The weather was great, for September, and it’s calm waters and blue skies as we paddle about, inventing names for the land masses we pass. There was Forbidden Island (complete with signs discouraging would-be explorers), Black Bird Cove (we’re not entirely sure what a cove is, but it probably has something to do with rocks and water), and Chipmunk Isle, which we barely escaped with our sunflower seeds in tact...
Canoeing’s fun, and not as hard on my arms as I thought it would be. The real challenge was in coordination; namely, paddling, capturing the experience on camera, and eating sunflower seeds at the same time. I didn’t tell Scott this, but I’m actually pretty self-conscious about my ability to spit seeds gracefully. I just never really figured out how to get a good range past my front teeth. I usually chew and chew till no one is looking, and puff as much air as I can – half the time getting it on me or my shoes instead of the designated spitting area. This was even more challenging sitting in the front, knowing that even if I did make the water, my half-chewed seeds would float back to him.
Scott’s real easy going though, and we’re having fun singing half-remembered sea shanties and claiming lost fishing lures and bobbers as bounty. We pull to shore and Scott says he’s going to get his sail out. Cool, I think, I didn’t know canoes could work as sailboats, too.
He then pulls out a kite. Odd, I think, and he tells me he wants to try something. It took quite a few times to catch the right wind and coordinate getting in the canoe, but MAN! When he got it going, we went WHOOSH! I didn’t paddle at all! In fact I just worked as the rudder, putting my paddle in to slow us down so we wouldn’t capsize. "HARD TO STARBOARD!" he’d excitedly say, and I’d thrust my paddle on the right, so we could keep in line with the winds the kite was catching. We easily went a mile and a half of our six mile journey by kite, not paddling at all!
Then the winds changed, and down went the kite, and we were too far from land to get it going again. The weather was changing too, so we had to paddle hard to get back to shore amidst rocky waters with a newbie in the steering seat. After we strapped the canoe to the top of his truck, all I could think on the way home was: MAN CANOEING IS AWESOME. And WE JUST SAILED A CANOE WITH A KITE. And IT WAS AWESOME.
Turns out he’d never done it before, either. He just had heard about kite sailing with a boogie board, and that in Sweden they are investigating it as a way to save energy on bigger ships. I’m not entirely sure if he is the first to try it in a canoe, but for the purposes of this vlog, I’m going to say he is, and proclaim the mighty Scott as the inventor of a new way to sail. Check out his vlog at Blah Blah Blah Et Cetera to follow his adventures on land and sea in our landlocked Colorado wild.
And on my new things to try list, here’s a CHECK next to Try Canoeing. And a bonus CHECK for trying canoeing… With A Kite!
A special thanks to Arial Baty for the piano music -- it's not an adventure without a soundtrack! The aged paper is from The Castaways Trading Company. And thanks to Elijah Atkins (www.elijahatkins.com) for the firey intro that helped launch the vlog.
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