Toto, I Don't Think We're In Rocky Gorge Anymore

I live less than 2 miles from the Brown Bridge put-in at Rocky Gorge Reservoir. After work I can decide to paddle and be on the water within 20 minutes, though when I move that fast I invariably forget something. Last night after work, I figured I had thought of everything:

1. Left a mini-float plan for my wife: "Putting in at Brown Bridge for usual paddle, should be off water by PM"
2. Checked weather forecast and looked at weather radar: partly cloudy, chance of showers, nothing but showers on local radar
3. Loaded PFD, paddle, glasses strap, GPS, boat on truck - even remembered to put the seat in the kayak.

I headed over to the ramp, put-in and took off under blue skies with fast moving white clouds, as it was quite breezy. The air temperature was in the high 60s, about the same as the water temperature, so I was just out in shorts and a t-shirt, and didn't bother with the spray skirt.

I'm working on "institutionalizing" my forward stroke with the wing paddle in my new Kayakpro Marlin, so I focused on sit up straight, stab down, rotate out and around, lift up, hand high, repeat - without worrying about how fast I'm going. With the new boat I'm just about now at the point I remember reaching when the P&H Capella was new to me: whenever I get the stroke mechanics right for a few strokes in a row the boat veers to one side or the other. Since the Marlin has a rudder, compared to the skeg in the Capella, I'm still at the point with the rudder that I have to pay attention to which foot does what. When I get that under control, I look up and my stroke has gone all to hell.

Usually, that means my upper hand has dropped down and when I get it back up I'm leaning forward. I then oscillate between sitting up straight with low hands and slumping with high hands, until I get back in synch. All this takes so much concentration that time actually passes quickly - often before I know it I'm approaching the Rt. 29 bridge which is the turn around point for my standard 8 miler. However, this time at about 3.4 miles I looked around and noticed that there was no more blue sky and that the reason the boat was veering was that the wind was swirling around on the water. Oh, and the water landing on my head wasn't from the paddle, it was actually raining.

The clouds looked ominously dark and the tops of the trees were starting to bend over, so I figured there might be a thunderstorm coming and turned around at the 3.5 mile mark. That put me directly into the main thrust of the wind and the actual waves and mini-swells that were now on the water. The wind got stronger, the rain got harder and the temperature was dropping. About 2.5 miles from the start I thought I heard thunder and had an internal debate about lightning safety: which was safer, staying on the water or getting out under the tall trees that line the shore? Is a carbon Kevlar kayak an insulator or a conductor? What is the difference between flammable and inflammable?

I decide the answer was trees, conductor, nothing and pulled over to the shore. The wind and rain really picked up - it was like a mini-hurricane for a bit. The weather data at Motionbased says the peak gust was 25 mph but it think it was a good deal higher than that for a bit. All the birds seemed to hunkering down to wait it out, too. I listened for a while and heard no thunder and saw no lightning, so I got back in the boat and continued on. What I realized I had forgotten was throwing the sprayskirt and a rain jacket in the hatch would have been nice - it was still raining and windy and it was actually pretty cold.

The rest of the paddle was pretty uneventful and of course the rain stopped just as I reached the ramp to get off the water. I was able to keep the stroke and boat direction together for a few more strokes in a row than the last practice paddle and averaged the usual 5.4 mph. Basically, in a year I've gotten my time for the 8 mile round trip down from 2 hours (in the 13 foot Ookpik with a Euro paddle) to 1 hour 28 minutes (in the 18 foot Marlin with a wing paddle) without going all out. I'd like to be able to get that down to 1 hour 20 minutes for a 6 mph average, but for now I'm focusing on beating that forward stroke into submission.

The usual Googlefied map: