It was our last day in a late May trip and we were paddling out, it had been a long one, into the wind and my 12 year old sister was in the bow. She was wiped out. We came up to a thin, short connection between two lakes. The connection had a sharp right turn into a very strong wind, the current was fast and against us. As we approached the spot I yelled to her to dig in while I tried to make the turn - the wind and current were too strong and started pushing us into the rocks. To avoid capsizing I jumped out into cold, waist deep, crystal clear water.

Now what to do? I started to swing the canoe to the right, I was at the stern so it took all my strength (and I am pretty strong) to get it in the right direction. I overcompensated, and as it came around, the canoe got caught in the wind and flew in the other direction. In about 2 seconds time it was pointed down river. Now what!? I dragged it to a shallower spot, hoped in and started paddling backwards. This caused the canoe to swing a lot so I had to switch sides every 2 strokes. It took us about 5 minutes of swearing and digging deep to travel all of 200 feet backwards.

Posted by Bill F on January 11, 2000 at 08:52