The Flight of The Canoe

Yes, this is a total break with tradition to write about something just after it happens instead of a year or more after the fact... but I had an amusing adventure yesterday.

It starts, actually, some time back. After the misadventures of trying to reach Mallows Bay, I realized that I wanted to get back there and that there did not seem to be any outfitters around within a day’s paddling of the location. Roughly a year ago, I started looking more seriously at canoes and kayaks, seriously enough to have purchase an adaptor for the roof rack to take them, but did not find anything that really motivated me enough to make it happen. A monster plane ticket (It's about $2000 a pop for me to go home to Australia for Christmas, as compared to a “mere” $1500 at other times of the year) also ran sucked the wallet dry and by the time I was no longer reeling for that particular financial insult, the passion for the canoe had dried up and moved to the back of my mind.

Some recent events brought it back to the fore, however. One was helping my friend Meredith move to her new condominium home from the basement apartment she had been renting for two years or so prior. She has a kayak which has been sitting unused in the backyard at the old place, and at least at move-in time, was seriously shy on any place to put it at her yard-less, storage-less new home. I offered to store it at my place temporarily, where it has been sitting darkly taunting me.

It turns out there is some sizing to kayaks and little Meredith and clunky big ole me are not compatible, at least at the level of kayaks. I haven't worked out how to get in the thing even if it is adjustable somehow.

But I did bring it along to a wonderful camping spot on the Cacapon River a month or so ago when my friend Pam had her birthday camping weekend event up near Berkeley Springs in West Virginia. Fantastic spot right on the river, very quiet and peaceful and a great place for a good splash in the water. Of course I don’t fit in the kayak and Pam who is significantly smaller than I (what with lacking spare tyre in the middle and all) was barely able to get in the kayak, while I borrowed her inflatable sit-on-top kayak (Fred, the Float-a-boat). It was wonderful fun and reminded me that this was something I would really enjoy doing, not withstanding that I managed to shatter one of the joints on Fred’s paddle. Opps! Sorry about that, Pam (and I still owe you a new paddle, don’t I?)

So I went back to looking seriously at canoes and kayaks again after that trip. A bit of thought brought me to close in on the idea of a canoe: it has more space inside and is a bit more versatile for overnight camping and such and seems a little more in tune with me. And a canoe was a lot less than a recreational kayak with suitable luggage space, more flexible about having one or two or even three aboard while remaining manageable to paddle and steer on my own. But cheaper is not cheap, and a new canoe was more than I was willing to part with.

E-Bay to the rescue (after determining that there did not seem to be anything second hand in the local classifieds). I found lots of used canoes for sale... in Washington State and Minnesota. Sale requires pickup. Yeah, not going to happen. But there were a few reasonable priced canoes in apparent good shape, including one just hours from ending its bid cycle up in Allendale, New Jersey, and another a bit further in the future to bid ending in Roanoke, Virginia. I did the bid after checking out the description of the canoe (17’ Old Town with an extra seat and fishing pole holder installed, in good nick and well cared for, decent pictures showing it) and a few hours later, became the proud owner.

There’s a catch, of course. I’m in Maryland, a good four hours drive south. I get in touch with the seller and it turns out that he’s about to go on travel, so I have to wait a week or so before going up there.

During that week, I start to get the “What the f*** did I just do?” sensation when I get out the measuring tape and start to realize what a 17’ boat really is like. This is the advantage of a store: you can look at the thing on the shelf and it dawns on you BEFORE YOU BUY IT that maybe this is just a bit big. Seeing as how you could put your CAR in it! I have a Saturn Station Wagon which is a moderately small car... and about 3-4 feet shorter than this canoe! How am I going to transport this thing? And once I do, how on Earth am I going to handle it on my own?

A visit to the Saturn dealer for other reasons reassures me that, well tied down front and back, the canoe should be fine on the roofrack. As far as handling it on my own goes, I can get one of those little wheeled trailer things for pulling it around. Getting it on and off the car is going to be interesting, as will carrying it places where there are no roads or boat ramps. Maybe I am going to need company for these things.

Hmmm... maybe it is time to start taking this pursuing a girlfriend thing a little more seriously? :-)

Anyway, I arrange some time off work to leave here in the afternoon, get to Bergen County in the early evening, get the canoe, and drive back all in one rather long day. Specifically, yesterday.

The trip up was uneventful, but the moment of truth is interesting. First, people in New Jersey (or at the very least in Allendale) have apparently subscribed to the New Math or something. I find the street number 740 when I am looking for 700, but the house numbers are (brilliantly) very hard to spot where they exist. In fact it turns out that 700 is just two doors down from 740. Huh? I’ve been in buildings that have no thirteenth floor before, but there should twenty houses between these two addresses, right?

I get to the place, see the canoe, and it’s a beauty. For a family of four and their dog perhaps. What the f*** have I done? It’s got a nice flat wide bottom (very good for touring and lake paddling since it is stable, but not a speedy design since it puts more surface area on the water and is less streamlined. Also DEFINITELY not designed for rough or white water.) and it is quite wide. In fact when we get it up on the roof rack, I have to remove the bike rail since the canoe covers the entire roof of the car up there.

Uh oh. Putting the canoe on the car like the diagram in the manual in the roof rack says, hull up, puts the bow right smack in the middle of my view out the front of the car and dangling in the air at least six feet in front of the windscreen. I might as well drive blindfolded. We flip it over and right side up, I can see out, but I am nervous. Air pressurse should, if I understand my Physics, be trying to pull the canoe off the car as I go now, instead of pushing it down on the rack. But this is the way it fits on the car. The seller and I futz with the straps across to hold it on the rack, and double bungee cord it back and front. It seems stable enough when I try a few tug tests, but the boat does bounce around a little alarmingly when I pull out onto the road. But it does stay in place... even once I get up to highway speeds on Route 17 heading back towards the Garden State Parkway.

I do notice that I am being very gentle on the gas. The canoe seems to be just fine up there, but every time I get up around 55 miles per hour, there is some sympathetic hum that starts up from the front strap and it is like being right next to a DC-3 prop engine running full bore. Not even John Farnham cranked up well beyond my usual volume setting will drownd out the roar right above my head. Am I going to have to have my ear drums pummeled this way for four hours straight?

I also face an interesting problem once I get on the Garden State Parkway. My car very recently got an E-Tag (I think the local name is EZ-Pass, an electronic toll booth tag that goes on the windscreen underneath the center rear view mirror so it does not block the driver's view at all, but can be seen by the toll booth sensor.). Is the toll sensor going to be able to see through the rather opaque object sitting on the car?

Turns out when I get to the first of the toll booths not to be an issue: I guess the sensors must either be eye level and get in under the canoe, or use microwaves or some frequency range to which canoes are transparent. I kept aiming for the toll booths that took money as well as E-tags just in case until I’d gone through a couple of sensors just to be sure.

I should add, even in this day and age of high gas prices, the biggest cost of this expedition was tolls: the Chesapeake Bay Bridge ($2.50), the New Jersery Turnpike (about $3 each way, though it never tells me what the tolls are since in the electronic lanes, you don’t get the ticket with the price on it), the Garden State Parkway ($0.35 six times... couldn’t they just set up one set of toll booths instead of dime and quartering you every ten miles?), the Delaware Memorial Bridge ($3 for two miles... Yeah, Memorial Bridge, I'll remember you alright!), the John F. Kennedy Expressway/Delaware Turnpike ($2), and Harbour Tunnel under Baltimore ($2). Taking the Chesapeake Bay Bridge up also allowed me to avoid the Maryland Turnpike ($1?) and a second whack from the Delaware Turnpike ($2). Good thing I saved at least $400 over the price of new canoe to make this worthwhile!

The Garden State Parkway was annoying: the roar from the straps if I nudged above 55 mph was quite loud. Then I took the ramps down to get onto the New Jersey Turnpike... and once I got back up to speed, no noise. I look up out the front... and no canoe! I cannot believe the thing slid off the car without me hearing the racket, not to mention the horns from annoyed and terrified drivers behind me finging a huge object in the middle of the lane. A few tenths of a second later, it occurs to me that I can still see the two bungee cords on the front of the car leading up into the air above me, obviously still attached to something, and I can see out the rearview mirror and see the towel on the second of the two bungee lines there to warn people my car is longer than it looks. Turns out that going around one of the ramps at the posted speed was just enough to shift the canoe which now is sitting a little further back and slightly angled to the car’s forward motion. But it is secure and in place... and not making the awful roaring noise at freeway speeds. I can hear myself think again.

I take the next food stop to pull over and get a very late dinner, but not before first checking out the canoe on the car. Let me tell you, the car looks VERY strange in the parking lot in the night with this monster on top. The shift took tension off the front strap, allowing it to slide a little, so I set things back to right and snug it all up carefully again, get the dinner, and head on home again.

Everything is quite secure and fine and the roar is still gone, but getting up to freeway speeds (and the speed limit on the NJ Turnpike is a swift 65 mph these days), the car develops another interesting habit. The canoe bounce around a little in the wind and tends to take the car with it. I’m secure on the road and the canoe is secure on the roof, but it is a little like being in an airplane in turbulence... and I’ve got a long way home. The canoe will do this to me anytime the car is over 60 mph the whole way home, so I am feeling MIGHTY tired by the time the off-ramp to the last freeway on the way home comes up. I’ve been muscling the steering wheel for nearly three hours by this point and managed to spend the evening right from eating dinner all the way back home like I was in the aggitate spin cycle in the washing machine...

I leave the canoe on the car overnight. Like washing the car, this of course summons punishment from the rain gods since the canoe is right side up on the car and filled with several gallons of water in the morning. Just what I need: MORE weight to deal with as I get the monster down. I succeed, but I'm not sure how I will gracefully do this in the future on my own.

But that is for the future. I’m excited about my new toy and looking forward to driving out to Southern Maryland some time soon and taking it out on the Potomac, or maybe exploring some other public waterways in the near future. But who would have thought I would need air sickness bags in the car to drive the canoe places?