Skip Pendleton kayaking on the Upper St. George River
Kayaker at the Scene of the Crime
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Perched precariously on a ragged pile of granite boulders in the middle of a steep Class III whitewater rapid, my wife Nancy and I concurred, “Things aren’t going too well. “  That was an understatement. Jonah, our 20 year-old much used and abused Mohawk XL 15 canoe, was pinned between jagged rocks on the upstream end of our new digs, submerged in a thousand pounds of turbulent, fast moving water and going no place soon.Â
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I was torn between feeling really bad for Nancy, the victim of my latest attempt to accomplish a goal on the cheap, and a sense of profound embarrassment due to our current predicament. Worse yet, my much too expensive lunch, a $5.00 veggie Italian sandwich, was in a “waterproof “bag attached to the boat and violently flapping in the waves. “What were the odds it would stay dry?” Losing my lunch along with everything else added insult to injury.
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Our adventure actually began last fall when I embarked on my Jonah reclamation project. After years of mistreatment and neglect as the “club boat” for our paddling group, Jonah was in sad shape: multiple patches, uncomfortably outfitted and numerous hairline cracks. With an investment of almost $100.00, I repaired all visible leaks, added a carrying yoke and foot braces, and replaced worn-out foam pedestals with state of the art mesh seats.  “Jonah is ready for our spring canoe trip on the Machias,” I announced.
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Today was our maiden voyage, an early April practice run with a group of friends on the upper St. George River in the hill country of coastal Maine. Patchy snow lingered in the nearby fields and woods, ice shelves lined the shore and water temperatures were slightly above freezing. From the outset, Jonah was uncooperative. He was too heavy, didn’t understand the command “draw,” and water poured through his porous hull at a much faster rate than we could bail. All of which leads to the obvious question, “Why did Nancy and I probe the most difficult rapid on the river with bad boy Jonah?”  Well, the answer is poor judgment on the part of the First Mate – that would be me. I had run this rapid a couple of days earlier in a kayak without incident and overestimated Jonah’s willingness to respond to the test. Poor execution didn’t help.Â
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We entered the rapid on river right intending to move left and navigate through a beefy wave train in the main channel. Jonah angled decidedly right, slammed sideways into the rock pile and defiantly refused to budge. Equally unaccommodating, the St. George poured gallons of water over the gunnels. As we attempted to push off the rocks, our friend Rich, following close behind us, careened into Jonah from upriver, solidifying our relationship with the barbed granite. Our only choice, exit the boat before the powerful forces of the rapid flipped us and Jonah onto the gnarly boulders.Â
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Fortunately, we were with an experienced group of whitewater paddlers. The rapid was located at the site of an old mill, with stone walls and abutments upstream and on river right. Quickly, our group got a throw bag to us and Nancy, a firm believer in the time-honored adage “women and children first,” was pulled upstream to safety. After several failed attempts, our friends got another throw bag to me which I carabinered to Jonah’s bow thwart. Our hardy companions leveraged their angle and towed Jonah and my lunch to the base of an old dam. Another throw bag and I quickly joined Jonah in a frigid eddy looking up at protruding ice shelves on a ten foot, vertical stone abutment. Skip bravely volunteered to assist me paddling Jonah to safety, since Nancy was in hiding.Â
Jonah continued his uncooperative behavior, refusing to respond to all paddling commands. Missing our intended eddy, Skip and I tumbled downriver in continuous rapids for another quarter mile. When we finally reached shore and Nancy, the verdict was in – “Jonah was history.” Alas, my veggie Italian sandwich was soggy, cold Mediterranean mush, but the pickles weren’t bad.Â
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