We called it Fairy Tale Rapids, and the name fit. The Class III drop was a silver ribbon of fast‑flowing water running through a forested gorge. It wasn’t long, but there were enough rocks to keep things interesting, and the towering standing waves at the bottom of the drop promised a lively finish. A bit too lively, we figured, looking thoughtfully at our heavily loaded Tripper. Still, there was a good‑sized pool below where we could bail, and we’d spent much of the day fighting a headwind. Now we fancied a bit of easy riding. We really didn’t want to spend the remaining hours of daylight lining down through the little canyon, slipping and slithering over algae‑covered pebbles. So we opted to make the run.

It took us only a few minutes to get ready. Then our four canoes dropped down the rushing tongue of water that marked the start of the rapids. Farwell and I were in the third boat. He was in the bow; I was paddling stern, and I didn’t envy him his job. The tongue wasn’t exactly a royal road. More like a cobbled cart track. Rocks, carpeted with brown slime, loomed up on every side, many of them nearly invisible in the tannin‑stained water. Still, Farwell guided us deftly around them all — all but the last one, that is. He overlooked a good‑sized boulder lurking just below the surface, near the point where the current lines converged at the bottom of the tongue. We didn’t hit hard. It was only a glancing blow. We just eased up on the shoulder of the rock. But then we started to pivot. And before we had a chance to react — it had been a long day, and the hot sun had made us both a bit dozy — the onrushing water had submerged our upstream gunwale. We didn’t go over, though. Not at first. We braced downriver, clawed our way off the rock, and continued on our way.

Our troubles were just beginning, however. A 17‑foot canoe can hold a lot of water, even when it’s half full of tightly lashed, waterproof gear bags. And in the few seconds we’d teetered on the submerged rock, our Tripper had drunk deep. So we now had only a couple of inches of freeboard. Instead of climbing nimbly over the seemingly endless succession of standing waves, we were wallowing through them, with each wave adding a few more gallons to our unwanted water ballast. And with hundreds of extra pounds weighing her down — a cubic foot of water tips the scales at about 62 pounds — our lively boat had become a sullen slug…Read more…

 
Send a Comment

 
Whenever you’re on the water — or even near it — drowning’s always a danger. Deaths by drowning happen every day, and the toll includes expert swimmers as well as folks who can’t swim a stroke. But there’s some good news, too. Drowning is almost always preventable. I learned this lesson the hard way. Twice. You might think I’m a slow learner, and you’d be right. Luckily, though, you don’t have to repeat my mistakes. You can profit from them, instead.

My first brush with death by drowning came on a hot June morning when I was in the fifth‑grade, on a class trip to a nearby lake. I had just swum out to the diving float, anchored over the lake’s steeply shelving, weedy bottom. No sooner had I hauled myself out of the water and onto the float, however, than I found myself in the middle of a melee. A couple of other girls were scuffling, and before I knew it, I’d been knocked back into the water — but this time I was on the deep‑water side of the float. I landed hard, into the bargain, knocking all the breath out of my body, and I seemed to have lost all ability to swim. I couldn’t scream for help, and I couldn’t wave my hands in the air to attract attention.…Read more…

 
Send a Comment

 
Open canoes have many advantages, but they all share one shortcoming. There’s a gaping hole in the top just waiting to swallow the next big breaker, and a single wave — if it’s big enough — can swamp a canoe in a hurry. One minute you’re paddling. And the next? It’s swim time. That doesn’t mean canoes can’t venture beyond Golden Pond, of course. Canoeists have been keeping their heads above rough waters for as long as there’ve been canoes to paddle. What’s their secret? Skill, for one thing. Caution, for another. And then there’s Plan B: adding extra flotation for the times when skill and caution simply aren’t enough. The recipe is pretty straightforward. If you cram securely tethered float bags into every empty corner of a canoe, you’ll have an (almost) unsinkable craft. A flotation‑filled canoe is nearly impossible to swamp, and with enough practice you can even roll it back up on the rare occasions when it does go over.

But there’s another way to address the problem cause by the canoe’s too‑open embrace of stray waves: just plug the hole. Put a fabric cover on your canoe, in other words, thereby transforming it into a decked boat. As readers of my earlier article on this subject may remember, I’m not exactly a big fan of this approach. Still, I’ve never claimed to have the last word on the matter (or any other, come to that), and sure enough, while some readers cheered me on, others wrote in to set me straight. Now it’s their turn to be heard. But first, let’s take a quick look at the letter that started it all… Read more…

 
Send a Comment