I are An Idiot

I may have once wrote about a news article which told of fireman going into a burning bedroom to find the bed on fire and a man sleeping in it. They woke him (he was drunk...but I digress) and asked him what had happened. "I don't know," he answered using slurred speech, "it was on fire when I got in it." He is an idiot. So am I

Yesterday, I took the SOF I had built at a workshop with Mark Rogers at Superior Kayaks. I also took the tuilik he had made. I launched onto Lake Michigan and was looking good. The boat is grey and the tuilik black (as were my neoprene mittens...but I digress...again). I decided I would stay near shore and work out in a small area. Things were going well at this point. I did some braces and sculled a bit and was feeling every bit the competent paddler.

A light on-shore breeze was stirring up a gentle swell, just enough so I could feel the water. One tiny swell rolled through and it felt like the boat was going to tip over. I braced and continued on. Gradually, however, the boat felt less and less stable, like the first time I ever sat in a sea kayak. I began to doubt myself and did not like the feeling of my confidence ebbing away. I started back toward the launch site and noted that the boat felt even less stable. Then I became aware that there was water in the boat.

Of course, I thought, my tuilik must not be sealed tightly, and I have taken on water. Then I realized that the water was not inside the sock with me but, rather, between the sock and the hull. Holy crap, I am sinking! I paddled and braced like hell hoping to make it back to shore alive. The boat was getting harder and harder to control. Then, slowly at first, the bow started to rise and an odd thought went through my mind: I thought of the Nile River (what the hell?). Then I thought of Cleopatra as the stern started going under. The stern touched bottom just as the bow reached the beach. I sat, waist high in water, and wondered what had just happened.

After wrestling with several hundred pounds of water-filled-SOF, I noticed a tear in my hull. I noticed, too, that it was an very neat and linear one and knew that I should have felt it when it had occurred. Anything that would have pierced and sliced me that way should have made itself known at the time. UNLESS, unless it had a hole in it when I got into it. Later, at home, I found the culprit and put the entire story together:

First, I usually have two float bags in the SOF, but I had removed the stern one for another purpose and had not returned it. That explained the butt-down landing, like an airplane flaring at touch down. Bad mistake, almost unforgivable. I also realized that, somehow, the line that held the boat hanging in the garage had been tightened (not sure how, yet) and that the garage door opener thingy had apparently made the surgical incision in the hull.

So ends my tale of woe and idiocy. I learned a lot of lessons (again) and was lucky the tuition wasn't higher. Now, I get to practice repairing a SOF.

Paddle safe...

DS