"Wilko" wrote in message
...
Railtramp wrote:
Bill Tuthill wrote:
Wilko wrote:
Sjeez Bill, you actually enjoy running fla****er in your ducky?
Compared to rowing a raft into a headwind, it's easy!
I can't keep up with tandem canoes, however.

Rowing into a headwind is a killer. I once ran the St Louis river at
30,000 cfs in the hope of a quick ride. Everything was great until the
river took a 90 degree turn and went straight east for 10 miles - right
into a 30+ mph headwind running up the valley. If I stopped rowing, I
just surfed in place. The current taking me downstream and the head
wind pushing me back up. Only when I had my passenger hunker down on
the floor and then power rowed with my back downstream and into the
wind did I make any progress at all. It took hours to make the first
possible place to take out. Never worked so hard before or since,
though I have come close a few times. But nothing for the lenght of
time that trip took.

You rafters, you're both just masochists! ;-)

On a Grand Canyon trip many years ago (wow, like almost 20!!!) there was
such a headwind one day in Marble Canyon that I rowed with all my strength
for several hours and only gained about 200 yards of river. A big part of
the problem was that the wind kept blowing me into the shoreline eddys and I
would get washed back to the top of the stretch I had just rowed. After
about an hour, I was so exhausted that I let one of the clients try to row.
He got us blown back UPSTREAM from where we had started, and I had to regain
his ground as well as my own. We stopped and made lunch less than 2 miles
from where we spent the night before. It was the second hardest day ever on
a river....

--riverman