"John MacKechnie" <bigmac1_at_enter.net> wrote: >I got exhausted reading your report, [Wayne]. Me, too. Perhaps that is the way of Memorial Day trips. Below my sig is a summary of our day of kayaking ... errr ... boat dragging. This was supposed to be an easy trip. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR. -- Skamokawa to Knappton, Lower Columbia River, Oregon/Washington May 30 It was my idea, so I guess I get the blame. My story is that it was Randy's fault. He made me do it. Randy and Beth hooked up with Jan and me at Skamokawa's Vista Park Sunday morning as they traveled downriver from Tenasillahee, where they had spent the night, engaging in serious gluttony. I had nothing to do with that. My error came later. Very peaceful, wonderful glassy water, two-three knots of ebb hustling us along, relaxed chatter back and forth, and six knots of speed made good. Only fifteen nautical miles to Knappton -- this will be a snap! Four hours max. Little did we know it would take about twice that. Randy was enamored of the gardens growing atop piles, so we paused now and then for shots, jabbered of the heyday of Brookfield, and dodged around the burbles off Jim Crow Point, to be swacked in the eyes with **Jim Crow Tent City**. Yeegods! Must have been fifteen big tents. End of the quiet times there! Further down, a marker on the end of the downriver piledike on Jim Crow Sands stands anointed with a relic from Marlboro days. Some gillnetter joke, we suspect. Then the error of our ways began. Randy: Wonder if we can go through the lagoon on Miller Sands? Dave: Sure! Lots of water, we can do that. Jan: I don't know -- remember all the trouble we had even getting into it last time? Dave: Yeah, but we have at least a foot more water. We committed, running the gauntlet leading into the lagoon ... and sure enough, ran totally out of water 300 yards down. Our main consolation was a trio of guys wandering the flats near their Alumaweld, stranded for the next three hours for sure, over near the north side of the lagoon. They would not make eye contact. The wind came up. We slowed down. We ate. We crossed the shipping channel over to the downriver end of Rice Island -- kinda choppy, but not bad -- turning towards Frankfort, a couple easy miles away. Oops! More shallow water. Aaaagh!! Pretty soon we are all dragging our boats again, over ground we'd have floated ... if we had not been delayed in the lagoon. A mile of walking and two more stranded boats later, we eased into the chop, where the west wind and remnant ebb combined for some nasty short-period stuff that soon had me soaked, and working hard to stay upright. Thirty - forty minutes of that and I slid onto the cobbles at Frankfort. Hop out, look around for the others ... where are they? Oh, there they are, leetle specks on the water. Twenty minutes later, we are all "ashore" on the mud flats, grousing about our fate and powerchomping to refuel while donning more insulation. Rounding Grays Point half an hour later, we hit the wind full in the face, dodging small seas, lagging to just a knot and a half, as the flood began, running a knot or so against us. An hour and a half later, we hit the rocks at Knappton, whupped and wet. I told Randy it was too shallow to do the lagoon. Would he listen? Nooooo! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! *************************************************************************** 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 Wed Jun 01 2005 - 13:18:42 PDT
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