|
Melanie & I have taken up kayaking. It an outdoors activity that is not limited by her flat feet, and we live in a place with lots of interesting places to see by boat. And it is good exercise! | |
|
We purchased a used tandem sea kayak from a tour outfitter last year. This year we have been out four times, with our most adventurous trip at last weekend. |
|
Seattle is dominated by the Lake Washington water system. Its largest feed is from Lake Sammamish to the east. I have often biked the Sammamish River trail, and the river is calm and generously sized all the way. However, there is one section that I knew nothing about. The river starts at the north end of Lake Sammamish, and passes over a weir that prevents the lake from dropping too much in the summer. | |
|
The river is at spring melt flood stage now (notice the submerged sign :-), so the weir was no problem. However... |
|
Just after the weir is a much steeper slope that is crowded with trees. In the summer, the river becomes a narrow fast stream there. This time it was a wider fast stream with tree branches across the water. One of the branches tangled Melanie's paddle and unstoppably the boat began to roll over. Melanie's first thought was, "This is how we die!" :-) I was thinking, "OK, what is my training; what do I do?" Upside down, I ripped the spray skirt off, and came up holding my paddle and the side of the boat. The water was cold! But the stream was also coming out into the open. I floated down the current, and kicked over to the bank. Melanie was holding on to a tree upstream. When she could breathe after the shock of cold, she called out that she was OK, and then floated down to me. I got her into the boat right away, we pumped the water out of the cockpits, and she put on another layer of wool for warmth. We had lost some things. Our hats and Melanie's prescription glasses were gone. Her paddle was gone too - and we still had 13 miles ahead of us! (Thankfully my waterproofed phone and our lunch floated inside the cockpit and weren't lost!) We paddled downstream and did find Mel's hat and water bottle. I decided to turn around and power upstream to look some more. We found Mel's paddle caught in a tree snag, so we retrieved it and accepted our other losses. The rest of the trip was less eventful. (Below is a walking route map that nearly parallels our river route. Try one '-' click out.) View Larger Map It was cold, but exertion kept our upper bodies warm enough. (We were very thankful for finding Mel's paddle!) There is trail along the river, and at one point a biker paced us and said we were doing 7 mph. The river current was faster there, so I'm sure our average speed was lower. The scenery was interesting, we had snatches of sun, saw lots of water birds, and had a good time on the trip. Although adventures like this can be good for marital bonding, I'm sure that I would NOT recommend others to repeat what we did! ;-) Update: We took a beginning kayak training class the following weekend that covered safety issues like this. It went pretty well. There certainly are a lot of things to learn! And it would be nice to have paddling dry suits! However, they are kind of expensive... | |