Mossback,

Wind & waves on big lakes give me more worries than just about anything else on my canoe travels... especially in the shoulder seasons when colder water is in play.  Lightning, bad portages, bad bushwhacks and even fire might occasionally grab my attention on a given trip.  However, I exercise the most caution around the possibility of big wind when I plan to travel big water.

Twenty-some years ago I found myself in a rough situation.  My paddling partner had a plane to catch.  We had failed to position ourselves close to our exit (Nym) at our last camp.  Sure enough, that night a fierce wind blew in from the NW.  We were camped on Maria so when we got up onto Pickerel, headed W/NW, we had a white-knuckle experience battling wind & waves, magnified by the local funneling effects of landform. 

We chose to "ferry" our way ever-so-slowly up to Batchewaung Bay.  We were both strong paddlers but the real trick was coordinating our strokes to keep the bow pointed at just the right angle.  Power had little to do with our eventual but painstaking success.  One wrong move & we would have been bashed on the cliffs of the southern shoreline OR have gone cross-ways and flipped as we negotiated the wide stretch of water we HAD to cross to our north.  The wind was absolutely howling out of those narrows at the far west end of the bay we were crossing.   

Never again!  I'd rather not be catching that flight as a corpse. 

Since those times I've been ultra-careful about positioning my last camp, especially if someone in the party has a "hard deadline" of some sort.  Actually, one of the blessings of travelling as a semi-retiree with full-time retirees is the complete lack of such hard deadlines.  Also, the existence of SPOT Messengers (& the like) relieve anxieties you feel about what loved ones back home might be thinking about your delay.  Ultimately, it is best for everyone that temporary human "imperatives" (ie. "I got to get home!) play second-fiddle to what Mother Nature happens to be tossing in your direction on a given day.

Yes, many of us have pushed the envelope a bit and have taken calculated risks.  Some of our best stories come from those experiences.  Nevertheless, "calculated" is the operative word in that statement.  You either get wiser with age... or you simply stop aging because you've done something really stupid.  Looking back, I was pretty stupid plenty of times, but I got lucky, and managed to get a decent story or two out of those experiences to boot (bushwhacks gone awry, lightning strikes at mid-lake when I shouldn't have been on the water, big wind & waves).  I can't figure on much more "luck" in my lifetime; I've likely used it all up.  So, I've grown more conservative, figuring I need to "stay alive" first in order to tell grand kids & future QJers my tall tales from yesteryear.

I'll have to read that Kinziger book.  Sounds like he is reflecting the wisdom of many years in a canoe.

Later,

Jimbo   8-)