Time to fess up and join the ranks of the "graceful". Many years ago, my wife and I went for an early fall paddle on the Connetquot River, launching from the dock at Dowling College. This is a beautiful setting as Dowling College in a previous life was the Vanderbuilt estate and the dock there is great because it is used by the skulling team. I guess it is about a foot or so off the water. BTW, there were lots of people around because it was some sort of "open house" weekend. Well I helped my wife get in her boat and when, it was my turn, she suggested that I "seal launch". At that time I was paddling a plastic boat with a small, fixed skeg that didn't look like it would get in the way. (You can see this coming, right?) Well I launched perpendicular to the edge of the dock and the boat slid slowly into the water until the skeg struck the edge of the dock and I stopped momentarily. I then rotated around the long axis of the boat and did a "half roll'. In the end I wet exited, got back up on the dock, emptied out the boat and entered the boat the usual way and was off. I had drawn quite a crowd and the worst part was assuring all those who rushed over to save me that I was quite all right and really did know what I was doing. There's a lesson here somewhere........ Bill Leonhardt :-) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Mar 15 2001 - 06:33:11 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:39 PDT