Eddy Lines
by John Lane
These are a few of the numbers I just crunched while reviewing my position as boating chair. Sometimes the load gets kind of heavy. At these times, I am heartened by donations and development. I don’t mean dollars here, but the gift of time from our volunteers and seeing paddlers come into our program and develop skills. Mary Spikowski has recently been seen doing enders on the Lower Gauley, Dave Agnor is joining the boating council as the boat shed manager and Barbie Demmy will be handling inflatables. We’ve been seeing some of the new faces from our schools return for meetings and more.
With these changes, the ebb and flow of the boating calendar remains the same: autumn rains and winter snow will provide springtime whitewater delight. Fall brings the cycle of preparing and planning for the next season of boating. Speaking of this, the scheduling meeting is Monday, November 5. This is the time for people to come and sign up to lead trips and schools. We hope to do the bulk of our scheduling this evening. Check the boating calendar for time and place - and an inducement to help our volunteer leaders!
Destination: Boating
by John Rogers Lane
This month’s feature is the Marblehead Peninsula. We took a trip there in late September and a half dozen COP sea kayakers got to test the waters up there. The peninsula is just shy of a three hour drive from Columbus. You can always find a spot out of the wind to paddle. There are plenty of put ins to be found. Camping, motels, restaurants and stores abound. In season, paddlers need to watch out for plentiful pleasure boat and commercial traffic. Off season, which is mid-September through early May the boat traffic drops off along with the water temperature.
Our trip took us into Sandusky Bay from the state Dempsey access to Johnson’s island with a stop at a private sand beach before heading back. With the wind from the northwest we paddled in the lee all day and had an easy time. Next day there was a big wind from the south so we paddled in the lee of the peninsula’s north shore from Lakeside to the Marblehead Lighthouse, the oldest operating light on Lake Erie. We managed to dodge the Marblehead ferries and had fun landing in the light surf on the limestone ledges at the lighthouse.
If you go, keep a weather eye out to the west. This is the typical direction weather comes from and the lake can go from mirror flat to gale force wind and waves in 30 minutes. Crossing to the islands can be dangerous, with open water stretches in excess of 3 miles. There is a Coast Guard station at Marblehead and VHF channel 16 is monitored for emergencies by the coasties and other boaters. It’s easy to have fun up there but you need to be prepared in case things turn sour.
Photos by J.D. MacMillan WA8ZHN
How to Run a River
by Julia Schmitt
Be nervous and psyched up about heading to any river, even if you’ve paddled many times before.
Gather your gear together. At a minimum this means paddle, helmet, lifejacket, and clothing. Any more means a map, sprayskirt, and shoes. If it’s multi-day: throw in your toothbrush. The tent and sleeping bag and other stuff is there to protect you to a degree. Don’t sweat equipment make or type, or temperature rating of your bag. Regardless of the level of sophistication of your stuff, you will be cold and wet anyway and that is a part of running a river. Bring food; all food will taste wonderful.
Show up a little before the starting time so you can be self-righteous around those who can’t get the gist of getting anywhere on time. This way too, you have money in the bank for any grievous errors you may make on the rest of the trip.
Drive the drive and talk to talk of
friends even if you have just met.
Get totally confused about how the shuttle is going to work so no one will ever engage you in future shuttle negotiations even though you are capable of coordinating an entire battalion of beagles let loose on a rabbit farm. If in the future you still can’t avoid the shuttle debate, wear a baseball cap backwards.
Unload gear. Reload extraneous gear making sure that you end up with more tie-down lines and bungees than you came with.
Thrill to the feel of your first sensation of your boat on the water. Let every muscle relax as your face spreads into a grin, your back straightens, and your shoulders remember why they exist. They are not just for lifting and carrying the worries of the world.
Read the water as others have instructed you and as you have discovered and are still discovering on your own.
Let the plants, the rocks, the sky, and the weather create an image that you want to hold onto forever. Many days are gray and dreary and sometimes there isn’t enough water to run, but this is a part of how to run a river.
Synchronize your mind and your body by doing ferries, surfing, and eddy turns. Work those liquid features till you can’t work them anymore.
Ignore media-induced experiences such as, extreme, rad, marathon, and epic until you know you are ready for them. Part of the beauty of running a river is knowing your limitations and practicing good judgement for you and for others in your group.
There is one hard and fast rule concerning river lunches: Always, always eat below major rapids and never above them. If you don’t know the reason for this, you are not yet ready for anything rad, or epic. However, the lunch location should be varied as much as possible, e.g., on a sandy beach, on a log, by a perfect wave, by serene water, in the boat, under a rock overhang, on a big rock, or by a bed of trillium. Eat in the rain, eat in the sun, eat where you can see sunlight dancing off of rippling water, eat where you can laugh at others, eat where you can feel the earth. You may forget your lunch and mooch, or you may bring treats to share. Sharing is another part of knowing how to run a river.
See exactly how and where you are going to put your boat. Watch wave patterns and streams of bubbles. What you were taught in formal classes will be remembered and forgotten at the same time as you interpret textbook teaching and turn it into real knowledge. Body English no longer means reading between the lines of what someone is saying, but a way to move your slender craft through the complexities of moving water.
Hustle your experiences ahead. Big water seems scary, but the bigger that it is, the closer it is to you, the more you will understand. Watch select others run a river. You will know them by the way they move; they are a part of every living thing around them. Duplicate their moves so you will know too. Do intricate moves in tight spots and grandiose moves when you feel yourself being swallowed by squirrelly eddies and surging waves.
Be last to the take out and sorry that you are there. Carry your boat, it has carried you all day.
Repair your gear, study maps and plan for the next trip.
Run rivers for many seasons and for many reasons and you will always know how to run a river.
Cherish all friends who run rivers. They will be there, for you, forever.
You learn river running only on viable, natural rivers. Truly knowing how is sharing how with others, and by making sure that river running will continue on, long after you are gone.
Preserve the Experience
Preserve Rivers.
Volunteer Spotlight
Steve Howell
Steve is the man behind getting the boating calendar listings into the newsletter each month. More on that later; more on him now.
Steve grew up in Barnesville, Ohio, home to the "Ohio Pumpkin Festival". He says this fest and the pumpkins brought there beats the Circleville Pumpkin Show vines down. Two years ago the Barnesville winner weighed in over 1100 pounds!
This country boy got to see much of the west when the family accompanied Dad on his underground coal mining machinery repair business rounds and shows. The family rafted in Colorado, Utah and other places. One of his favorite memories is of a motor raft trip down the Colorado from Moab to Lake Powell in a Korean War vintage inflatable. The guides laced a rope platform between the pontoons that stuck out in front of the bow and he would lie there, holding on tight through the rapids. As he described surging over the top of a wave and looking 20 feet down to a boiling cauldron of muddy water, I couldn’t help but wonder whether his brain, stomach or the hole was churning most!
Steve joined COP in 1997 to backpack. Now he’s not sure if he did any COP backpack trips but he has gone on some of our day hikes. He lists the AT as something he’d like to do and other fantasy trips include anything boating, the Mohican to the Ohio River and a river trip from Lake Erie to the Ohio. Like so many of us, Steve has other hobbies that take away potential play time. Steve lists computers, ham radio, and science fiction reading among his hobbies.
Steve has sampled the job market as well. He assisted in his dad’s business for a while, has been a police officer in a nearby suburb and an income tax auditor. These days he is a trust tax accountant for Huntington National Bank. In about two months he’ll be up to his eyeballs in tax work.
Steve’s role with the boating calendar is to confirm trips and other boating events and pass those along to the newsletter editors. This is an important job - keeping us informed of where we’re boating when. He queries the boater list monthly to check with leaders for accurate details. Leaders need to respond so we can get an accurate calendar posted. When you get the email with the ham radio signal AB8JC (AT) yahoo.com you’ll know it’s Steve. With this picture, we hope you’ll link the country boy from Barnesville with the man behind the boating calendar!
Val and Bob Zen
Here’s the scoop on Val and Bob Zen. We welcome them to COP! Val has been working on something that bugged her. She felt it would help if we had maps to the Wednesday Night Paddle putins available so people wouldn’t get lost trying to find them. So she volunteered to make that happen. We look forward to adding that to the 2002 WNP calendar. By the time you read this, Val may also be the newsletter boating liaison. We’ve needed someone to wrench stories out of people and she may have the leverage.
IN THEIR WORDS:
We’re Bob and Val Zen, and consider ourselves still fairly new to canoeing. Our initial outings last fall proved to be disastrous. The first experience on the Hocking, we were left upstream without our paddles, literally. After calling back to the canoe livery, they brought our paddles, but since we were their last scheduled trip of the day, it was now 5:30. We pushed off the shore, and our "experienced" friends turned over while getting into their canoe. All their stuff, and our stuff which we put in their canoe for safekeeping got soaked. Then, because we were so late getting started, we were out on the river ‘til 10PM, no flashlights, pitch black. No idea of the territory ahead of us. Couldn’t see the shore. Nothing but gravel all along the stream. What a nightmare.
Second trip was with another friend. Went to Ft Morgan. More water this time, but big trees snatched us right out of our canoe. Made the big mistake of grabbing onto the tree to hold us upright. Nope. Glub. Glub. Catching carp in our teeth. That was the trip that ate the cell phone, the camera and the prescription sunglasses. Didn't know about dry bags. Didn’t figure the river would dare overturn us. Ha! Not once, but twice, I found myself looking up at blue sky. Second time, it was by the dock. Gal decided she was getting out and she was getting out right now. Unfortunately she didn’t notice, there was no ground under her, and so as she stepped out, she went down about 6 feet, pulled the boat over on top of her, and I went flying.
Third trip with yet another friend. One who knew what to do, knew how to steer, never been overturned before... Surely we’d be dry on this trip. But there loomed a large pair of rocks, and as we approached, we were sucked in sideways, and before we knew it, over we went.
Well, we had exhausted our supply of friends who wanted to go canoeing with us, but undaunted, we started looking to buy a canoe, and found a great deal last February. Now nobody buys a canoe in February. There is still ice on the lakes and streams. Who in their right minds would even be looking in February? By now, you’ve guessed, we’re not in our right minds. But don’t tell. Got that puppy strapped atop our wagon, and nearly air-lifted ourselves home in that winter gust. Ice under us, parasail over us. A little bit of thrust. Whoo-wee! What a combination!!! Thinking about introducing it as a new Olympic winter sport.
Anyway, in June of this year, we found COP on the web. First WNP we attended was at Madison Lake. Met Terry and Vicky and some of the others, got hooked up with someone who told us of RWB, so we took the time and met up with the group. I can tell you that of all the ways to see the fireworks, this is unquestioningly the best. No crowds to fight, no traffic snarls to contend with. No bugs, no ash or grit in your teeth. Just a leisurely paddle after its all over. Next year, we all need to get those glow-in-the-dark necklaces. We’d be waaay too cool. Anybody know of a source?
We’ve attended all of the WNPs through August, met some really nice people, and taken the Canoe I School, plus paddled a number of other streams on our own. Then in Sept, things got a little hairy, with planes falling out of the sky. My schedule getting changed, we haven't been out much. Friend #2 got herself a camper, and now she’s willing to camp BY the stream, but not venture near the stream. She’s following a different sound that’s taking her in another direction, the sound of the bluegrass fiddle. Have had many folks come up to us and say they’d like to go canoeing with us, after having seen ours atop the car, but not having a means of delivering additional canoes has become a hindrance.
We live in Pickerington OH, with 3 sweet, lovable chow chows. Bob works for Winbook Computer, a laptop company headquartered on the westside of Columbus, and I work for Micro Center home office in Hilliard, OH.