On Saturday mornings at 9 AM during the summer months the City of Bellevue Parks and Recreation Department hosts a canoe trip through the Mercer Slough. This is a very popular trip, and one that I had been hoping to take my family on. However, it has proven next to impossible to get everyone up and going in time for this trip during the summer vacation, and with school now in session it simply can not be done. The kids are just too zonked from school activities, or are doing school activities Saturday mornings. Sigh...
I decided to go it alone. However, instead of shelling out for the privilege of renting a big old Discovery 169 rental canoe and paddle, and instead of hauling my Discovery 169 canoe out of storage deep within my garage, I opted to take my Cadence out for a (gasp!) non-competitive outing. Yessiree, this is not a race report!
Thinking about it further, going through Mercer Slough would be an excellent test of my boat's new weed cutter.
After loading up my car with boat and boating paraphernalia, returning to the house only once to retrieve the forgotten GPS unit, I drove 5 minutes down the road, 5 minutes down the freeway, and 5 minutes down a few more roads to Bellevue's Enatai Beach Park. This park is located directly under the I-90 bridge from Bellevue to Mercer Island and extends somewhat to the south. In fact, this might be one of the few parks in the area with covered parking, as the concrete bridge overhead provides ideal protection from the elements.
Painted on several of the bridge pylons were notices saying "Boat Launching Prohibited". This confused me, as I know this park has facilities for renting canoes and kayaks. They have to be launched from somewhere!
With a little trepidation I decided to go for it anyway. The canoe trip would be leaving in a few minutes, and there was no time to put in elsewhere.
I took the Cadence from the roof of the car and onto its dolly. After filling it with PFD, paddle, water bottles, shoes, etc., I wheeled it down to the far southwestern corner of the park's gravel beach. Perhaps if I launched it here no one would complain. After all, it is far from the rental area, outside the swim area and reasonably away from the fishing dock. There were no signs posted here, either. The only problem was that this meant rolling the boat over some boulders down to the beach somehow, and then retrieving it after the day was done.
Hmmm, what to do?
As carefully as possible I rolled the boat over the boulders down to the beach. That worked fairly well, until the rudder began digging into the gravel. It was quite difficult keeping the pressure off it, and putting the hull down on the rocks while going down to the stern did not help the finish of the underside of the hull. Sigh...
Eventually I got the boat in the water, my tennis shoes and dolly back up to the car, and only a few more scratches in the finish.
Meanwhile, this guy pulls up in his car with a kayak on the roof. He takes his kayak over to where the rental folks were launching their boats, and puts in there on the nice gravel ramp they have that goes right down to the water. Perhaps I should have asked? Oh, well. I guess I can retrieve the boat that way later!
As I shoved off I noticed the canoe trip group leaving Enatai Park and heading towards the slough. After meticulously drying my feet and putting on my cycling shoes, I headed after them. In almost no time at all I caught up. Rather than just slowly putter around behind, I decided to head over to the Newport Yacht Club marina for a short warm-up.
A few moments later I arrived just outside the log breakwater. Gee, that was fun. What to do next?
All around me were splashes from some sort of tiny fish. I couldn't quite make them out, but they seemed to be jumping out of the water a short distance and landing with little splashes back into the water. Shortly after I stopped pedaling, the splashing stopped as well.
The last of the canoes could now be seen making its way through the channel under the I-90 bridge over the slough. Ok, perhaps it was time to join the group.
Between the Newport Yacht Club marina is a shallow corner of Lake Washington. This is something of a given considering that it is at the mouth of a slough. Aquatic weeds love to grow in these waters, and the dominant species of aquatic weed in this lake is Eurasian milfoil.
Milfoil is aptly named.
In fact, this area could be considered a milfoil reserve, considering how thickly it grows.
I pedaled straight into the heart of it.
At first, I could feel the weeds start to snag the propeller. They would soon be cut off and the resistance was gone. Very quickly, however, the propeller became so bound up with weeds that it became difficult to pedal, and pedaling did not move the boat forward or backward. In fact, the boat was moving sideways. Uh oh.
Taking a canoe paddle that was stowed beside the cockpit just for such situations I was able to paddle my way over to an area that was not so thick with weeds. Once there, I tried pedaling forward a few strokes and then reverse for a few strokes. The pedaling effort seemed to get easier with each change in direction. In fact, after a few moments of repeating the forward/backward pedaling it was as though the propeller was no longer fouled! Excellent! The weed cutter was working!
Over on the north side of the water near the shore I spied a white boating fender floating in the middle of another weed field. Deciding to rescue the hapless fender from the clutches of milfoil I pedaled over at high speed. Again, the propeller got so wound up with weeds in the thickly matted area that it was rather difficult to pedal. Deploying the paddle once again, I paddled to the fender and retrieved it.
It was still in excellent condition. There were no identification markings on it, nor any lines attached, so it was now MINE, ALL MINE!
It was a short paddle back to the relatively clear area where once again I was able to clean off the propeller through the use of the pedals alone.
By now all the canoes had disappeared into Mercer Slough. It was time to find them.
The route goes under the I-90 freeway bridge between the bridge support pylons. There are some signs as well as bulkheads provided to direct boaters away from submerged pipelines, snags and shallow water. Even on a cloudless sunny day like today it was a relatively dark and forbidding place, mainly since without direct sunlight the water itself is dark and next to impossible to see through to the bottom.
Beyond the bridge the channel passes under an arched bike/pedestrian bridge and between thick stands of blackberry bushes. The sweet perfume of ripe berries filled the air, bringing with it memories of having picked some of these bushes years ago on a canoe trip with my wife and son. Maybe some day we'll do it again.
Just ahead I saw the group of canoes stopped at the Sweyolocken Boat Launch. I cruised up slowly to meet them.
The naturalist in one of the canoes was talking about the history of the area, as well as describing some of the wildlife and flora. The most interesting thing I recall him saying at this stop was that one could eat just all of the berries in the park and at worst just get a little sick - with the exception of the bright red berries that none of the animals seemed to be eating. Those berries were from the nightshade family, and are considered highly poisonous.
The group continued northward through the slough. I tagged along behind, providing a little paddling technique coaching for a dad in one of the straggling boats. We were heading up the channel at a speed of almost 2 miles per hour, which gave everyone lots of time to look for evidence of wildlife in and around the water.
The fender was starting to get in the way of my pedaling. I stopped moving, opened the rear storage hatch of the Cadence, and tossed the offending fender inside. It was pretty easy to open and secure the rear hatch, though I don't think I would want to try to dig too deeply for anything while out on the water.
The next stop was at the footbridge midway up the slough near the blueberry farm. The naturalist pointed out evidence of muskrats and beavers that had made their homes in the banks of the channel. With the lack of rain this summer the level of the lake had fallen. This exposed many of the tunnel entrances into their burrows.
While we were listening a duck flew down the channel, under the bridge and plopped itself right between a couple of the canoes. It then paddled over to the side where it joined another group of ducks apparently waiting for us to leave.
After a few minutes we continued our travel northward. Many of the other canoeists had taken notice of the different looking boat I was in, and were very curious about it. Even the naturalist and his companion were interested in the possibilities of using leg power to move boats through the water.
Eventually we came to a fork in the channel. In the 1960's, before it was realized that building in a swamp was not a great idea, the City of Bellevue allowed developers to build an office park in the slough. They weren't complete idiots, however. They did require the developers to leave a fairly sizable greenbelt buffer between the buildings and the channel of the slough. This has helped tremendously in maintaining the numbers of wildlife and waterfowl, as well as keeping overall water quality much high than it otherwise might have been.
Meanwhile, the office buildings are sinking at a rate of 0.25 inches to 0.5 inches per year into the peat and mud of the slough. A nearby arterial road had to be rebuilt using large blocks of styrofoam under the asphalt in order to stop it from sinking as well.
As we continued our trip up the slough to its beginnings at the mouth of Kelsey Creek we saw a large turtle sunning itself on some sticks protruding from the water. It was about the size of a child's head.
I ran into quite a few more weeds here. It took a couple of moments to clear the propeller, and I decided to stay behind to help the last straggler keep up. With one hand grasping the gunwale of the canoe midway along its length I pushed it along while pedaling. This gave me a little more of a workout, and we caught up to the others fairly rapidly.
All of a sudden the propeller knocked against something and I stopped abruptly. Oops! It was getting pretty shallow here. In fact, unless I could find deeper water there was no way I would be able to make it to Kelsey Creek.
As luck would have it, deeper water was available near one side of the channel. Carefully following the trough I was able to make it just about all the way to the salmon ladders at Kelsey Creek where everyone had stopped. Time to turn around!
The return trip was no problem. I stopped at the small float dock by the trail bridge to check my propeller. It seemed to be operating at less than perfect efficiency. Well, actually, I wasn't able to go faster than about 4.5 mph. Something had to be fouling the propeller that just wasn't coming off.
Sure enough, the propeller was fouled. However, there were very few weeds. The problem was that somehow or other a plastic shopping bag got wrapped around the shaft. The weed cutter did as best it could against it, but a large fragment of the bag remained.
Once the bag was removed, the boat was back up to its normal speed and nimbleness in the water. I put the bag on top of the rear hatch so it could be discarded properly later.
I returned through the slough to Lake Washington, passing Sweyolocken, the I-90 bridge and the milfoil farm at moderate speed. Near Enatai I passed a couple on a tandem Hobie Mirage. They were headed towards the slough. We exchanged greetings and went our separate ways.
Ahead was the I-90 bridge to Mercer Island. A couple of hundred yards away I could see a sailboat operating under power heading north about to pass under the bridge, and decided to give chase. After all, how fast could a sailboat go, anyway? Maybe 6 knots?
There was a bit of a headwind, which thankfully helped to keep me cool. I was pedaling at a speed and level of effort which seemed to be more normal to me. Well, the heavier breathing was certainly more that which one would associate with racing conditions, so, umm, maybe I should do more non-racing boating?
I quickly passed under the bridge, heading more or less straight for the sailboat. The guy at the wheel of the boat took a look behind, saw me in the distance, smiled and turned away.
Slowly I was catching up to the boat. I passed a marker buoy when another guy appeared from the cabin of the sailboat, noticed me, and pointed. The guy at the wheel looked again, and saw that I was still approaching, and playing in the wake of his boat.
This was getting to be fun. I passed another buoy, and a couple more people appeared at the stern of the boat. The first guy was looking at his instruments as I came within 30 or feet of him, and shouted that I was doing at least 5.6 knots, since that was the speed he was going. My gps indicated I was going a little over 6.5 mph, and I told him my speed as I continued to pass by. He asked how long I could keep up that speed, and I replied about 15 or 20 minutes.
After a few more minutes I decided to turn back. My stomach was telling me it was lunch time, and I had brought along no food.
Beaching at the place where the rental boats are launched was quite easy. There were a couple of rocks to be careful of, but for the most part I had no problems getting out of the boat, and pulling the boat from the water on its dolly. Still, it was a bit of a hike up to the under bridge parking lot.
Just after pulling the Cadence from the water I took a picture of the prop shaft. It was completely devoid of weeds. The weed cutter worked perfectly! However, there was still a 4 inch long by 0.5 inch wide fragment of the grocery bag that had wound around the shaft between the propeller hub and the shaft bearing. This seemed to have had a slight effect on my speed, perhaps dropping it by 0.5 to 1 mph when I was outpacing the sailboat. When I install the stainless blade I will just have to make the clearance to the hub just a bit tighter.
A small group of bicyclists had congregated at the lot. They had a double-take at the Cadence, and one of them came up to me as I was putting it back on my car. He was very interested in its performance, though perhaps the answer of 6+ mph did not sound quite so fast to his road biking experiences. He returned to his companions, leaving me to finish tying down the boat.
Total distance traveled: 6.75 miles. Total time: approximately 3.5 hours.
It was another delightful day to be out on the water. Perhaps there is a boating life outside the racing circuit!
Postscript: I did not have time to place the camera in its waterproof bags for this excursion. I apologize for the lack of waterborne photography.