Canoe Episode

Part of my Hosting assignment involves meeting guests at the dock where we store the canoes and kayaks for rental, and preparing them for launch. That includes taking out the life jackets and paddles from the small storage bin that is next to these units on the same dock. Below is a picture of these boats and the dock they are stored on, along with the small storage bin:

I received a call from the office on my radio that a couple would be walking down to the boat area to pick up a canoe that they had rented for an hour. I went to the dock, unlocked the boat from the secured area on the dock, took out 2 life jackets and the paddles and waited for them. They were young people, a girl and (husky) guy who was celebrating his 18th birthday. I asked them both if they had been in a canoe before. She had, but he had not. Then the fun began. They helped me place the canoe in the water against the dock, and she proceeded to get in, with my help, and she moved to the front. The boy placed one foot in the canoe and he started to get in when he lost his balance and the whole canoe flipped over with both of them ending up in the water. Fortunately, the water at this location is is only a few feet deep so they were able to stand and get the canoe turned over, get out of the water and onto the dock, and once again into the canoe. I was concerned that they wouldn't be able to complete the whole hour in the water without flipping the boat again, so I spent the whole hour going back and forth to the dock to make sure I could see them in the water and that they were still floating. Finally, they came back to the dock for take-out and they flipped the canoe again while trying to step out onto the dock. Both got wet again, in the cold water, and finally made it out to end their canoe trip. I'm not sure if he will want to do that again anytime soon.

The rest of my work day yesterday was spent doing other hosting chores and since I had the camera with me, took another shot of the marina area from a different view at the end of the park:

The clouds began rolling in as you can see from the above shot, and we again had a thunderstorm that was not quite as violent as the one the night before. We received over .50" of rain and had some wind during the storm but it ended after about a half hour.

The rain stayed around for most of the night and it is still cloudy this morning. That probably means we will stay fairly close to home and get some chores done. We need to get propane in one of our tanks and we need to go to Mathews to the bank and do some grocery shopping. That should be the schedule for today...