Moose Bow Canoe ripped in 2

[deerfly]

When I was a punk surfer back in the day, "gnarly" was the right word for anything you might want to give pause before doing. Simple, easy to remember and apply with uncanny precision to almost limitless circumstances, even when stoned or tripping on mushrooms.

So I hereby recommend you canoeing ninja's take a page from surfing nomenclature to describe the hazardous water and avoid all this confusion and injury.

carry on....

 

[Guest]

This is called a fall?

We have lots of falls nearby, but nothing called “rips” or “shoals”.

We do have lots of “Falls” in the name of streams and rivers. The trout stream just down the road is “Little Falls”, or “Little Gunpowder Falls”. Yes there is an actual falls. Our local homeriver is Gunpowder Falls, again there is a significant abrupt drop where the Piedmont Plateau drops down to meet the Atlantic Coastal Plain.

http://www.mgs.md.gov/geology/

Falls named stuff all along that line. Little Falls on the Potomac, and Great Falls.

But at least our creeks ain’t Kills; we kept them Squarehead Dutch out of Maryland back when we were naming streams and rivers.

 

[yellowcanoe]

Rips riffles falls rapidsDead waters. We got em all in Maine

Regional nomenclature is a head scratcher

 

[boatstall]

We have the occasional whitewater, associated not with falls, but with fails.
Like when a levee fails. Rarely is the term "riffle" used in these situations. Can however create a hell of a rip current.

 

[Dr John]

I'm sure this is true other places as well, but when you look at the name of a river feature in Maine you have to remember that a great number of them date from the logging era. When your riding down the river a top of floating logs with only a pitch pole to steady you from falling into the springtime flow, you might consider a relatively small rapid a falls.

One other thing about the Moose Bow. Like many Maine rivers on a holiday weekend it is full of relatively inexperienced parties in rental boats. And most of them feel the need to post videos of their "whitewater" "accomplishments" on youtube. There are a lot of good paddlers in Maine and some of us Flatlanders can glide down those Maine rivers gracefully too... Our YouTube videos are pretty boring though.

Dr John

 

[Guest]

That was my buddy Scottb and Kayak Ken. Scott was able to patch the boat to finish the trip
Scotts an experienced paddler, paddled many trips with him. Sometimes stuff happens!

The most regrettably part of the “I-wasn’t-even-there-but” brouhaha is that we’ll probably never read a trip report.

It has hallmarks and potential to be a drama of Dionysian proportions

https://www.google.com/search?q=tra...=6UU0Wf2zLIrGjwSA4JjICw#imgrc=lKOnuSLEpn22oM:

 

[dougd]

I've been paddling with Scott for well over 10 years and outside of modestly posting some great pictures he is not one to do a write up. He is an experienced paddler, former Maine Guide, has more trips under his belt in a lot of different kinds of waters then a most people I know and is a strong and good paddler, one of the better I've had the time to share with. Scott is not a novice and he is one of the few people I trust with my life on any river we run cause sh*t can happen on any dang river regardless of the flow or conditions. A small river can bring as many challenges as a big one, just a different environment.

Yeah his boat was pretty messed up but he fixed enough to get off the river, that's what he's good at, finding a solution when it gets tough. As some of have stated sh*t happens and it can only take a second to make it a messed up day and I have to think that most of us who paddle have found ourselves in a spot that hasn't been very savory, I certainly know I have. We all deal with it best we can. Just speaking my .02 worth.

dougd

 

[JoeO]

The video of Mosquito rips does not do it justice There was a huge pile of wood on river left with branch sticking out into your path. The right side had one foot drop over rock there was a cross current going left to right if you let it the current could throw you into the rock at the center I entered river left then road the cross current left to right and paddle hard I had a partner in my boat so there were two of us paddling. If he was paddling the explorer solo it would have been a difficult move especially loaded. I was glad to get through with only scratches on the bottom of the boat. The problem is it is a fairly easy rapid and water can be stronger than expect and because it is easy people let there guard down especially in a plastic boat. I was in kevlar and I was paddling with someone I usually do not paddle with so I was extra cautious going through. The wave and current were just as strong as this video of Spencer rips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiSCFMxrQyM This was the day before. Two years ago the water was not as high and there was a drop (at Spencer)and my canoe came down hard and put a crack in the rear of the canoe after hitting a rock under the water

 

[yellowcanoe]

I think coulda woulda shoulda is called mon morning quarterbacking. And the title of this thread misleading

It's always good to learn however. And if you put enough miles on the water it'll happen to you!
It seems prudent to know how to do field repairs. The Maine Guide Ray Rietze said that if you hadn't had an oops you hadn't paddled enough. Ray could field repair any canoe with enough spruce root and pine tar and cedar
A most quiet unassuming expert and a resident of the woods. Most of us are visitors

 

[JoeO]

All I am saying is it was harder than the video looked and I did it the day before. They guy from Cry of the loon told us the first year to be careful of that rips as a lot of dump and have damaged his boats there

 

[pblanc]

From the perspective of the camera used to shoot that video it is hard to judge the strength of the hydraulic created by the ledge.

It is clear that there is a big rock at the right side of the hydraulic immediately after the drop because it is kicking up a pretty good-sized rooster tail. That is the rock that rolled the guys in the red canoe to their port side because they did not counter balance. It does not look feasible to shoot off either the left or right corners of the hole/hydraulic because there are rocks in the way. And it looks as if there is at least a moderate amount of recirculation in the eddy to the right of the hydraulic that is formed by the series of rocks.

Looks like in that video the best option apart from walking or cheating and scraping down to the right of the ledge is to get up a head of speed and punch the hydraulic straight through the center. I am not particularly surprised that that particular smallish drop causes quite a few people trouble.

 

[Kayak_Ken]

No Title

Since a lot of this Moose River trip involves me I guess I should give my side of it.

"Here is more info This is what my friend said " he lowered it the first little ledge then got in trying not to get wet, the eddy force drew him right into the wave side surf style and flipped him into the rock in the center of the rapid breaching the explorer. his friend paddled right into a tree hanging into the river and he swam too"

The first part of this statement pretty much described what happened to Scott. Seeing the picture of falls with the rocks exposed was surprising to me. When we went thru the rocks were just underwater which would explain the eddy that caused the mishap. I was hauling my canoe over the top of the falls when I looked up and saw Scott's canoe come to a sudden stop, then get spun around to his left side and go upstream and have the stern go under the water flow. The canoe filled with water and rolled over on it's left side. Now Scott is in the water and the canoe hits the underwater rocks with the open side facing upstream. Suddenly it looked like the canoe was broken into two pieces as the two bottom halves of the canoe were touching each other. It turned out that the canoe wasn't torn in two but that both gunnels had broken and each side had torn most of the way to the floor and then the floor of the canoe folded in half. When they got the canoe to the river bank the canoe popped back into it's shape.

I got my canoe to the base of the falls as quick as I could and hopped in. Next thing I know is I am being sucked up stream fast. I had to paddle my arse off to break free of the eddy. Once I could look around I saw Scott in the water hanging on to his folded canoe. Someone said to grab his gear which was floating down stream. Since Scott looked alright I went for the nearest piece which was a paddle pinned against a tree that was out in river with the root end upstream and the tree top pointed downstream. As I approach the tree the current which was moving diagonally across the river at this point and sweep me into the tree and flipped my canoe. I was very lucky that several canoes were behind us and helped me flip my canoe over and collect most of our gear. I can't thank them enough for being there when I needed them.

The next morning Scott worked his repair skills magic in holding the canoe together with some Para cord, duct tape and Gorilla tape. After some careful testing Scott felt that it would hold together enough to get him to a possible take out spot. When we arrived there we met another couple who were drying their gear out. Found out they were rescued by the same group of folks as us. Scott decided the canoe would hold up so we went for the next set of campsites. We arrived there with no problems and spent the night. Rising early, packing up and another canoe inspection and we headed out. We reached Attean Pond and it started out calm till we were about half way across then the wind started picking up at our backs. Before you know it we had about one foot waves to deal with. You can now hear the canoe creaking and can see the crack starting to open up. Some how Scott's repair held without leaking and we made it safely back to the takeout.

Scott's paddling skills have been called into question. I can't think of another person I would rather have at my side or watching my back on land or water than Scott. As far as my paddling skills go, on a scale of 1 to 10 I would say I am about a 6 1/2, maybe a 7 on a good day in a canoe and 7 1/2 to 8 in my sea touring kayak.

I would like address a couple of lessons learned:

I was wearing a pair of NRS Splash pants and Mukluks. They filled with water and made swimming very difficult. Was able to do a quick canoe over canoe rescue but wasn't able to get back in the canoe with them full of water. Need to have them SAFELY fastened in such a way that they will be able to keep water out.

Found out my PFD needs to have some kind of straps going between my legs to keep my PFD held in the proper position.

I was lucky that the gear that could float did and the items that could not got wedged in the canoe and I didn't loose anything. The next morning those good folks were able to round up the rest of Scott's stuff.

I had the right clothing for staying warm while wet. Can't say enough about that.

A whole roll of Gorilla tape is a very good idea to carry.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I'm still confused as to what happened to Scott, other than that his canoe ended up in an upstream pin and wrap. Did he run the entire rapid or portage part of it?

Here's another video of Mosquito Rips beginning at about 18:00, run by three very amateur tandem teams. There seems to be an underwater rock in the middle of hydraulic below the small drop, which the first canoe hits. Scouting and reading water would reveal that rock. The second two canoes easily run the drop to the left of the underwater rock, and there are no rocks to hit below that line. The water in this video seems to be low medium. Maybe the wood pile that Joe refers to was blocking a left side run.

Kayak Ken, what is that a photo of that you posted -- the Moose Bow? That's a much more substantial drop than Mosquito or Spencer.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Here's a really hapless run of Mosquito at about 3:10. The paddlers have no idea how to control the big tandem in cross currents and end up aiming at and crashing into the right side rock garden.

 

[Kayak_Ken]

It's a picture of me going over Kayak Falls on the French Broad in North Carolina. I just wanted to show that even thought I am from Florida that I have been in whitewater before.

 

[Guest]

Ken, I appreciate reading that from someone who was actually there.

Found out my PFD needs to have some kind of straps going between my legs to keep my PFD held in the proper position.

I know there are some survival or rescue PFD’s that have crotch straps (and most infant one too). MTI, NRS and others sell crotch strap adapters.

https://www.mtiadventurewear.com/products/accessories/webcrs100000-crotch-strap-set-black-universal

A crotch strap sounds uncomfortable to me except in extreme circumstances. A well fitted PFD snugged up tight should suffice aside from serious whitewater swims (or abandoning ship mid-ocean).

My preferred PDF is well fitted (it took a BMO brick and mortar visit to try on a dozen before I found the right one). It can’t ride up when the side straps are cinched properly; there is a beer belly stopper in the way. Skinny dudes may lack that advantage.

Admittedly, those side straps are often not cinched tight, see “comfort” and “Oh-hell-I’m-not-swimming” hubris.

I have taken a swim or two with that PFD loosely fastened and it is not swim friendly with the zipper just below my nose.

 

[Canotrouge]

Ken, I appreciate reading that from someone who was actually there.



I know there are some survival or rescue PFD’s that have crotch straps (and most infant one too). MTI, NRS and others sell crotch strap adapters.

https://www.mtiadventurewear.com/products/accessories/webcrs100000-crotch-strap-set-black-universal

A crotch strap sounds uncomfortable to me except in extreme circumstances. A well fitted PFD snugged up tight should suffice aside from serious whitewater swims (or abandoning ship mid-ocean).

My preferred PDF is well fitted (it took a BMO brick and mortar visit to try on a dozen before I found the right one). It can’t ride up when the side straps are cinched properly; there is a beer belly stopper in the way. Skinny dudes may lack that advantage.

Admittedly, those side straps are often not cinched tight, see “comfort” and “Oh-hell-I’m-not-swimming” hubris.

I have taken a swim or two with that PFD loosely fastened and it is not swim friendly with the zipper just below my nose.

I agree that if your PFD is well fitted, it should stay in place. I swam a lot in ww and still do quite often, either on purpose or not, teaching swift water rescue course you end up swimming lots.... Sometime in class III III+ and I never had a PFD getting off position or close to comping off of my self so far! But again, not all pfd's are the same.

Take the time to try a bunch on, and be sure that is it done up properly! There is no shame in asking some one to help with adjustment!!

 

[JoeO]

The first video Glenn showed where the canoe went through was where the pile of wood was.
I lost a life jacket once. I was on the Baker river in nh on the quick water section. There was almost a river wide strainer on the surface the current was fairly slow and the water was about 3 feet deep. My friend and his girl friend in and OT camper bounced off the strainer then went around. I planned to do the same the problem was I was in an OT tripper with my daughter and 2 labs The dogs freaked on the bump and jumped out and my daughter fell out thus causing the canoe to flip on me and go under the strainer.
Next thing I know I am standing in the middle of the strainer holding on to the throw rope that got caught to the strainer my life jacket is about 5 feet in front of me tangled in the tree. My wife and friends were were screaming and freaking out. I yelled to them telling them I was ok. Pulling myself up the throw rope I grabbed my life jacket and put it back on after I unzipped it.
The current inside and under the tree was very strong I would not have made it to the life jacket with out the rope. After my lifejacket was back on using my legs and feet I could feel under the strainer there were no branches so I let go of the branches and shot out the other side. At this point my friends were ready for that. We then had to free the canoe it had a hole in it near the gunnel in pushed through a spot where I had a D ring so the adhesive had made the royalex soft. Other than that the canoe was fine and I patched it with fiberglass and gflex.
Basically what happen was the strainer dammed the river and then the river went under the tree and the Bernoulli\s principle was in full force[FONT=Roboto, arial, sans-serif]. The current on the surface was slow but under the tree unseen the current was like a sluice With the pile of wood on Mosquito rip something similar most likely happened.
This is the only time I have ever lost a life jacket I have swam flood water class 2 to 4 I use a class 5 jacket because of my weight. The force of the water ripped me out of the life jacket which is a good thing or I would have been trapped
[/FONT]

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

A PFD coming loose story.

In 88 I was running the Cheat River canyon for the fourth time, this time in a Whitesell Piranha instead of an ME, and at high water. I confidently went first down the center of class 4 Big Nasty, but couldn't accelerate that pig boat to the left fast enough, as I could in a slalom canoe, to avoid the gigantic, raft-swallowing hole at the bottom. I side surfed it for about 30 seconds and then got violently window-shaded -- deep, dark and for a long time under insanely churning water.

When I surfaced and made it to shore, I found my Hi-Float PFD completely unzipped. How, I know not. The only thing that held the PFD on my body was my DIY waist tie. I had replaced the usual waist tie straps with prusik ropes held together by two large carabiners (for rescue purposes). Weird stuff happens in rapids. I might have drowned if my PFD had come completely off in the depths of that violent hole.

I didn't have much time to feel scared or sorry for myself, as I had to immediately rescue another swimmer and his boat.

Go to 2:50 in this video to see raft carnage in the hole, which you have to avoid by getting to extreme river left.

We ran the Cheat Canyon in the 80's with all open canoes including two boaters in their mid-60's. The average single stick skill level was much higher then. Today, almost everything is kayaks and rafts.