OK, I’ll go first. Upon exiting my kayak after a paddle in Biscayne National Park (camping on Elliot Key if I recall correctly), I found a brick of cocaine. Told the rangers who were very interesting and who were out the next day cruising along the shoreline with a pair of binocs looking for more. I was told that planes will drop them to a waiting boat and every once in a while, one gets away.
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That was quite a find! No contraband, just a sunken kayak along the shore of northern Lake Michigan.
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Half of my friend’s equipment found in eddies over 2 days of traveling on the John Day River in Oregon after swamping his boat in big haystacks.
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I most frequently paddle in my home base, Pittsburgh, which has the most bridges of any city in the world (446, which is 3 more than Venice, Italy, which most people guess when asked to guess which has the most). My closest and favorite waterway is the Monongahela River, eventually part of the Mississippi drainage via the Ohio, in which I have most often found the strangest flotsam and jetsam. These included the upper torso of a male clothing mannequin (I got some looks from shore while towing that behind me to put in the dumpster at the park where I launched), a life-sized hollow plastic fire hydrant, a 3’ tall Blessed Virgin Mary statue, an enormous dead beaver (left that one to float) and a city fire department river patrol safety helmet (which I returned to them). I always carry a long handled butterfly net under my deck rigging to retrieve floating debris during my urban paddles (and a trash bag since that is usually what I skim in the vain attempt to clean up the rivers a bit).
On one outing I spotted what I was certain was a wadded up red and gold Cheet-ohs bag but when snagged, it turned out to be a perfect long-stemmed rosy tipped yellow rose bud. As I continued upriver, I encountered more of them until I had a bouquet of 17 stashed under the bungees. Stopped finding any more after I passed beneath the final bridge before the Braddock lock and dam, so that last span must have been where they were pitched. I imagined the roses either being dropped by the survivor of a loved one who drowned on the river or being flung in despair by a rejected suitor after a proposal was turned down. Felt slightly guilty about perhaps interfering in a symbolic gesture and considered restoring them to the river, but rationalized that they were just going to get maytagged going over the murderous lowhead dam downstream and took them home to enjoy the gorgeous bouquet in a vase for a couple of weeks.
The most startling “flotsam” (also on the Monongahela) was when a very large rat snake I was eyeballing suddenly dropped off its sunbathing spot on one of the massive ashlar stone bridge buttresses that I was paddling between and splashed into the water a boat length ahead of me. It surfaced and gracefully and sinuously glided past me to shore.
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Rookie had an interesting one.
Great stories. Worth the read just for the fun fact about Pittsburgh!
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Many years ago, I was paddling Lake Erie a day after a storm and I noticed what looked like a plastic baggie moving with small waves…I paddled to it and it turned out to be a bat(the flying kind) that was floundering in the water. I lifted it up with my paddle and put it on my front deck and paddled to shore and left it in a big patch of some kind of Ivy(million dollar houses line the shore). It left a stain on my yak that is still there to this day…
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a body on shore (deceased, St Johns river near downtown) reported it, on the paddle return by the spot - saw the authorities investigating the area. Never heard anything else about it.
On crossing Whitefish Bay (started predawn on Canada side), landed on the Michigan side (Whitefish Pt), near the ship wreck museum.
There was a person from the museum ‘peeling’ off a bat that was stuck to an insect sticky trap
Yikes. That had to be unpleasant.
I used to paddle the marsh around Hilton Head. I was always concerned that I’d run across a body back in those creeks. I’m glad I never did.
The body I ran across , literally, was in a creek in Camp AP Hill in Virginia. A dead dear was blocking the creek. We had to shove it under with our paddles.
Those glue traps are death traps for bats.
mic drop!
Found a canoe paddle on the Milwaukee River that was likely set free during the spring high water flows. Added it to a collection of other paddles and built this headboard. It’s the red one on the left. Processing: IMG_0779.jpeg…
While getting out of my kayak in knee deep water the other day, I stepped on a gun. I think most of you are in the US so perhaps that wouldn’t be strange, but it was a surprise here in Canada.
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Was it a water gun! Haha. The one thing I regret about not having had children is there is no one to appreciate my awesome ‘dad’ jokes (not yet anyway, my wife’s daughter from a previous relationship has a 2 year old daughter and a son on the way, so I will consider this practice)!
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found a Kayak Paddle on the upper Delaware. and lower down by tinicum a sunken swan Paddleboat.
I rescued a paddle on the Suwannee. I saw the guy dump his boat and his paddle floated to me.
Hope you kept that “Blessed” artifact.
Paddlin’ Pittsburgh, it ain’t scarry,
when you got the Virgin Mary,
standin’ bow watch deck of yer kayak.
Comin’ down Monongahela,
perhaps I 'll get me that other sacred fella,
trans-substantiate the rudder reason in which I tack.
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I have seen some strange, some almost frightening objects floating, sometimes submerged, out there in the big liquid. Sometimes it’s best to just let them be:
