Kayaking Lake Mendota
I purchased the sea kayak from Matt despite knowing that I didn’t have a good place to store it, though I did have a few ideas. Madison offers lakeside boat storage racks year-round, and while I had submitted an application for the P&H Quest kayak, I had been put on the wait list for a spot. The park office told me I might need to wait anywhere from a week to a few months for a spot to open up. I considered my odds low. In a city so well known for its outdoor-oriented residents, I thought it would be incredibly lucky for me to secure a spot on a rack any time this year. I might be able to store it in my apartment, outside by the balcony, or possibly on the roof of my car in the meantime. Matt very kindly offered to drive the kayak to my apartment in Middleton for me since I hadn’t brought a check to complete the transaction and pick it up right then and there. As a result, I arranged to have him drop the kayak off the next Monday, and came home from work to meet him there. Matt only had to take a short detour from his normal commute to Madison to deliver the boat, so it worked out well for both of us.
Later that weekend, I made sure to drop by the bank to pick up a few checks. I also took a tape measure to figure out if I could get the sea kayak upstairs to my apartment inside. I figured the hardest part would be getting it the second story door to my apartment from the hallway. That would allow me to move some bookshelves and store it along the long axis of my living room for a temporary storage solution until a spot with the Madison park racks opened up. It would have been a clumsy solution, and in hindsight I’m glad the angles turned out to be impossible. I had also considered hoisting the kayak up over the balcony into my apartment through the sliding glass doors from the yard, but the tree that provides welcome shade to my deck proved to be in the way. Instead, I devised a plan to secure the kayak vertically against my balcony with ratchet straps. The neighbors who lived in the apartment downstairs didn’t have an issue with the idea, and while the apartment management was less than happy, they agreed to the plan seeing that there weren’t many better options.
When Matt pulled up on Monday, I had him park in the lot east of my building, which would be closest to the balcony. I explained my plan as we lifted the kayak off the roof of his car and walked into the courtyard behind my apartment. Matt seemed skeptical, and he had a right to be, but he offered me a hand lifting it vertical and held it in place while I went upstairs to secure it with the straps. I made sure to place a large piece of foam beneath the stern of the kayak to prevent damage if it were to shift in the wind. It was a crazy setup, but one that held.
The next weekend, I finally had the first real chance to take my new kayak out for a spin on Lake Mendota. My plan was to circumnavigate the lake again, clockwise. It’s some 22 miles around, and I wanted to compare the experience of doing so with the new kayak against the experience I had with the old one the year previous. My thinking was that the sea kayak might well be faster, and at the very least, this would give me the opportunity to conduct a thorough check-out of the boat and allow me to experiment with ways to mitigate the numbness I had felt in my lower legs when kayaking with Matt during the demo.
The first challenge was in getting the kayak to the lake. One of the things I liked most about my apartment in Middleton is its proximity to Lake Mendota. Located less than a quarter of a mile from the boat ramp, I could literally walk my kayak over. I asked my neighbor Andy to help me with the boat as I got it down from the balcony. He held it in position while I undid the straps upstairs, then helped tip it over in a way that wouldn’t make the boat impact with the building. It occurred to me that the biggest flaw with the balcony strap storage idea is that it would always require me to have a second pair of hands each time I got the kayak out or put it back. I resolved to try storing it on the roof of my car from then on instead.
One of the pieces of equipment I invested in last summer is a device I call my ‘Kayak Wheels.’ It’s an axle and truss system that supports the rear of the kayak and allows me to pick up the other end and pull it around, just like walking a dog on a leash. The setup is quick and it easily stows within my kayak while I’m on the lake. Using the kayak wheels, I rolled the sea kayak across Allen Blvd to the boat ramp. The water gently lapped against the dock while I set about stowing the wheels and my boots inside the rear compartment. I brought along a dry bag with which to store my wallet and phone. Assembling my paddle, I moved the kayak into the water, skeg first. Getting into the boat was tricky. With the bow held steady on the ramp, the boat easily tipped to the left or right as my weight shifted - much like a ladder game at a carnival. I heard Matt’s advice in my head, and changed my approach to have the kayak angled relative to the ramp to make one side intrinsically more stable. The trouble was that when I put my bottom into the seat first, my legs wouldn’t fit within the cockpit coming, and if I got my legs in first my bottom would catch on the seat. I ended up just sitting on the seatback and using another hand to pull that material back into the correct position. I nearly capsized while trying to get in.
Then, paddle in hand, I pushed off from the ramp and maneuvered the kayak around to face the northeast. There wasn’t much wind, so there were hardly any waves and I didn’t need the skeg. I wedged my thighs under the coming and pushed the balls of my feet into the forward bulkhead. My first paddle strokes were smooth and powerful, and it struck me again just how surprised I was that the kayak moved so quickly over the water for so little effort. Following the shoreline, I smoothly passed the Highland and Sunrise neighborhoods that make up the quiet northwest of Madison’s suburbs. I briefly stopped at Mendota County Park to readjust and get some water. I decided to leave the bottle in my lap for easier access. I continued around the north shore of Mendota to Governor Nelson State Park, noting the growing cumulus clouds on the horizon as the day matured. I stretched my legs, easing some of the feeling back into my toes. I ate lunch on the beach there, digging a can of Amy’s spicy chili out of my front compartment and wishing I had brought a spoon.
Continuing north, I spotted the unnamed cluster of rocks in the northern channel that is Lake Mendota’s only true island. In the summer of 2020, I made a habit of visiting the island while touring the lake on my blue kayak. It is entirely surrounded by shallow waters, so I think the only way to reach it is by kayak or over the ice in the midst of winter. I like to place a geocache to mark a special spot for each chapter of my life. While I unfortunately never got the chance, if I were ever to return to Wisconsin, it is upon that island that my geocache for Madison would be placed.
As I passed the marina, a gentle rain started to fall, blanketing the still water with ripples from the drops. A crane stalked its way through the tall grasses on the shoreline and a flotilla of loons drifted past. The water was very shallow, and my paddle sometimes dug up the mud in the water below me. I brought the kayak back out to deeper water and around some rocks I could easily have gotten stuck on. Looking up at the sky, I didn’t think the rain would last long. It was peaceful, so I enjoyed it while it lasted. I wriggled my toes and shifted my weight within the kayak in order to restore feeling. I found I had to stop again, and pulled up to the shore west of Governor Island.
Governor Island is nearly an island, but isn’t. It has a thin isthmus that connects it with mainland Wisconsin that provides access for visitors to fish and picnic there. The south side of the ‘island’ has cliffs that rise out of the water. These provided an interesting challenge for my kayak. Waves from the wakes of speedboats would hit me from one side, then ricochet off the cliff and hit me from the other. As I made it around the other side, the rain stopped but the wind started to pick up. I took another rest at Warner Park, observing the sky. The clouds had mostly cleared, so I suspected the weather would improve.
I continued around Maple Bluff, a wealthy, elegant area of town with much taller cliffs. There wasn’t anywhere to land to rest my legs or take a sip of water. I found that trying to drink while paddling drastically reduced my lateral stability. Without forward momentum or a paddle with which to brace, tipping would suddenly become a much greater threat. I lowered the skeg to keep the kayak on course despite the wind trying to pull my bow to the west. I stopped to use the restroom at Beach Park, at roughly the halfway point of the day. I was pretty much exactly as far away as possible from where I had put in. The upside to that is that with each stroke of the paddle, I’d be a little closer to home.
As I passed the governor’s mansion, the wind started to pick up, strengthening into gusts that seriously jeopardized my ability to remain stable. To this point in the trip I had been thoroughly enjoying myself, but now I needed to concentrate on the waves and push through the second half to get back. The water became very turbulent, waves hitting me from all angles, and it took all of my focus to properly brace against the waves and keep the kayak pointed in the right direction. As I passed the beach at James Madison park at the thinnest part of the capitol isthmus, the wind was almost entirely perpendicular to me. The waves came from the side, perhaps the least stable orientation for the boat. At just the wrong moment, a wave hit from the west and my right leg cramped up. Instead of leaning into the wave as Matt had taught me to, I instead dropped the paddle and gripped the sides of the cockpit coming. In an instant, I was in the water, standing about waist-high in the waves.
Thankfully, I had capsized close to shore right beside a public beach. A few hundred yards further, and there would have been no good place to land. I hoisted the kayak into the air, draining water out of the main compartment, then flipped it over. I realized my phone was in my pocket, so I got it out, turned it off, and dried it against my shirt. I pushed the kayak to shore, pulled it up onto the beach, and considered my options. I was dripping wet, didn’t have a towel or spare clothes, and was starting to get really cold with blasts of wind coming in from the lake. Shivering, I approached a handful of students playing volleyball, asking how long they’d be there. They agreed to watch my kayak while another called me a taxi. I rode back to the boat dock, got in my car, turned the heater to the max, and drove back. One of the students helped me carry the kayak to where I had parked and lifted it onto the roof. I thanked her, gave her $20 for the taxi, and drove home. The phone never recovered, and was ultimately replaced.
There are a few lessons I took away from this trip. Use your dry bags. Bring a spare change of clothes. Bring a jacket. Don’t be an idiot. I decided going forward to treat kayaking like I treat aviation: to check the forecast and do my best to be prepared for all outcomes.
