I am back a bit early from my trip. I had an odd affliction that I bet is not common.
There were 3 of us on this trip. Yesterday the winds were at about 20 MPH in the afternoon and were only about 8 MPH in the morning. We all got on the water at about 7:30. Around 11:00 I and one of my two friends decided to do a bit of practice in sculling and bracing so we stopped and did about 45 minutes of chest sculling and lay-back sculling (similar to a balance brace, but with support form moving the paddle back and forth) After about 20 minutes I beached my kayak and got in the water to help my friend becasue he is fairly new to extreme angles bracing and rolling (actually the same thing but for the amount of rotation the kayak has from an even keel) So I stood on the bottom and he did the drills with my coaching, and my help to right his kayak when he got it wrong. After about 10 minutes of me having “hands on” I got back in my kayak and did the drills along side him so he could see me as he was doing the drill. But the point is that the kayaks were on their sides for quite a lot of time. List angles from about 40 degrees to as much as 80 degrees.
Then all 3 of us went to shore to eat lunch. My lunch was taken from the rear compartment of my Chatham17 kayak. When we were done I packed up again but I has some course sand and small gravel inside the hatch cover, so I washed it out by swishing the cover in the water and then replaced it. We started the afternoon leg of our trip for the day but the winds had come up more and were sustained at 20 MPH. So there were some waves to deal with. About 40 minutes later I felt I was working harder then I usually do, and my friends were now in front. I am usually the one in front and I slow down to allow them to stay in a group.
Then Thor said “hey, you look very low in the water” Steve M, said “yeah, in fact, I think you are sinking”. We were maybe 600 yards from the nearest land so I turned towards land and paddled in. Sure enough, my back deck was awash and at times about 3" under. I beached on a steep rocky shore and removed the rear hatch cover, finding it to be about 1/4 of the way off already. My compartment was as full as it could get. Right to the top. I unloaded the gear and food and bailed out at least 20 gallons of water, then had to drain as much water as I could from my tent, ground mat, paddle jacket and wet suit vest. All other gear was in dry boxes and bags, so it was fine except for a book that got soaked. I was sure the problem was my idiotic inattention, and that I had simply not been careful to replace the cover very well after our lunch.
But no… just a few minutes later the lid popped up again. So again I go to shore and do the whole unload, pump out, dry with sponge and so on---- and when I placed the cover back on it popped up at the same place I’d found it loose on the first swamping. So I ran my finger under the lip of the hatch cover but it all felt fine. Still, it was leaking. I replaced it and we paddles for about 30 minutes and went to shore to check. Yup , I had about a pint of water inside. That time I unloaded and set the kayak in the water, pushed down to look in and see if it were leaking around the skeg box. Nope. 100% OK. Water was getting around the hatch cover.
Well, the forecast was for winds to pick up and be stiffer the following day, (30 to 35) so I figured I has a bad hatch cover, and I decided to come home. I was thankfully not very far from the launch point where my truck was parked, so we paddled over and I said goodbye to my friends, loaded up the kayak and came home.
Today after leaving out the kayak in the sun to dry out I was putting it back in my shed. I always turn the covers upside down and insert them into the kayak for storage. I looked down and saw something poking out from the rim of my cover. I pulled it out and it was a sliver of reddish bark and white wood, curling up as it dried ---- which is why it stuck out. I soaked it in tap water and it got very supple and VERY slick. It’s about 4-1/2" long, tapered down to about 1/16 inch and the thick part is about 3/16 inch. It’s about 1/2" wide at the wide end.
I had run my finger into the rim of that cover to check for anything but felt nothing at all, somehow missing it.
But it was enough to work the lip up and allow the water to get in from the waves over-washing the rear deck. I and both of my friends checked and looked over all we could think of to check, and none of us felt or saw this little split of a twig, yet it was enough to cut my trip short. I even contacted Kajak Sport to order a new cover. But it was just a piece of bark and wood and my hatch cover is fine. How on earth I and both my friend could have not felt it is a mystery, but it hid from all 3 of us. Looking back I now know I must have scooped it up when I washed out the sand from my cover after lunch and the reason for the whole story above is to point out the fact it could NOT have been there until after I ate lunch because we did bracing and sculling drill with sideways kayaks for quite a lot of time before lunch, and when I took out my food it was totally dry inside.
So it was just a little “saboteur” and nothing is wrong with the covers, the hull or the skeg box, but it was enough to ruin part of my camping trip. It may be one in a million, but in the future I will use a Popsicle stick to run along the inside groove in my hatch cover to be SURE it’s clean!
All’s well that ends well. Maybe this will never happen again, but maybe some other kayaker can benefit from this short story and not get into the same set of problems I did.