Down the Road
We can canoe, can you?
By Milt Gross
Sep 1, 2010 - 12:18:16 AM

And canoeing for us is especially fun these days, since we bought a new-for-us Old Town Pathfinder 14-foot fiberglass that we can carry easily on either of our 13-foot-long Toyotas.

And, perhaps best, is the electric trolling motor I bought from a guy last year who told me he had retired from fishing. That and the 90-ton battery that sits on the canoe floor and provides ballast while the motor hums us quietly along.

We tried the combination out last weekend in Megunticook Lake. We only glanced off one rock -- don't know how it happened -- and only got "turned around" once. Of course, we never get lost in Maine's great outdoors, just occasionally get turned around.

I originally bought the retired fisherman's motor to power our 18-foot Aluminum Battleship, created by Grumman not long after the Indians invented birchbark. But we don't have a pickup, which is likely one reason we'll never be accepted as bonafide Maineiacs, so had to rent one each time we put the AB in the water. I was even quietly looking around for a used pickup.

AB weighs about 125 pounds, so needs a pickup -- and a team of strong guys or gals to load her onto it. The Pathfinder weighs about 70 pounds, I think, since I haven't yet weighed it as once I did AB.

One recent morning while driving my bus with no passengers aboard, the "duh" moment came.

"Okay, stupid," I said to myself, "so buy a smaller canoe. One that will fit on both Toyotas." (not at once, of course)

Following a "duh" moment, there's nothing quite like Uncle Henry's to spark the moment.

Uncle Henry's online showed us several smaller canoes, and one looked more promising than the others. The owner even brought it to our house from Windsor. So we have the Pathfinder.

We put it in a the state public launch site on Megunticook, because there is a dock immediately next to the launch. That means I was able to play around with the heavy, heavy battery, getting it set without its going through Pathfinder's bottom, and adjust the motor on the side near the stern. Pathfinder is not a square stern.

That accomplished, we took it out on the lake and were pleasantly surprised by the quiet as we moved -- moved without paddling, that is -- through the water. Not far from the launch site, we managed to bounce off a submerged rock. The rocks on that lake are either visible or marked, so I'm not sure what the bounce was all about. Except it scared yet more tar out of me,* but we didn't capsize and neither motor nor canoe were damaged.

We continued and enjoyed a really peaceful ride across the lake, looking unsuccessfully for the way up alongside Fernald Point to try to find a brook coming out into the lake from a property at which we once looked. We didn't want to spend too much time looking, and we discovered that the way things look from the water are different than they way they look on a map.

Oh well, there will be a next time.

We watched a loon at a great distance and kind of accidentally were traveling at an angle toward it. It didn't dive, probably because the electric outboard was so quiet and we weren't flapping our wings -- called paddling in canoeize. We were about 30 yards from it, when it finally dived.

Apologetically, explaining to us that it knows we're quiet, peaceful folk who wouldn't scare a loon but that it had been trained as a loonlet to flee watercraft since most people aren't like us.

We understood and continued our lakeborne adventure. We were enjoying the quiet of the cruise, when we noticed a motorboat coming toward us. It was louder, so we knew it wasn't electric. It was also moving fairly fast, which we knew meant we should be awake for the next few minutes. It moved to one side and passed safely.

We noticed its wake moving sideways, toward us. I've had lots of experience paddling through wakes, aiming the bow as straight as possible toward it so it wouldn't catch me sideways. Wondering how the electric motor would handle such a contingency, I aimed Pathfinder toward the wake. We glided right through, hardly a wave motion as we did.

Wonderful! The motor did that better than my paddle could have.

The next wake came from behind, the motorboat boat having passed closer to us and leaving a larger wake. I nudged the power steering, the tiller handle, and aimed away from it so it caught our stern at a slight angle. Ah, success again. We didn't go awash nor turn over.**

So far, that motor was doing better than my paddle ever had.

Eventually, we headed back toward the dock.

Which we couldn't find for awhile.

Here, the electric motor did no better than my paddle. It didn't tell us which way to aim Pathfinder. We stared along the shore where the launch area should have been, but didn't see it.

Did we panic? What makes you think we would have, except my just mentioning that possibility?

When you're out in your canoe powered by your electric motor on a sunny afternoon and all is perfect, except you can't figure out where to aim the beast to get home, why would you panic?

What we actually did was study the shoreline. Ah, what an idea. Eventually it dawned on us that when we had bounced off that rock way back when, it was where we were going around a point of peninsula that protruded into the lake on an angle across a narrow part of the lake from where we launched the canoe.

We were so good, no compass, no GPS, no yelling for help. We looked carefully and picked up the point and aimed well out from it so as to not bounce off the same rock.

Guess what. There was the launch area.

We easily landed, against the dock and took the motor, battery, and all the rest of the stuff you carry in a canoe out of Pathfinder and placed it on the dock. I backed Ellie Echo down and, presto, she seemed as light as a feather -- a heavier-than-most feather -- and slid Pathfinder right up onto Ellie.

Strapping her down with the L.L. Bean canoe carrier took about 15 minutes and then we were off to Cellar Door Winery, about a five-minute drive.

What could be better? A fine wine the evening following a fine cruise in Pathfinder with a quiet, powerful-enough-for-us-and-the-motorboat-wakes electric motor.

It was so smooth, so quiet, so easy.

I can't wait to buy our first electric car.

But we'll try to keep it out of the lake.

*I tell those tourists, most of whom like to listen to the ramblings of these strange, hillbilly-type critters known as Maineiacs, that I've had the tar scared out of my in the woods by so many moose, falls, blinding snow, being "turned around," and other awakening moments, that there is absolutely no tar left in me. (If there were any tar in me when we bounced off that rock, it must have grown in there anew. A comforting thought. How many times do you have to have the tar scared out of you to be sure none is left in there somewhere?) If you choose to tar and feather me, you'll have to supply your own tar.
Oh, neither do I have any feathers.

**A passenger on one of my buses asked me if we carry life jackets in the canoe. I told him that of course we did, since the law requires it. But, I explained, we never wear them because they're awkward. The passenger told me we would drown one of these days.
Let's see, it's been about 50 years since I began paddling a canoe at the age of ten. Let's see, I've turned over twice, once as a teenager when a friend tipped it over on purpose, thinking that would be "cool." It was, along with wet. The second time was when I kind of allowed my daughter and a friend to tip us over. When you're in the stern, you have to allow tipping or it just won't happen. On that trip, I allowed it after we were near someone's dock. We pulled the canoe onto the dock upside down, rolled her over, and slid her back into the water. Just the way they teach you.

I do warn Dolores about the life jackets. If we tip over, I say, never mind the life jacket, just grab hold of the canoe's gunnel and the canoe will keep you afloat until "they" can rescue. And "they" can find you better, because it's a lot easier to spot an upside down canoe than an upright person bobbing around in a life jacket.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2010