10% Paddle by Ray-Ray (Evan Anderson - Blog # 2 - S.O.A,R. Spring 2011

10% Paddle by Ray-Ray (Evan Anderson)

Day 7, canoes depart for Lopez campsite.

This day had to be the group’s most successful day of the entire canoe trip. We had the wind and the tide going the same direction we planned on heading.

20 miles in under 7 hours with some awesome innovations being made by the individual boats. On this day I was with a staff from our group (Evan Small) and we both decided paddling was pointless effort, but we still wanted to have some speed to make good time. I just happened to have this nearly perfect stick which would work great as a mast. My sleeping pad was accessible as well. So the idea came to be that we could create a sail to make our laziness more, obvious. I pulled out my sleeping pad and lashed it about the mast (or the stick I had), used the paddle to hold out the sail to catch good winds and boy did we fly across those bays! Other people had other ideas, Stephen used his hammock. I worked efficiently but we believed too much air was flowing through it because it was light materials. The 10% paddling comes from the fact that we only paddled 10% of the time like during small streams or rivers where wind is minimal. So the theme is that whenever you’re doing something difficult, use your resources around you to make life easier.