This past weekend I was reminded
once again just how fast the human brain problem solves. The speed of the mind
is something rarely recognized during your average work week. That same brain
that helps you decide what to wear in the morning, what to eat for breakfast,
what to do at work, is the same brain that prevents car accidents and, well, drowning
in Class IV rapids; the latter being on full display this past weekend in
Maine.
We’ll
get to that later.
It’s been years, literally years that I’ve been searching for a
kayak to call my own. No, I wasn’t looking for some open-top Old Town lake
kayak that anybody can walk into L.L.Bean and take off the wall; I was
searching for a playboat. This search has brought me closer and closer to
owning the real thing and for the first time ever, I drove up to Maine this
weekend with my own playboat strapped to my roofracks. It was like a dream come
true! I couldn’t stop taking pictures of my vessel as it was shuttled around,
first class, on the roof of my Subaru. The moment work ended at 6pm last Friday,
my boat and I hit the highway for what was sure to be an unforgettable weekend
of white water.
Saturday morning rolls around early and
another day of rafting brings me to consciousness. Most of the time, a day of
guiding the Kennebec is something I crave but as I walked onto the loaded bus that
morning I felt a twinge of anxiousness. It wasn’t that I was frightened about
hoping back into a raft after a month long, work related, sabbatical. I just
wanted to kayak instead! But, like most things, work came before play and we
hit the river with a seven boat trip of excited customers.
After what felt like the longest day
on earth, Mason and I start packing the car for our long anticipated, inaugural
run with two brand new Jackson Rockstars. The boats look perfect as we strap
them onto the roof for the ride up to the river. They’re scratch-less, and so
smooth and light that they float around atop the Thule roofracks as if the
boats themselves can’t wait to hop off and into the river. We’re being
accompanied by Tyler and some other guy who appears to be a hitchhiker that
Mason had picked up on his way to Windfall (the basecamp). They pack two,
heavy-duty rubber tubes onto the kayaks and we hit the road what was sure going
to be an interesting night.
After running shuttle we get to the
top of the Kennebec dam. The river is blowing out 8200 cf of water every
second, Big Water… Hell. Yes. The dam is notorious for changing “scheduled”
flows and I didn’t want to believe that Big Water was happening until I saw it
with my own eyes. Sure enough, the river had crept up the sides of the gorge
and was lapping away at roots and trees that on most days saw less than a
spinkle. Besides the quickly setting sun (it was 7:30pm) it seemed that
everything was going well. I raced back up the stairs to put on my gear and
notice Mason and Tyler rummaging rather greedily through my trunk.
“Nah, man… I swore I packed it!”
“Ah, I think I forgot!”
“Yeah, uh, I really don’t have my
life jacket right now.”
“And I forgot the extra…”
Here we were, finally, getting ready
to drop our boats in the water for the first time and we were missing TWO life
jackets. Mason was going to pack an extra for the hitchhiker who was still with
us, and he forgot, and Tyler… well… He just straight up didn’t bring his.
As someone who is a habitual planner
with near OCD precision I started to feel a bit deflated. We were so close! But,
with the desire to hit the river overpowering common sense we did a bit of
improvising. Tyler found an extra life jacket somewhere, somehow and Mason
donated his life jacket to the hitchhiker who I was beginning to think maybe
wasn’t a hitchhiker after all. Finally, down the stairs and off to the river.
I had set my boat up in the grass
back at Windfall so I was able to sit in it with perfect comfort right from the
get go. (This is where I’ll actually be reviewing the boat, so if you know
nothing about kayaks then just be prepared to feel a little bit left out). Both
of our boats were equipped with Happy Feet and Sweet Cheeks. I nestled my
booties into the bottom of the boat and locked them into place, along with my
knees and hips courtesy of Jackson’s perfect outfitting. Of every Jackson boat
I’ve paddled, the comfort level has been leagues above the competition. I
couldn’t move an inch within the boat, just the way I liked it… With outfitting
this comfortable it was as if the boat were just an abnormally shaped and colored
part of my own body. I slipped into the water for the first time.
This new Rockstar, compared to
previous models, felt perfect. It was
as if everything I had wished for in a boat had come true. It boat felt a bit
tippier than its predecessor, but not in the way you would imagine. After
paddling a 2Fun that was too small for me I really got to feel what “too tippy”
actually was. This Rockstar had just the right amount for someone in the middle
to low end of its weight range. The tippyness gave me the ability to move more
to the stern and bow of the boat. It was so easy to slice! I would have played
around a bit more but the current was taking me after a few practice rolls and
the river had grown dark with night. I wanted to get a move on. I paddled
forward down the river, easily slipping to my stern and bow in my vain attempts
to wave wheel. While the previous Rockstar remained a solid, stable boat it
wasn’t the easiest to get to stall. This new Rockstar needed minimal paddle
work to want to get on edge or on its nose. It felt like it wanted to have fun!
So I let it.
The first class III-IV section on
the Kennebec is Rock Garden. Mason and I split the pour-overs in an attempt to
really test out maneuverability. I watched as two perfect surf waves slid by,
(next time for sure) and we continued to head down river. The boat was FAST. It
seemed to feel very similar, in speed, to a Titan Genesis… (Although MUCH more
comfortable). I bounced over waves, catching air and doing my best to stay
upright through the munch of class IV rapids. The boat crossed eddy lines and
boils with ease and I launched off Big Momma (15’-20’ crashing wave) into the
hurl of water. With the Sweet Cheeks supporting me I felt like I had a better
vantage point of the Kennebec in a kayak than I had before. The run continued
and nothing went awry until Supernatural. The last big wave before Cathedral
Eddy. It was here where I was amazed at the speed of the brain.
The wave hit me, hard and knocked me
over and onto Pocket Eddy’s boil line. As I began to situate myself to roll I
felt something… strange. The right side of paddle, my rolling side, felt much
lighter than it should of. I tried to roll and felt zero power. “Maybe I was
slicing it?” I adjusted and tried again… nothing. Still underwater, and on a
boil line, I felt the end of my paddle, sans blade. Nothing felt broken, there
was nothing sharp, there was just… nothing! It was here where I had to make
some of the quickest decision making of my life. I couldn’t pull, no way… not
on my maiden voyage, so I scrambled. My off-side roll was only 50/50 in combat
and I didn’t want to risk another failure, especially with my waning breath. I
also didn’t want to hand roll because that was only 50/50 too and I would have
had to ditch my black paddle into the black water at night where the chances of
finding it again would be very slim. “Could I switch my paddle?” I thought it
was worth the risk. With the boil line streaming around my upside-down body I
very carefully turned the paddle around so that the left blade was now by my
right hand. I rolled, success! All of that felt like it happened in slow
motion, truthfully it must have been five seconds. Crazy.
I held my broken paddle up in the
air and looked back at Mason who was paddling furiously towards me. “Dude you
were under for so long! I thought you were going to pull!” I showed him what
happened and told him what I did. “That’s crazy, man!” He said.
I was so scared. It was the most
frightened I had ever been in a boat. Not of what had happened, I kind of felt
like the man after that, but for what was to come. We still had half a river to
run! Including a hit called Maytag which some people put in Class V territory.
With my broken paddle I was forced to quit experimenting with my boat and start
thinking about how the heck I was going to get down the rest of the river! I
was so bummed! I had driven five hours to do this and now my Werner Player
Carbon paddle had decided to take a vacation. If that blade had come off on
something like Lachine, or the Penobscot, I could have lost my brand new boat.
I was pissed. Luckily, this was the Kennebec and I knew the lines of the river
perfectly. Still though, the broken paddle made me run the highway and miss
Maytag, something I had been looking forward to running for weeks. Fortunately
I was able to watch Mason surf it with the craziest two bounce surf I’ve ever
seen. This wave is massive. For real. House-sized.
So, review halted due to poor
manufacturing of my paddle but soon, SOON! (like, this weekend if Werner gets
their butt in gear and sends me a new paddle) I’ll be right back out there for
another go. Now only if I could convince the sun to stay out later.
