FUTRE TRIPS?

I said right at the outset of this trip that it was to see whether I had another solo long distance paddle in me and whether at the end I had got them out of my system,

I think the answer to both questions is a qualified yes.. While I didn't make it to Chicago or even my revised destination of Detroit, I did cover nearly 1500 kilometres in some of the toughest paddling conditions I have ever encountered. .The Mississippi River was a doddle compared with this trip. What made the river hard was the unrelenting heat which was just about the only weather condition I didn't encounter on this trip. I didn't have one day off the river due to the weather. On this trip I had 6 days in the first 2 to 3 weeks. I had storms, extreme thunderstorms (I have never seen so much purple on the Doppler weather radar on the TV),strong winds, heavy rain  tidal currents and river currents. Friends had commented beforehand that I was going uphill and that I should have started in Chicago. I was aware of all this but the bottom line was that my boat was in NY. Besides I knew of two kayakers who had done what I was proposing one of them on a sit on kayak.. The elements were against me right from the date of the start. The Hudson River is a tidal estuary and one would normally choose a start date to take best advantage of the tides. I didn't have that luxury. On the day I started low tide was around 11.00am and of course this got later day by day and as I moved up the river until it got tot the stage where for the first 6 hours of the day I was paddling against the tide. Then when I got up to Albany the estuary became river and the tide is joined by river current reinforced by the heavy rain over the preceding Memorial Day.

The first portion of the Erie Canal is actually the Mohawk River so there is some slight current even in normal conditions. When the extreme thunderstorm hit the canal water level rose 3 feet in a matter of hours and some 10 locks were closed for varying periods.

When I made it on to Lake Erie there were several days when the conditions were so bad I was the only boat on the water. People I met at various marinas were amazed when I turned up and even more so when they heard where I had started the day (of course none of them knew anything about a kayak's ability to handle rough conditions---or mine for that matter although there were a couple of occasions when I wondered whether I had just made the worst decision of my life) ( I can't speak highly enough about my boat-it is so well made and handled everything superbly--I even found out it surfs well when I was spun around by a wave and picked up by the next one for hair raising but mercifully brief ride).I basically spent every day on the lake in the surf zone, ending up soaking wet and exhausted.

As for future trips, I don't think there will be any more but I have learned never to say never. I did jokingly say to my son in law that the next trip would be on the Snake river in Idaho which is just about as far away from NY as it is possible to get and that I expected him to come and pick me up. For the moment , I still have the boat .It is at the Inwood Canoe Club and next w/e will be taken to the families holiday home near Rhinebeck for storage