Day 2 of the trip we experienced 30 km (18.75 mile) per hour winds with gusts up to around 40 km (25 mile) per hour. We started out going into 2-3 foot waves, which were doable, but left us worried for the large open stretches of water. When we hit the open stretches the waves grew to 3-4 feet. The waves were at the very upper end of manageable, but the wind in the canoe was something we had never experienced before.
What we found out, and honestly what shouldn't have been a surprise, is that our bodies and the canoe act like a giant sail. When the wind catches the canoe it pivots the canoe, making it move so that the length of the canoe is perpendicular to the wind direction. This also makes the canoe perpendicular to the wave direction and the combination of the two makes it very difficult to keep your canoe properly pointed into the waves so that it does not roll.
We also had waves crest the top of our canoe a few times. As we were dropping down the backside of a wave, the next wave came along faster than our canoe could rise up and the wave washed over Roslyn in the front. The waves were still small enough that not a lot of water got in and there wasn't enough power to push Roslyn at all.
With all of the above in mind, here are the key Lessons Learned that we took away from the weekend:
1 - We do NOT know enough about safe canoe recovery. We do not know how to unflip a canoe, how to get back in a canoe after having fallen out, and we have never practiced anything like it.
2 - Wind is a separate issue from waves. Even in areas with manageable waves, the wind pushed us around an uncomfortable amount, at one point we could not maintain our course simply because the wind was pushing us sideways along otherwise manageable waves.
3 - Route planning is critical. While we did okay with this, we still learned that proper route planning can make or break canoeing across a lake.
From the above points we have formulated an action plan to make sure we are never in a situation where we are out of our depth. The following steps/rules will help us, and anyone else who is new to canoeing, avoid these types of situations.
1 - We are going to take a white water canoe safety course. We had already planned on doing this, but we are now 200% making sure it happens.
2 - We are putting strict limits on the amount of wind we will canoe in. For us, we have decided that if the wind speed is above 18 km (11.25 miles) per hour we won't go out on large bodies of water. We will still go out on either narrow lakes or rivers that don't have enough space for large waves to form,
3 - All route planning will be done with the wind direction in mind. We are going to make sure that if the wind is close to our 18 kph limit (about 12 mph) there will be a way for us to travel our entire route within 200-300 feet of the shore line/an island that will block the wind.
4 - We are going to plan an extra day into every trip. We can canoe about 25 km per day without many issues in decent weather. For a 100 km trip we would plan for 5 days instead of 4 days and then still stick to going about 25 km per day. This gives us some extra breathing room in case we need to stop due to the weather.
5 - For 2 day trips we are going to limit ourselves to about 10-15 km distances. Having a shorter distance means we can either take lots of breaks, take a longer shore line route, or get the riskier parts of a route done during breaks in the weather.
6 - We are going to be more willing to call off a trip. Having gotten used to hiking in pretty much all conditions we rarely want to cancel a trip, but being out on the water is still new to us and potentially a lot more dangerous.
We are going to try out the above rules for the rest of the summer and then adjust them as we become more comfortable and competent.
No comments:
Post a Comment