Failure to Launch

I haven’t written in a long time.  I’m having more trouble getting started these past few months than I had all of last year.  I will try to get back in the boat.

Last weekend I took my new canoe to a beach nearby.  I went with my daughter.  This canoe, it’s very light.  I think it’s 28 pounds, but it could be 30.  In any case, the man who sold it to me told me to be careful when I put it on top of my car.  “Be sure to hold it down with one hand…or better yet have someone else hold it down while you’re tying it to the rack.  They’ve been known to blow away.”  Yeah, it’s that light.

This is of course a great attribute when you are hauling the canoe over land to get to a watery destination.  In August, in the Adirondacks, this allowed me and my wife to trek two miles through the woods to get to a spectacularly deserted pond at the foot of several mountains.  I will admit that even 28 pounds begins to feel a bit heavy after two miles of up and down trail, but it’s very manageable.  Actually, after I came up with the proper portaging posture (canoe tipped back so that I could see the trail better), the two miles back from the pond was very easy.  But I digress.

While the weight (or lack of it) is great when you are lugging a canoe over land, it has another affect in the water.  The canoe sits low in the water, because if it sat high in the water, it would be particularly tippy.  We wouldn’t want that.  I grew up paddling very heavy canoes at the summer camp I attended.  I went on a lot of overnight trips, and while I did not enjoy the portage experience (read: despised), I became very accustomed to the stability of these hefty aluminum vessels.

On this most recent venture, Sarah and I headed to a state park, where we planned to just launch from the beach.  We headed out in the late afternoon on a holiday weekend and were surprised (why?) to find the park quite crowded.  Who knew that people liked to go to the beach on a holiday weekend at the end of the summer?  I’m including this detail, only to show that perhaps my mind was not at its sharpest, and I suppose to hint at the prospect of an audience for our later feats.

With some bravado (I’m not really “bravad-ish,” but when you have a 14-foot canoe that looks heavy, but only weighs 28 pounds, sometimes a little bravadishness eeks out) I set about readying for our voyage.  After untying the canoe, I swept it off the roof of my car, holding it aloft for any onlookers to admire, perhaps also admiring my nearly superhuman strength.  For good measure, I then spun the canoe a few times on my middle finger.  Sarah grabbed the paddles and the life jackets, and surprisingly, both of us remembered to leave our phones in the car.  Well played!

With only about 50 yards to the shoreline, I didn’t even put the canoe over my head.  I just rested it on my left shoulder, kinda casual-like.  You know, like the way you sling a backpack over one shoulder when it’s really too light to bother with both straps.  When we got to the water’s edge, there were only about 40 to 50 people at the beach.  We put on our life jackets, set the boat in the water, and picked up our paddles.  Being a gentleman, I offered to let Sarah get in first.  I always liked the expression we used at camp.  It sounded so…nautical.  “Bow man in,” I said to Sarah, with a bow.  She looked at me with an odd look.  She gives me that a lot, so I didn’t really think much of it.  “Oh, excuse me, bow person in.”

“Seriously?  Is that how you usually do it?”  She looked genuinely surprised.  Sarah had become a pretty experienced canoeist over the past few summers as a counselor at the sister camp of the one I’d attended.  It always seemed that the girls’ camp had different rules…well, actually, what they had were rules.  The boys’ camp had very few, being run by former boys.

“Why, how do you do it?”

“No, it’s just that whenever we launch a canoe, the stern person gets in first, and the bow person gets in second and pushes off before sitting down.”

“Hmm.  Sounds reasonable.  But I like saying, ‘Bow man in.'”

“Couldn’t you still say that from your seat in the stern?”

“Mmmm. It would seem less gentlemanly.”

“Whatever, I’ll get in first.”  She was being very agreeable.  Clearly we were not in the camp millieu, or we would have had a full-on debate.  She proceeded to seat herself in the bow of the boat.

“Now, what I do, is I push the canoe out a little, so that it’s in a little deeper water, like this.”  I was giving her the professorial voice.  The voice of the experienced canoeist.  I pushed the canoe out a bit further, but not too far.  The waves were already beginning to buffet the featherweight canoe.

“Then, I place one foot into the canoe, being sure to have one hand on either gunwale for stability.”

“Whatever, Dad.  Can we just get going?”  Sarah had her paddle ready and her back toward me, so she couldn’t see me as I mocked the “whatever.”  Nor did she see me as I placed one crocked foot carefully and confidently into the center of the canoe.  Nor did she see me as my other foot, the one still in the water, stepped confidently onto a poorly-placed slimy stone. Hence, she was caught completely unaware as my weight shifted abruptly to my left, causing me to enter the canoe in a far less graceful or confident manner than I had intended.  In fact, it came as rather a shock to both of us, as the canoe leaned hard to the port side, took on substantial amounts of water,  flipped onto its side, and pitched both of us, rather uncermoniously into Long Island Sound.

The water was surprisingly refreshing.  No one was hurt, though the 40 to 50 onlookers seemed to be holding their sides in some pain as they turned away, their shoulders convulsing.   Fortunately, I could easily stand up, tip the canoe sideways, lift it out of the water, turn it upside-down over my head, and pour the contents back into the sound where it (they?) belonged.  It was at that point that it occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely sure that the key fob from my car was waterproof.  Hmm.  Interesting thought.

Out of gentle-manliness and deference to my daughter, I agreed to try her launch technique for our second attempt.  As expected (by her), it worked.

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