Adventure on the High Seas

(OK so we live inland but it was a little bit of an adventure on water.)

Friday 1 July was Canada Day. The weather was very nice all weekend so Sunday we decided to go out on the lake. Hubby and I set out early afternoon in a canoe and rowed up the lake and back. We saw dark clouds coming in over the boathouse and hubby asked if I wanted to go in; not wanting to be the usual nervous nellie and not having had much of a work out I said no. Ha! this turned out to be not the time to change one's nature.

We were roughly in the middle of the lake when the wind started to kick up and we tried to turn the canoe around to head back but the wind really kicked up and we weren't getting anywhere battling the wind and the waves that were surprisingly large. Not that large but bigger than you would have expected on a community lake, almost white caps - large enough to nearly capsize us when we turned the canoe.

I was none too happy being in the middle of the lake at the mercy of the elements so we headed for the shore in the safest way which just so happened to be at the opposite end from the boat house. After hanging on to a (private) dock for a bit to see if the wind would die down, we beached the canoe. We could either portage it through gardens, abandon it and walk back to base, sit it out and hope we weren't in for a long storm.

There were two other boats out, a couple in a kayak who were at right angles to the wind and not far out so were able to return and a pedalo who were not far out but couldn't get back. (It's hard work pedaling those things on a normal day I'd hate to think what it would be like pedaling into the wind.) While we were at the private dock the motor boat set out and towed the pedalo back in. I knew there was little hope they would see us but I also knew I would have been far from happy if we had stayed in the middle of the lake waiting to be picked up.

We had started to carry the canoe so that we could put back in at a more sheltered spot and follow the shore back to the boathouse when a home owner called to us. She had just seen us and was concerned that we had been there a while. She said it happens all the time people getting stuck because of the wind and to just leave the canoe and she'd drive us back. We declined her offer of a lift as we were not far from the boathouse but we did thank her. (The houses on the shore are large and priced accordingly and we would have thought wouldn't have been happy to have the hoi polloi invading their back yard.)

All's well that ends well but the morale is that sometimes being a nervous nellie is a good thing.