Monday, July 19, 2010

Yellow Submarine, BB or The Lynx?

Oh, what to name our new boat?  Debby sez Yellow Submarine.  I've been calling it The Lynx because it "links" us to rivers.  Susun likes "BB (Banana Boat)"  Maybe we will have an LBR poll.

We sure love our boat and look forward to all the places it's going to take us. On Friday, we tinkered with the boat in camp for about 3 hours getting all the rigging "just so" while Susun napped in the shade of the pine forest.  We finally actually got on the water about 3:30 pm at the Osborne Bridge river access point (RAP) in Harriman State Park.  It's a nice maybe 5 mile stretch of mostly flat water with maybe a mile of fast water.  It was a perfect place to figure out how to make the boat behave.  Luckily, we had a stout headwind so we really had to paddle and couldn't lollygag amid the beautiful scenery.  Being forced to keep the boat aligned properly in the headwind was a perfect baptism for learning about our boat.  In the rocky stretch, we tried to hit as many eddies as possible to learn how the boat would spin and turn on the eddy lines.  It's a graceful boat, that's for sure.  This was also a perfect initial float because we could boat right up to our campground.  The one-way shuttle distance from camp is a mere 10 minutes so we had everything derigged and both vehicles back in camp by 5:30 pm.  Piece of cake casual run!

On Saturday, we left at 10 am to do The Last Chance run.  The put-in is below Island Park Dam.  Mid-July sees the highest annual flows.  We were running on 1140 cfs.  It's a short stretch of only a few miles but the current is fast and it takes only 45 minutes.  There's a lot of fast water and some Class One obstacles.  Luckily, mid-morning, the river is practically deserted.  All the kids show up in the heat of the afternoon.  We had the whole river to our lonesome selves.  Our practice the previous day really paid off and it was a very casual float.  We learned on Friday that Susun would be using the shorty canoe paddle in front while I used the kayak paddle in the back.  This arrangement works great and it's much easier on her wrists, too.  She really likes the sawed off canoe paddle.  The whole excursion, running our own shuttle and everything took less than 3 hours.

Our next float with the boat will be no later than Friday up on the Salmon River.  Hopefully, we will run Friday, Sunday and maybe Monday, too.  Then it's going to be a long break before we get the boat wet again--probably won't be until mid-August.  Here are some photos.

1 comment:

stasea said...

Great picture. You two are doin what ya love!!