An onslaught of wood

I had a chance to do some more barge wake surfing Tuesday morning, as there were three rigs heading upstream on the Memphis riverfront.  I found the waves tough to get on, however.

For the last couple of weeks there has been an impressive amount of wood floating down the Mississippi--tree trunks, branches, and tons of smaller stuff.  While there's not really anything new about such conditions, I this is the longest sustained period of woody debris in the river that I can recall.  Right now paddling upstream or surfing behind an upstream-moving vessel means occasionally having to weave through a gauntlet of logs.  The worst thing is that some of the wood is so waterlogged that it's floating several inches below the surface where I can't see it.  At one point on Tuesday my boat hit a submerged log, stopped dead, and flipped.  I did a quick remount while the pilot of the towboat I was surfing behind was probably marveling at what a goober I was.  And then a little bit later I was paddling up along the Tennessee side and the big surf rudder on my V10 Sport hit a branch that was sticking out from the bank underwater.  The rudder now has a good-sized ding I need to repair.  And quite a few times my paddle hit logs lurking a foot or so beneath the surface.  These are strange days indeed out on that big river.

This morning there was a lot of driftwood and trash floating in the harbor, and at one point I had to stop and dislodge some junk from my rudder.  Once I was out on the river I saw a good bit of driftwood, but maybe not quite as much as on Tuesday.  The river is cresting right now around 26.5 feet on the Memphis gauge, so I expect in the coming days the debris will start to thin out.

I paddled for 60 minutes today.  An upstream-moving barge rig was just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge as I left the harbor, and I tried to surf its residual waves.  By this time the waves' amplitude was low and their wavelength was long, so I really had to sprint hard to get even a few seconds of surf.  I worked on that for 20 minutes or so before returning to the harbor.

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Monday photo feature

A couple of weeks ago I discussed the results of the U.S. Olympic team selections in whitewater slalom.  I'd be remiss if I didn't share the flatwater sprint results as well.

Three flatwater athletes will race for the U.S. in Paris.  Nevin Harrison (pictured above) qualified a spot for a U.S. athlete in 200-meter women's single canoe at last year's world championships, and subsequently won the right to fill that spot.  Harrison is the defending Olympic gold medalist in that event, and has also won two world championships.

This past month, Jonas Ecker and Aaron Small won the 500-meter men's double kayak event at the Pan American championships and thereby qualified for the same event in Paris.

Harrison, Ecker, and Small all hail from the greater Seattle-Tacoma area.

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Some great paddling and some so-so riding

I took the weekend off from fighting the rudder-line wars.  So two of my three surfskis remain out of commission, maybe permanently for one of them.

I took a bike ride Friday morning, following my usual route out east on the Greater Memphis Greenline, around the lake in Shelby Farms, and back home via the Greenline.  I felt sort of tired and didn't push the pace.  But it was a beautiful day: the whole week had been muggy and rainy, but those storms early Thursday brought in some cooler, drier air, and Friday was sunny with a high around 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

It was sunny again yesterday, and warmer, but still not so humid.  I had a rather delightful time out on the river.  As I paddled out of the harbor there was a barge rig coming upriver, and I went to inspect the surfing possibilities behind it.  The waves were moving fast, and they were a bit confused because the towboat was turning to line itself up with the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and so surfing wasn't easy.  But I did get a handful of decent rides, and even linked a couple of runs (hard to do with barge wakes).  As the waves started to peter out I paddled down below the Harahan Bridge and then up along the Arkansas bank, most of the way to the HDB.  As I started my ferry back over toward the harbor's entrance I found some good residual waves from that same rig I'd been surfing behind earlier--it was now well north of the HDB, but for some reason waves seem to linger longer around that bridge.  I got to do some more nice surfing.  After that I returned to the harbor and did a couple of strong surges back to the dock.  So all my energy systems got some work during my 80 minutes in the boat.

I couldn't paddle this morning because the handbell group I play with had its last gig of the season.  And then I went to lunch with my mom--it is Mothers' Day, after all.  So my whole Sunday routine was out the window, and by mid afternoon I was feeling utterly lethargic.  It was a reminder of why I prefer to do my athletic stuff in the morning.  Finally, around 4 o'clock, I got myself out on a bike ride, and I rode for a good half-hour before my body finally started to embrace the idea.  After a 70-minute ride, I was still feeling a bit sluggish, but glad to have gotten some blood flowing.

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Arrrrgh.

One of my projects this week has been installing new rudder lines on my three surfskis.  I think the general wisdom is that any surfski paddled regularly should have its lines changed once a year, so the boat I keep down on the riverfront was definitely due for new ones.  Meanwhile, my other two mostly just sit in storage in my garage, but when I took one of them down to Ocean Springs in March I noticed that one of its lines was getting pretty worn right at the rudder post.  So I decided to just change them out on all my boats and head into the summer with some peace of mind on this particular boat-maintenance issue.

The problem is that changing the rudder lines on a surfski is a monumental hassle.  No other task I can think of makes me want to scream impolite words at the top of my lungs like stringing rudder lines does.

The first challenge is to get the new line to feed through the tube inside the boat.  The best-case scenario is to have the old line still in place, because then you can just attach the end of the new line to the end of the old and pull it through.  But... you can't just tie them together, because the knot is too bulky to fit through the tube.  In the past I've used a little piece of electrical tape to join the ends, but you have to make a very neat, very thin tape joint so it will fit through the tube.  And then you have to pull it through very gently, lest the tape joint fail deep inside the boat.

This time around, my strategy has been to fray the end of each line, like so:

and then soak each end in G-flex epoxy resin, twist the two ends together, and let it cure overnight, with the intention of pulling it through the next day:

Each time, the epoxied joint has been too bulky to fit through the tube; so I have to whittle it down with a sharp knife or work on it with a piece of sandpaper.  One of the joints failed during this trimming process, and I had to glue the ends all over again.

(If you are not so fortunate as to have the old lines in place for pulling through the new lines, I know of a couple of things you can try.  One is to feed a stiff wire through the tube, and then use that to pull the new line through.  The challenge with this method attaching the line to the wire in a way that will fit through the tube.  Meanwhile, there are videos on You Tube that show the use of a vacuum cleaner to suck the line through the tube.  I've tried this a couple of times, and I seem to remember having success at least once but having more trouble other times.)

As of this writing I've been working on two of my three skis, and I've successfully installed two of the four new lines.  The other two have raised the frustration level of this project to a new height.  On Tuesday morning, while pulling on the old line to move the new line into place on one of the boats in my garage, the joint hit a snag inside the boat and broke.  Upon further inspection, I realized that the tube was broken inside the boat.  This was bad, because a surfski is a closed shell with no way to get inside short of taking a saw to it.

That is in fact what I ended up doing to my oldest ski when I found its tubes were broken a few years ago.  I hated to do it, but at least by that time the boat was getting old and beat-up and I was using it just for training anyway.  This photo shows what I did:

First I cut a circular hole in the deck aft of the seat bucket.  Peering through this hole, I found that the tubes were broken in many places and would have to be replaced entirely.  To do so, I would have to access the boat's insides closer to the footboard, and I ended up using a circular saw to make slits on either side of the seat.  After much painstaking work I got the new tubes in position and secured them in place, and then, by way of repairing the surgical damage I had done, I installed a hatch on the back deck (I ordered it from West Marine or some such supplier) and used Kevlar and fiberglass seam tape to patch the slits on either side of the seat.  The boat is now rather ugly and at least 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) heavier than it was when it was new, but like I said, it was already sort of beat-up anyway and relegated to training duty.  It has paddled just fine, and that's ultimately all that matters.

The broken tube I discovered Tuesday morning causes me more anguish, because even though I've had this boat eight years, it still feels new to me because I've mostly kept it in the garage and gotten it out only for races.  I was so infuriated by it all that I had to walk away from it and go down to the river to paddle (the whole point of all this work, after all).

I took the other boat from my garage--the one I hadn't messed up yet--down to the river with me because I wanted to bring my training boat back home so I could replace its rudder lines.  The boat I was taking down there happened to be the most stable one I own (V10 Sport), and that was a good thing because there was a strong south wind blowing and there were some pretty legitimate downwind conditions out on the Mississippi.  They weren't epic like the Miller's Run or the Columbia Gorge, but they were more than adequate for practice in reading conditions and linking runs.  And they were ideal for the mood I was in: infuriated with the awful turn my rudder-line-replacement project had taken, I needed to do lots and lots of hard sprints until I was too exhausted to feel angry anymore.  And that's what I did.

I brought the other boat home from the river and spent some time working on it yesterday.  I got one new line strung, but had that glue bond fail on the other one like I mentioned above.

This morning I returned to the river.  Some heavy thunderstorms had moved through overnight, part of the same system that spawned deadly tornados farther east in Tennessee.  By the time I got down to the dock the sun had come out and there was a mild breeze blowing from the northwest.  There would be no downwinding today, but I paddled the V10 Sport out onto the river hoping maybe there would be some barge wakes to ride.  But the river was free of traffic, so I just paddled for 60 minutes, working hard on hip rotation.  With a more stable boat under me I felt comfortable rotating hard out on the river, so much so that my whole pelvic area was quite tired by the time I was finished.

This afternoon I went down to the shop to work on my training boat's other rudder line.  I was expecting this task to be the smoothest yet; after all, should anything go wrong I have access to this boat's innards through that hatch I installed a few years ago.  I shaved down the glue joint so that it would fit through the tube, and began pulling.  The line hit a snag, so I opened the hatch to investigate... and discovered that the tube had broken up into many fragments.  This is a tube that was new just a few years ago.  The only thing I can figure is that when a boat lives outdoors year-round, the tube material can't withstand the constant fluctuation in temperature, with the freezing and thawing and all that.

I'll have to install a new tube, and that'll probably mean taking the circular saw to the edge of the seat bucket again to get the tube properly situated there.

Or...

Maybe it's time to retire this old boat.  Fifteen years is a long life for just about any canoe or kayak, and I've certainly invested a good bit of money and many hours of labor to keep this one going for this long.  It's seen me through hundreds of days of training and exploring, and it feels like an old friend, but perhaps the time has come to take it behind the barn and put it out of its misery.  Sigh.

That would leave me with the V10 Sport that's currently down at the dock (the state of whose insides I have yet to explore), and that other boat in the garage (a V10L) that also has a broken tube.  In that boat I'm pretty sure there's just one break near the stern, and I'm hopeful that I can cut a smaller hole, run the rudder line across the break, and repair the hole with a smaller hatch.

Anyway... what a week I've had, all because of what at first glance looks like some simple routine maintenance.  And yes, I do have sort of an issue with the manufacturer of these boats regarding the durability, accessibility, and repairability of their interior parts, but I'll save that rant for some future post.

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Monday photo feature

John P. Batson of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, competes in the "Nooga Loop" canoe and kayak race on Saturday.  This is a 10.9-mile (17.5-kilometer) race on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Photo by Rick White.

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Warmer weather makes wetter better

Both the weather and the water are getting warm enough that I'm starting to feel comfortable surfing wakes out on the Mississippi.  I got to do a little of that both Tuesday and Thursday.  On Tuesday I was on the river north of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge when I saw the Coast Guard's buoy tender the Kankakee coming upriver, and I found some nice waves in its wake.  The vessel was moving fast and I really had to sprint hard to catch something, but each time I did I felt that rush of satisfaction that's part of what makes surfing/downwind paddling so addictive.

As I was paddling out of the harbor on Thursday there was a barge rig heading upstream in perfect position for me to get out to it, and I was eager for more surfing goodness.  I achieved a couple of nice rides, but unfortunately there was another barge rig coming upriver behind this one, and it started blaring its horn at me, so I moved over toward the Arkansas bank to ease the pilot's troubled mind.  Once I was down below this towboat I checked out its wake, but the waves weren't nearly as good.  Oh well.

I had a bike ride planned for Friday, and my biggest challenge was the weather: when I checked the Internet radar Friday morning, it showed a huge mass of rain moving across Arkansas right toward Memphis, and I didn't think there was any way I could do my ride in the morning without getting drenched.  I figured I would have to wait and hope the rain would move out by the afternoon, but as I continued to watch the radar it looked like the system was moving slowly enough that I could squeeze the morning ride in.  I rode the Greenline out to Shelby Farms and back, thinking there was a good chance that the last 20 minutes or so of my 95-minute ride would be done in the rain.  But the rain held off, and once I was back inside I checked the radar again and the rain had only just arrived in Forrest City, about 50 miles west of Memphis.  So it was moving more slowly than I’d thought.  And when the afternoon arrived with still no rain, I checked the radar again and saw that the part of the system that appeared headed for Memphis had fallen apart.  Spring weather is unpredictable.

Yesterday I headed out on a slightly longer paddle--80 minutes--and I was expecting it to be a calm distance paddle.  But as I left the harbor I saw three upstream-moving barge rigs down below the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges, so I knew that before I was done I'd have an opportunity to surf some more.  I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled up into the lower reaches of the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back downriver.  By this time the barge "convoy" was passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and once I was below the last rig I paddled in to explore the surfing possibilities.  The waves were moving fast, and they were sort of wandering from side to side rather than moving in an organized wave train, so I really had to sprint to catch them, and once I did catch one, the ride didn't last long.  But it was good practice for the next time I'm in a true downwind situation.  I had to focus on staying balanced on the crest of a wave, and keep my eyes open for another run to catch when the one I was on petered out.

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes on a river that was all clear of barge traffic, and that was okay with me.  Surfing is hard work, and I was ready for a calm session.  All this week I'd worked on that thing that's been the theme of the whole winter and spring for me: improving my rotation from the hips.  Again, now that swimming is no longer such a frigid prospect I'm feeling a lot more relaxed out on the turbulent waters of the Mississippi, and rotating more freely.  It's still a mixed bag, though: some days I feel like I'm still making myself do it rather than doing it naturally.  Today I actually felt better rotating out on the river than I did in the harbor.

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