling,” composing a national anthem, drawing up a constitution, creating a flag, and even issuing his own currency. Somewhere in my files, I have one of those non-negotiable notes he gave me — called, naturally, a Dumpling.

Anyway, Kamen, whose principal residence is in New Hampshire, didn’t appear to be on the island when Dave and I approached — there was no sign of his helicopter or amphibious vehicle (not that we would have landed, anyway).

“I think I’ll poke around the corner and get some photos of the sunset,” Dave said.

I studied a churning tidal rip between North Dumpling and its smaller neighbor, South Dumpling, and replied, “OK, I’ll hunker down here in the lee for a while.”

Dave is an intrepid paddler. As loyal readers may recall, on a frigid, blustery April day seven years ago. he launched his kayak before dawn on the Connecticut River in Agawam, Mass., and paddled south with the spring runoff 40 miles to Middletown. I met him there, and we paddled the remaining 30 miles to the mouth of the river in Old Saybrook.

A few years earlier, Dave also organized a legendary expedition called the Stonington Triangle. He and a handful of other paddlers departed from the Borough, paddled across the sound to Montauk Point on Long Island, then navigated east to Block Island, and finally returned to Stonington — a distance of some 54 miles, all in one long day.

So our short hop to North Dumpling last Tuesday barely registered on the Fasulo Scale of Nautical Adventure.

No matter, it was a grand outing. The surfing kayakers were already ashore when Dave and I pulled back in to Esker in semi-darkness. Another Tuesday Night Paddlers season in the books.

But for hardcore paddlers, kayaking doesn’t end in October. Bob Teneyck, who was part of a group I accompanied on a seal-watching voyage to Hungry Point on Fishers Island last January, said he plans to organize a winter version of the weekly gathering, tentatively called the Tuesday Afternoon Paddlers.

Stay tuned.