Canoeing

This summer, in view of the absent Canoe Training trip in the late spring, I've pulled out my wooden canoe and taken in out in varying conditions. I welcome the shelter provided by the point and the boat field, but a lake (especially this one) does not have a direction of flow, which means you have work to move in any direction. The swells and winds are unpredictable, but there are enough obstacles (birds, boats, and rocks) to challenge my navigation skills.

The usual course is southwards first, between the rocks at the lakeside tennis courts and buoy field, outside the buoys at the pier which (in theory) prevent boats from ramming into the pier at high speed, down to the old pier near the end of the point, and back almost to the starting point. From there, I go around a smaller point that used to have rocks jutting out of the water, past the summer swimming raft off which I used to push my cousin Victoria, past the other summer swimming raft, and around back to the starting point. The round trip is a third to half a mile. Sometimes I reverse the direction.

In calm waters, I'll often overestimate the power of my strokes and have to correct for it; my old sailing instructor used to say the same of my tacking. The canoe, fortunately, has no draft whatsoever, so any rocks lurking six inches under the surface cannot threaten my craft.