Ever lose some gear? Help me feel better

Good News!
You can laminate some boards with Gflex resin and carve, sand and finish your own Greenland paddle in a weekend.



Look into getting a high quality draw knife and a sureform rasp, and a small fourway rasp.

I had a little better luck
About ten years ago, we (my wife and I) were driving on the interstate and had our two sea kayaks on the roof with cockpit covers on them.

Evidently we forgot to clip one of them to the bungees which we always do, and when we got to our destination, (120 miles away) one was gone.

About a month later driving the same route as I was sailing along a 70 MPH, I thought I saw what looked like it, so I got off at the next exit, and made a loop back and sure enough it was.

It was dirty and grungy, but after a good washing it was as good as before, and we still have it today



Jack L

Boneheaded but not valuable
I tend to lose sunglasses, water bottles, and hats. I took a swim and lost a well-worn pair of work boots that were in the bottom of my boat two years ago. Sunglasses I tend to take off if I’m paddling on a sunny day and pass under overhanging trees with riffles. To see better I place the glasses on the pack in front of me and then knock them overboard with the paddle. You’d think I’d only do that once, but nooo…



Hats (and I prefer cheap ones for exactly this reason) I lose sometimes if I dump or they can get blown off my head by a gust and not be worth the risk of chasing into strainers.



Works both ways though… for the last five or six years I’ve been using water bottles I’ve dug out of strainers (one from the Wisconsin and one from the Manitowish) and the last hat (a boonie) I lost I used for a couple years after I gained it by digging it out of a sandbar on a river. Lost it to a rapid on the Flambeau.



The rivers give and the rivers taketh away.

A few Years Ago…
…I left my Werner Bandit canoe paddle at Pulltite access on the Current River. Thought I’d move it into the grass instead of laying it in the gravel as it was my favorite paddle. Drove back about 30 minutes later thinking the father and son watching us may have “Saved” the day? No such luck. Checked all the canoe liveries for weeks, but someone absconded with my beloved stick.



“Replaced” it a few months later, but not the same. You could no longer buy the paddle with a wooden T-grip and I had actually cut the paddle down to an odd size that was perfect.

I remember a wayward glove too!
Seems that it wished to escape from your truck after having been set up to catch some breeze and dry a little. But the next day when I drove that same route, there were three sets of eyes combing the shoulders and it couldn’t stay lost. My memory is so bad now - Did we surprise you when returning it somehow?

Hehehe…
…“Yes,” Eric, you DID (LOL)! My beloved Bandit was my biggest lost, but I have left gloves and sunglasses on rocks and logs on rivers everywhere, which is why I always buy discounted sunglasses.



I remember last Fall Rendezvous or the one before I left my sunglasses on my sitting log where we ate lunch. About a month later Dan and I paddled up to the spot and there they were, no worse for a few weeks in the woods!



I think, the funniest sunglasses casualty was once on the North Fork. I took them off and sat them on a rock that was providing me with my sitting eddy to photograph other paddlers. Finished pictures and promptly peeled out, sunglasses forgotten until miles downstream (LOL)!

Sunglasses
Years ago, ChuckIL and I were paddling on the Current River on a couple of days after the entire lot of the Rendezvous people had left early on account of rain (and by the way, we had some great paddling due to a moderately-high river level). After one rest stop, Chuck got on the water quicker than I, and as I was catching up, with him still 50 yards out front, I spotted a small float marker in the water, and on pulling up alongside, saw that it was part of a strap retainer for sunglasses, and the sunglasses were suspended by that strap about a foot below the surface. They looked like Chuck’s sunglasses, and I grabbed the float and lifted, and the sunglasses slipped free of the strap’s “grippers” and immediately sank out of sight. It turns out, Chuck had left the glasses on the deck of his kayak during the rest stop, and they’d washed off while he was passing through some riffles. Anyway, I thought I’d surprise him with the find before he even knew they were gone, but all I could give him was the strap and a funny story.

Did you get my second reply…
with the measurements ?



Jack L

of course not…
an ounce of prevention… look before you leap… play it again Sam… worth doing, do it right… secure your load…be responsible for your own actions…measure twice, cut once…a place for everything and everything in its place…

I’LL DO JACK ONE BETTER…
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, my ex and I were on our way to a dinner party, in our non-AC (toldja it was a long time ago) car with the windows down. We had an argument. Around 6 PM. Northbound, on I-95. In the middle of Miami.



She slaps me. My glasses fly off. Sail out the window. At around 60…



Argument stops in its tracks.



Luckily, I can see the lines and stay between them.



We attend the party. I assume I faked it well enough that the others thought I finally got contacts.



We leave around midnight, driving home, now SB, on I-95. Drive an interchange past the t site of the incident, U-it, and proceed north.



And low and behold, there at the foot of the Jersey barrier on the innermost lane, are my glases!!!



I pull off in the breakdown lane and go get them. One small, hardly noticeable scratch, and I can see clearly now, the rain is gone…



But that was years -40+! -ago, long before I would take to kayaks, and, MUCH more happily, with Sally,



PADDLE ON



-Frank in Miami


Only worry about losing one thing your health then there is no paddling.

Lost a camera! Had no idea where it went. So I bought another camera. 2 years later I was cleaning out my deck bag and saw a lanyard sticking out of the stiffener at the top of the deck bag. Pulled on it and out pops the camera I had lost! Still have the camera and use it as a backup.

I have this vague memory of leaving a Werner paddle at a takeout never to be seen again. You try to forget those things. I’m thinking a pair of sunglasses went to the bottom of a local lake. Another pair weren’t lost but ruined… thrown into the day hatch without a case. Scratched up badly. Won’t do that again.

Ever leave all your hang up clothes in the closet at a hotel? …a cooler? …a camera?

You have my sympathy – if I lost my beloved cedar GP I would be devastated, especially now that the guy that custom made it for me has been out of business for a while, rendering it irreplaceable. Much as I hate to mar it, I may ink my name and phone number on it, maybe even “reward for return”. Honestly, if I capsized and had a choice between saving that paddle and any of my boats, I would probably choose the paddle.

As to lost gear, three times I have “lost” digital cameras on paddling trips. In the first case, the camera was nowhere to be found after a weekend outing. I fretted about it and then bought 3 more cameras over the next two years, none of which I was as happy with as the one that went missing. Then I was sorting gear one Spring and pulled out a spray skirt that I had not used for a while – there was a lump in the zip pocket of the deck and guess what…duh. I gave away two of the other cameras I had bought in the meantime.

Then last year, we rented sit on tops while at Lake Tahoe for a day outing along the northeast shore. I took along my recently purchased Pentax Optio waterproof camera. Back in the apartment the next morning, I realized that the camera was not to be found and recalled with a sinking feeling, that I had last seen it lying in the cockpit of the kayak, which we had left on the beach behind the outfitters – I recalled snapping its carabiner strap to the deck rigging. I rushed to their shop and the outfitter guide and i went out and checked all the boats – no camera. Then he asked if it was possible I had clipped it to my PFD. We dug through a huge pile of them in their shed and there, at the very bottom, was the PFD with camera intact! I realized that the drawback to having such a rugged, compact and waterproof camera had made me very inattentive and cavalier about it – when I had more fragile cameras I was always handling and caching them with more attention. With that camera I had gotten blase about clipping it to decks or PFD and forgetting it was even there.

The third time was this past August, when I hauled 3 kayaks up to Lakeside Chatauqua on Lake Erie for a visit with cousins staying there. I capsized my SOF while paddling (dumb reason - I had added a thin foam seat pad under my keister and that raised my center of gravity just enough to send me over when I turned too abruptly at one point.) It was one of those near-shore, warm water casual outings where I had not bothered with spray skirt or float bags so I had to swim the inverted boat back 100 yards to shore to empty it. Realized when I hauled out that the Optio camera had been dangling immersed in the water from the deck lines the whole trip. Upon inspection it had lived up brilliantly to its “waterproof” claim and I downloaded my shots from the day to my iPad. I have not seen the camera since and have no idea where it ended up, either up there, on my way home or since I got back. Finally gave up searching all my gear and luggage and corners of my car for it and ordered a new version of that camera today. This will just about guarantee that the old one shows up eventually in some obscure location. :frowning:

Prescription glasses.
Sunglasses.
Sunglasses (I never learn).
Compass.
Several bags of spare clothes etc., floated away after a hatch went open on sea without me noticing.
Tow belt.
Axelpack map case, lost when a huge wave dumped on me (only one third lost, but remaining two thirds now useless).

A while back I was packing up to go on an early spring car (front country) camping trip. I was getting everything together and though I searched high and low, I could not find the tent. To this day I don’t know where it is. I suspect it was left at a campsite rather than be packed into the truck.

It remains a running joke to this day whenever something can’t be found: “Maybe it’s with the tent”.

Yeah, I lost eight keys and an aftermarket alarm fob very recently. I must have put them in the rim well of the spare trailer tire (which is attached horizontally to the trailer tongue) when hitching up, and driven off without taking them in the truck with me. I drove 35 miles to launch, got out, and realized what had happened. Did not paddle that day but immediately drove back hoping to see the whole bundle on the road before they got run over.

I did not see them on the road. After I got home, I realized they might have gotten all the way to the boat ramp before falling out on that corrugated long ramp. Unfortunately, I had rushed off before thinking to look right there. Anyway, I started driving BACK to the put-in and saw something in the road, about 5 or 6 miles from home. Yup, mangled keys. All eight keys got broken, bent, or severely abraded. I found a little battery that I hoped came from a shattered fob but saw no fob remnants, nor those of the little pinch light or the tiny Swiss Army knife also attached to the bundle. While I was glad nobody had the keys, I still wonder what really happened, and whether someone has the DEI fob. It locks and unlocks doors as well as controlling the alarm system. IF the bundle fell off at the boat ramp, someone could cruise parked trucks there waiting for a responding chirp. I fervently hope the fob got crushed along with the keys.

To make things worse, DEI no longer makes the replacement fob, so I ordered an aftermarket one. SUPPOSEDLY I can program it with my lone (spare) DEI fob, and hopefully with the two factory fobs, because those lock and unlock doors even though they do not control the alarm system. I could not get a straight answer from DEI or Car Toys (who originally installed the alarm system) on whether all four can be programmed together, so that they continue functioning as they used to. I am afraid to screw it up when I program them but have little choice but to try. If I just used my lone DEI spare fob and lost that, too, I would have no way to turn off a malfunctioning system OR to reprogram a new fob, because the latter requires having a valid spare fob.

If I had known this set of restrictions existed, I would not have gotten the system installed in the first place. Car Toys says the only other solution is to remove the sysfem completely. I live many hours away from a shop that can do it.

Oh, and another awful thing happened that day, too. Worst day in decades!

Lost my car key surfing, only did that once.
Lost a paddle float off the back of a play sea kayak surfing one day, totally vanished.
Lost a cheap radio while safety boating at a demo.

I see this is an old, revived thread, and I’ve posted here before, but this time is different - about somebody else losing something. I found a nice aluminum tackle box (a rare item nowadays) sitting wide open and half underwater in the branches of a snag on the Wisconsin River. As I went sailing by going downstream, my first thought was that there was no way it would be practical to get my guide-boat in among the branches with the water rushing through there the way it was, but then I thought about fishing lures being a particularly nasty type of litter and I spun the boat around and went back to see what I could do.

Indeed, getting deep into that snag in such strong current was pretty dicey, so the newest big scratch on my boat is named “the tackle box scratch”. That tackle box had roughly $200 worth of lures inside, so I guess it was worth it, and the box itself is nice too. Too bad the owner didn’t write his phone number on it or something. How it got stuck in the tree branches, wide open and mostly submerged and with such strong current blasting through there, I have no clue.