It’s not quite as daring or brave as it sounds. Perhaps you arrived here expecting a tale of bravery and heroism. Lost souls, stranded by a summer storm, and the courageous search party that rescued them.
This is not that story. The most dramatic, the key, event in this story, was the failure to secure two kayaks to the rope ties properly. You see, instead of feeding the rope through the cleat, then back over and around, I simply slipped them over. It was calm, at the time. Surely that would last?
Overnight Wind
The night got windy. The morning found us with no kayaks. I was down at the dock in the morning before breakfast. Counting kayaks was not even on my mind at the time. I had grabbed my fly rod to cast for some morning Perch. A good start to the day. Caught about 10 in about 15 casts. You either catch a bunch of Perch, or none at all. I set down my fly rod and started walking back to the cabin. There was an empty space where there should be two kayaks tied up. “Hmmmmmmmmm……” was my reaction. It didn’t take long to figure out they had slipped off the ties and floated away.
Our cabin is at the west end of a 19 km long lake (12 miles). The wind was from the West by South-West. The little bit of south to the direction was going to work in my favour, I hoped. I looked to the East, looking for something red and something orange bobbing next to a dock or on the shore down the line of cabins. Nothing in sight.
Search Party
Now for the search party, it was me. I grabbed a couple pieces of ski tow rope and they keys for a Sea Doo and I set off on my morning adventure. Initially I guessed the wind would have blown them up against something along the 35 or so cabins to our immediate East. If someone noticed, they likely would have pulled them up on a dock or on shore. It’s a pretty helpful group of cabin owners along our neighbourhood. Nothing spotted in our bay, so on to the next most likely areas, just keep heading East. It’s a long lake, but a narrow lake, with a few islands, and a few points and a 45 degree bend a few kilometers to our East.
Past the point of our bay, at what I call First Island, I saw a long orange form nestled in the reeds. It was in a spot that made sense according to what I had guessed as the second most likely drift pattern. I felt like I had just correctly solved a mystery, like on CSI, using ocean current charts and some computer simulation. In reality, going East was about all they could have done.
The Orange Kayak
I hoped to find them both together. The red one just out of sight, in some taller reeds. All I found was the orange one.
Loop the ski rope through the handle and attach to the Sea Doo and the search continues. As I was hopping back on the Sea Doo. I saw someone paddling a red kayak over along the shore. Surely this was a good Samaritan retrieving it for me? I idled up to ask. On my approach, I could see this was not my red kayak, but she was coming from the direction my red kayak might be. I stopped and asked. She had not seen another red kayak. Hmmmmmm…. again. Where she was paddling from, along the North shore, East of the resting place of the orange kayak, should have encountered my red kayak. I will have to go search further.
The Island Tour
Along the shore I motored, orange kayak in tow. Past Second Island. Past Go Go Island. No red kayak, so maybe it found another path, a mysterious current may have swept it along a different tack. I circled Go Go Island and headed across to the reedy area across the other side of the lake’s narrows. A good place for a a kayak to get hung up, I hoped.
After searching the weeds and reeds, I headed back towards the South side of Go Go Island and Second Island. Glancing left towards the South shore of the lake and right towards the south side of the islands. Nothing caught my eyes. Across the open stretch of water, looking left to the cabins, docks, shoreline, and right as I made way to the South side of First Island.
The Red Kayak is Found
That’s when I spotted something red, resting in the reeds of the South side of First Island. Maybe 100 yards, but around the corner, from where I had found the orange kayak. Red and orange kayaks are found. Took me an extra half an hour, but afterwards, the drift patterns all make sense. Likely only a few degrees of difference in the drift put them on different parts of the same First Island.
Another rope looped through the handle and a few minutes to tow them both back to our dock, where they where tied up again, secured to the same cleats, but it you look at the second image below, zoom a bit more if you need to, they are tied properly to the rope cleats.
The “adventure ends”. No kayaks were harmed in this story.