Mother's Day Paddle

Sometimes I let the herd mentality take control of my better sense. At least I lived to tell the tale.

No s**t, there I was: I don't like the section of the Potomac they planned to paddle and they were taking two ladies out whom I hadn't paddled with; the river was just under flood stage; the wind was a good 15-22 mph; and I've never practiced rescues with any of the paddlers going. Last minute, I got an email from the club leader telling me he'd love to see the husband and I on the river for this event. Uh no, the hubby won't be budged. He doesn't like to be hurried and doesn't like to paddle with people he doesn't know and trust. Me, I'm not that smart.

I pull up in the parking lot and the water is up on to the retaining wall maybe a foot or 18 inches off the parking deck. But it's high tide's peak and the tide is starting to ease out. The wind is a bit stiff. I get my equipment on, I chose my CD Solstice for speed and the fact that it doesn't weather cock.

It doesn't look so bad, still in the protected marina area

Here's where I don't have the technical jargon to describe what a mess I bit off: We had one or two foot swells that were more like messy chop. "Following seas" I believe it's called but coming first from the right and then the left rear with no real rhyme or reason. And gusts of wind, stiff. The Solstice doesn't swing in the wind nor really let the swells push it around from the front. But it also doesn't catch waves like my Elias. It wants to go straight and the faster the better. Its stern will rise up on waves coming from behind, pushing the bow down in to the trough between each wave, somewhat pearling. It was a game of risk; brace and stroke.

Just after leaving the marina and entering the river full I was keenly aware that I felt I had no business being out there. My boat is not stable at low speeds in all that wash, and I was horrified by the noticeable pearling, which was becoming more and more obvious as the swells, well, swelled. I said I was going back. That I was uncomfortable. The club leader said "What's the problem? You have your big girl boat and your big girl hat on, what's the matter?"

Well, snap, I was worried, and definitely uncomfortable. But in the time it would have taken to explain this fact I could have been hanging from the cockpit downside up in chocolate colored water that was sure to be full of city runoff. So I did the only thing I could think of that wasn't returning to the launch: I took off. The boat, when driven at speed becomes a missile. It cuts through the waves and just tracks like an arrow. So I covered a half mile in a harrowing few moments. Upon rounding the point and entering milder water I began to breathe again.

I was far ahead of my companions, I could barely hear them behind me. So I eased up and snapped a couple of shots of them over my shoulder as they gained on me. Celeste, on the paddle board, had stayed on her knees through the worst of it. She is surely one heck of a paddler.

Celeste to the far right

The water looks ok, huh? Yeah, because I couldn't snap a shot in the thick of it. In the end I didn't take a dunking. But I am mad at myself. I let myself get talked into paddling in conditions I normally never would. I failed at risk management in that I took unacceptable risk when there was no need. 

One of the two ladies I didn't know was more shaken than I and hugged the shore as we made our way south. She insisted on leaving the river when we got to our half-way point, meaning we had to take a long break while her vehicle was recovered. Our boats sat on newly deposited flotsam.

That's my boat, red and white, nose in the bushes

I know better. This won't happen again. And I am also thinking hard about the boat that would have been the "right boat" to have been paddling. Obviously in the company of 17 and 18 foot boats my stable 12 foot Tsunami would have been too slow. Perhaps my Elias would have been a better choice. But it is hard on long paddles, being more suitable to playing in surf than travelling long miles with big glass boats all around.

I am just not sure where to go from here. Just not sure at all.