[Paddlewise] Twelka in Goose Bay

"I know you wanted to sleep in," my wife said as I tried to lever my bleary
eyes open, "But it's a gorgeous morning out there."

My wife doesn't kayak, but knows where my interests are. And, she knew that
I would be especially anxious to get out on the water this morning, so I
levered my tired body out of bed. "Fool," I thought. "You're getting too
old for days like yesterday." I looked out the window. It wasn't really a
georgous day -- there were breaks in the overcast following an all-night
rain. But I knew there would be no going back to bed. I got dressed, walked
out to the van, and drove it around to the garage door. There on the
trailer where we'd hurredly unloaded it the night before was the brand-new
Nimbus Telkwa that I'd driven a one-day 900 mile solo round trip to pick up.

I slid the Telkwa back on the bunks, hooked the trailer to the van, and
made a quick estimate. Yes, I'd have to extend the trailer tongue again,
but for now it could ride on the centerline bunks. I slid the boat over to
them, and redid the straps to tie it down, with just a hint of sadness. My
faithful old red Heron sat forlornly on the boat rack, already accumulating
clutter on its dirty, scratched and faded deck -- some CDs and tapes from
the trip yesterday, ropes, a coffee cup. The Heron and I have been a lot of
places in three years -- Isle Royale, Grand Marais, the Lake Erie islands,
lots of lakes. I've given it a beating and paddled it  close to a couple
thousand miles, so now it felt a little like treason to be leaving it
behind in favor of the new, long, lithe, fiberglass hussy. But, I'd long
wanted a second boat so I could take friends out with me, and at one time
reasoned that I needed a cheap, used, stable plastic boat that tracks well
and was fast enough to keep up with me. Then, the realization hit me, "What
do I need another one for, when I've already got one of those."

But a new boat was a lot of money -- more than I really wanted to spend.
That reluctance evaporated one Saturday afternoon when two friends and I
sat at a boat launch having some lunch on a paddle trip. A guy pulled in
and started to unload a bass boat. Nothing special, just a run of the mill
boat. He was rather proud; it was a brand new boat, the first time in the
water. One of us asked how much it had cost -- eighteen thousand. We looked
at each other shaking out heads. We could have bought all three of the
boats we had with us -- a Seda, a Gulfstream, and the Heron -- three times
over for what he had in that one boat. All of a sudden, a couple grand for
a new boat seemed awful cheap, especially considering that I'd be likely to
use the kayak at least as much, if not far more, than the bass boat.

So, several tryout trips to demo boats, including one three weeks before to
demo another Telkwa and some other boats, a few e-mails, some web surfing,
some dithering over make and model and color and finances, and I'd done the
deed. The result sat on the trailer, still with some water droplets from
yesterday's rain, smelling of new fiberglass and seeming impossibly long.
It seemed even longer in the rear view mirror on the way to the lake.

It had rained a lot the night before. I hadn't been aware of it, for I'd
been dead to the world, but I had noticed that the gauge had three inches
in it. There was evidence of it at the launch ramp; a pickup truck and
empty boat trailer sat with sleeping bags and tent spread out all over
them. Someone had an uncomfortable night. The water was high, lapping in
the grass, and I unloaded the boat, taking extra time to figure out how the
pedal adjustment worked and adjust the seat padding.

It's very unlikely that the Telkwa had ever been in the water before, and
it seemed a shame to baptise it in the muddy waters of Lake Hudson, when it
was so obviously a boat built for blue waters and far horizons. "We won't
always be here," I promised. "We'll get out and go at least sometimes." Not
as much as I would like, I knew, and if a fiberglass boat could have a
soul, not as much as it would like, either. But reality has to set in.

It seemed so much more roomy in the cockput than the Heron that I knew I'd
have to do some padding out. In the cockpit, the boat was just on the verge
of being too big, which is a strange experience for a guy as large as I am,
and as many cockpits as I'd crammed myself into over the past weeks. I'd
paddled another Telkwa three weeks before, but in the water this seemed a
little more tender than the familiar Heron -- but roll the boat ten
degrees, and it settled down and turned rock solid. The turnaround from
backing out from the launch went with half the strokes and confusion that I
was used to in the Heron, and the paddle strokes as I was accellerating
away from the ramp seemed light and easy, so much so that the paddle seemed
to have lost its bite. Although the boat it technically a hair wider than
the Heron -- a quarter inch -- the width came high, and with its bouyancy
it wasn't as deep in the water as the Heron, so the working waterline was
quite a bit less. It would be hard to tell until I paddled next to a
familiar paddler how much faster it really was, although I knew it would be
faster.

When I'd paddled the other Telkwa three weeks before, it had been in high
wind and no wind. It had handled superbly in high wind -- the thing that
sold me on it -- but in light wind, it seemed to have a tendancy to
weathercock. Probably my impression was tempered again by the Heron, which
has a tendancy to leecock in the same conditions, so  there'd be some
learning to handle it to come. The Telkwa doesn't track as well as the
Heron, which is fine, since one of the things that had annoyed me about the
old boat was the extremely hard tracking, which is fine for going across
the lake, but tough when you want to maneuver it. The Telkwa comes with a
rudder, and I would really have preferred a boat without a rudder. I didn't
use it this morning, but probably will be glad to have it at times.

The familiar shores of Lake Hudson sped by -- well, not quickly,
necessarily, but comfortably. I paddled under a dead tree, its branches
filled with turkey vultures, a couple dozen or more waiting for the sun to
heat up the land and create some thermals. Out at the far end of the lake,
my favorite little spot I call Goose Bay. Out on the lake, and especially
near the shore, the carp were raising a ruckus -- there was a lot of
splashing going on, fins and sometimes whole fish out of the water, the
kind of behavior I'd expect from spawning. It was fun to sit there and
watch them, and I found that it was more comfortable to just sit with a
little roll on, since it's more stable that way.

While I like to sit and watch the carp, I decided to get a move on. There's
lots to do today, even if I was still tired from yesterday. The trailer
needs the tongue extended, there's some outfitting to be done, lots of
things to be able to use the boat on a routine basis, so I dug the paddle
into the water and got on my way. Downwind in the light breeze the boat
seemed well-behaved, and although the dead air made things seem slow I was
actually moving at a pretty good clip. I decided to paddle hard the last
half mile or so, and realized that the boat was moving right along -- it
seemed faster than the Heron, anyway. With the grass in the lake due to the
high water, I decided to do one of my "ram-it-up" landings, although that's
something else that's going to have to change with the new boat, since I'm
rarely going to have a carpet to land the boat on. But, that will come too,
but I guess I'm going to have to learn to like wet feet.

I stopped at the gate house on the way out of the park. The girl in the
gatehouse, who knows nothing about kayaks except what she's learned from
watching me drive by,  said, "That's a whole lot more boat than your old one."

She's right. It is a lot more boat, and not just bigger. It's more
advanced, more delicate, more responsive. More fun, I hope -- at least,
that's the point. It's going to take some getting used to, and some skill
improvement. But, I think I'm going to like it.

-------------------------------

My thanks to Heather, Penny, Graham and Tim at White Squall Outfitters in
Nobel, Ontario, for all their help and courtesies; and my special thanks to
Matt Broze, for tipping me off on this boat in the first place.

-- Wes


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