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Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Breaking the Drought
Posted By: Wes Boyd
Date: Monday, 1 February 1999, at 8:26 p.m.
Since Bob has been posting his trip reports, I didn't think anyone would mind if I posted one:
Saturday was the Virtual Vampyre's birthday, so at her request the TV Queen and I took her, along with some friends, to a Japanese restaurant in Ann Arbor. I no more than got in the door when the phone went off. I figured it was a sales call, but it proved to be Kayak Tom with something even more insidious: a report of open water. It seems he'd been taking a short cut when he found a mile or more of open water in a channel between two lakes in eastern Branch County.
Over the course of the next hour, I managed to find all the kayak gear that for most of the year stays loaded in the van, along with some other goodies, like the neoprene gloves I bought myself for Christmas. Bright and early Sunday morning, I dropped the Firecracker (I mean, what else are you going to call a bright red kayak bought on July 4 weekend?) from its winter home in the rafters of the garage onto the trailer where it normally lives, and headed up to the convenience store on the corner for a cup of eyeopener. "What's that you've got on your trailer?" the girl there asked. "An iceboat?" Not a bad guess, actually, and perhaps pretty close to right.
On down to Kayak Tom's, sipping coffee all the way, and then into the wetsuit and everything in his living room, then on to the lake. I'd never been there before, but it proved to be a long, straight channel, perhaps a mile of it, between Loon and Bartholomew Lakes, and wonder of wonders, it was mostly free of ice, especially at the little boat launch next to a bridge. I set the Firecracker off of the trailer and onto the snow, and it showed that it had been too long for it, too: it immediately took off toward the water. Had a heck of a time catching it. Although we were protected by trees, the wind was still whistling, and it was cold. "Keep your eyes open for guys in white jackets," I told Kayak Tom.
"Why?" he said. "People kayak in the winter all the time."
"Around here?"
"You might have a point," he said.
Onto the water. The kayak felt a little strange after being away for so long, and I was having a little difficulty getting comfortable. Once we'd jiggled and prodded and pried our way into the cockpits, getting the spray skirts on and clothing adjusted, we set off down the channel at an easy pace. Toward the end of the channel, a thread of ice stretched across in front of us, but a tap of the Firecracker's crusier bow opened us a path for a ways longer, until the channel widened out into a frozen lake. In front of us we could see a guy out ice fishing, and I'm sure that he was more surprised to see us than we were to see him.
We turned around and headed back the other way, most of a mile down to the other lake. In the channel there was a flock of perhaps a couple of hundred mallards and blacks, with three snow geese mixed in for good measures. A lot of them took to the air as we passed, but a few just squeezed over to the bank and let us pass. All too soon, the channel widened again, and ice blocked our way in the other lake. The wind was strong here and it made it a little fun getting turned around without being blown into a large ice floe, but soon we were heading back down toward the channel.
We thought about doing a second lap, but I was overheated from being overdressed, strange thing to say, and Kayak Tom's back was hurting a little, so we decided to hang it up after only a couple miles, a lot shorter than our usual trips, even though we've laid off it for a while. But, what the heck -- we've logged one in January to keep the string of being out at least once a month alive, and not really a bad trip, either. All too soon we'll have to dose ourselves with bug dope and carry a towel to mop away the sweat.
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