Equipment that Fails on the River
By Cecilia Gill

Welcome to "Backwater Backwash", a random and incomprehensible collection of thoughts, observances and experiences in no particular order, so that it makes absolutely no sense at all.

This past Memorial Day weekend, we did our annual Sabine River Barge thing. This wonderful contraption consists of two canoes held together with poles, covered with a deck and a canopy, and a Mercury 2.5 powering it. What a way to paddle! OK, Joe actually paddled his kayak. The idea behind the barge, especially for the Labor Day weekend trip, is a sort of Safety and Support Boat. But that is not what we're here to talk about today....

What prompted this tale is an incident that occurred while on the river, that could never possibly happen with a paddle craft.... (or could it?) The incident I speak of is this: a tiny piece of equipment, instrumental in making the propeller actually spin, broke. This tiny thing is called a "sheer pin"

Without the shear pin, the motor spins free while the prop just kind of flops around, and you have totally lost power and can in no way control where the boat goes or which one of those nasty looking tree stumps you are going to crash into. It was exciting! But, we managed to get the boat to the sand bar and change out the tiny shear pin and toodle on down the river lickity split.

Now, why am I telling a PADDLING club about a MOTOR problem? Because it reminded me of an incident on the San Marcos River that happened to me a very long time ago. I stopped just before Cotton Seed to check conditions (I was new... had no idea how to roll or anything yet) before I attempted such a daunting run. I decided I was stupid enough.... I mean brave enough... to run it, and jumped back in my little kayak, pulled the spray skirt on and took off. I managed to get past the worst of it, when suddenly I seemed to just totally lose control and spun around. One side seemed to go through the water easier than the other. I'd heard of the ferocious "paddle snake" before. Maybe they were real! I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on! I went in weird little circles, crashed into a rock, managed to not flip (yet) and then noticed this odd looking thing float past me, semi-submerged, just as I finally flipped and had to pull the skirt off and do an escape.

After I dragged myself and my boat out of the water, I looked at my paddle and saw what the heck had happened. That odd looking thing that floated past me, semi-submerged, was the blade off of my paddle. About then, some nice fellow happened by in his kayak. I asked him if he could retrieve my paddle blade for me. Once he stopped laughing, he found it, and managed to get it back to me with only minor difficulty.

Fortunately, I had plenty of duct tape, and used most of it strapping the errant blade back onto the shaft, not indexed correctly, of course. I ever so carefully paddled, mostly trying to only use the good blade, hoping and praying the entire time until I made it back to Skulls Crossing and from there, home. Once I was home, I had a friend who actually knew what he was doing index and repair it properly for me.

The whole point of these stories is this: Sometimes, when you least expect it, just as you think you're home free, your equipment fails and you find that the river thinks you should go some completely different way than the way you were heading. Sometimes, its like the river planned for these things to happen. Sometimes I think the river just got bored and wanted a good laugh.........