10/21/17. Detroit, MI
Her name was Intex Challenger K1. She was beautiful – nine feet of lissome lime-green inflatable kayak – and she was mine. Then, one golden afternoon, she sank in the Detroit River.
In the Midwest, October kayaking is a leap of faith. Though the sun still shines and the weather is periodically pleasant, the water is always cold. So in the days leading up to my fateful excursion, I had been watching the forecast with care. Saturday the 21st – breezy but warm, with a high near sixty – looked ideal. Since this was likely to be the year’s last run, I decided to attempt something memorable – a long ride down a new stretch of the Detroit River.
Most of my previous trips on the Detroit River had followed the same pattern. To avoid the midday sun and boat traffic, I typically left my apartment well before dawn. Arriving at the desolate and trash-strewn public launch in Delray (a depopulated neighborhood in southwest Detroit), I would lock my bike in a place hidden by overgrown shrubs. Driving to a public launch off Alter Road (the eastern city limit), I would inflate the kayak, daub pasty extremities with sunscreen, and don a travel-stained floppy hat. Then, just as the sun rose, I would kick off the algae-slicked boat ramp and follow a series of overgrown canals to the River. About ten miles and three hours later, I would bob into the Delray launch, deflate and hide my kayak, unlock my bike, and cycle back to the car.
This excursion, I decided, would plot a different course. Beginning a little upstream of downtown, I would continue past Delray and the Detroit’s downriver suburbs to the boat ramp in Wyandotte. It would be a fairly long haul – about 13 miles – but nothing my redoubtable inflatable and I couldn’t handle.
It was clear and cool when I left my apartment. Patches of frost glimmered in the grass as I locked my bike to a convenient fence at the Wyandotte launch; stars still hung in the graying sky as I headed up the Fisher Freeway. A pale sun appeared through the fog on Lake St. Clair just as I clambered down a rip-rap embankment and launched.
The first few miles went swimmingly. The skyscrapers of downtown passed in monumental procession; the massive towers of the Ambassador Bridge drew nearer. As I approached the bridge, I slowed and drew closer to shore, pressing close to an abandoned barge terminal. A few months before, I had noticed that the pilings of the terminal framed a panoramic view of downtown, but had been prevented by an oncoming lake freighter from taking a photo. Checking to see that no boats were approaching, I turned my bow into the current and lined up my shot. I tapped the phone screen – and at that moment, felt a strange tug as the kayak stopped midstream.
The cool water of the Great Lakes preserves wood for decades. Pilings rot to the waterline; but long after the portion exposed to weather has splintered or liquefied, the submerged shaft lives on, waiting jaggedly. Unbeknownst to me, just such a ghost piling, six inches or so below the surface, had caught in the ridged bottom of my kayak. Assuming that I had stopped because of some quirk of the current, I paddled vigorously forward – and drove the tip of that piling into the bottom air compartment. It was over in an instant. The kayak ripped free with an audible pop; and the bottom began to sag. I was nearly ten miles from my destination, and I was sinking.
I tried to remain calm as I drifted beneath the Ambassador Bridge. Knowing that my kayak had two air compartments – one, now punctured, making up the bottom; another, mercifully intact, forming the sides – I decided to continue downriver. My kayak was bound to fill with water eventually; without the bottom to stiffen them, the sides folded inward with every large wave. But so long as I could get close to Wyandotte before the kayak was totally submerged, I could clamber onshore and walk to my bike in relative ease and comfort.
And so I settled in for the long haul, paddling steadily with the current. Every time a lake freighter passed, I would turn my bow into the wake – often four or five feet high – and then bail the water that poured in as the kayak flexed between waves. Soaked and shivering, I reminded myself that I had no choice but to continue. I was now coasting along Delray; even if I could have found a place to land along the crumbling concrete seawall, I would have had to walk several miles through an area frequented (as I knew from experience) by packs of feral dogs.
So I stuck to the River. I tried to enjoy the scenery, even turning to take a picture of downtown framed by the Ambassador Bridge. Birches, golden against a hazy sky, whispered behind rusty fences. A freighter chugged placidly upstream on the Canadian side. Wakes sucked at rotted pilings. And all the while, cold water trickled over my legs.
About a half-hour after the puncture, I pulled into the slip at the Delray Launch. Dragging my sodden kayak over the pondweed heaped on the boat ramp, I emptied all the water I could. The Launch, closed for the winter, was totally deserted. As a stiffening south breeze dragged litter across the overgrown parking lot, I cast a wistful glance toward the weather-beaten buildings of Fort Wayne and Jefferson Avenue beyond. Then, legs postholing in pondweed, I wriggled back into my kayak, and launched. With the first wave, the familiar trickle of water resumed.
Continuing downstream, I paddled beneath the towering gantry cranes and blast furnaces of Zug Island. On a foggy morning a few months before, at the beginning of a kayak ride up the River Rouge, I had paused here a while to watch the mechanical ballet of steelmaking – the shuttling carts of flux and coke, the glow of the furnaces, the periodic releases of steam. But now the water sloshing around my legs warned against delay, and I stopped only for a picture.
I passed the mouth of the River Rouge and the massive power plant on the south bank, and bobbed reluctantly past the launch in Belanger Park. As the River turned south, the Detroit skyline faded from view. The breeze I had noticed earlier, now seemingly blowing unobstructed off Lake Erie, whipped up a two-foot chop. My kayak began to fill at an alarming rate. Trying to escape the waves by hugging the shore, I found myself whirled around by the outflows of the Ecorse still mills. And so, with mounting waves midstream and steaming outflows onshore, I steered an uneasy middle course. The water around my legs deepened.
As I passed Mud Island, the waves grew higher and my kayak – already almost even with the surface of the River – sank lower. In the teeth of the stiffening south wind, I slowed to a crawl. Every wave sloshed over and into the kayak, pouring in water faster than I could bail it out. Head down, paddling forward as hard as I could, I didn’t see the five-foot freighter wake until it was almost upon me. I turned my bow; but instead of riding over the wave, my waterlogged kayak simply sank into it. Fifty-degree water crashed over me.
Just then, miraculously, I noticed that I was only 100 yards from a boat landing. Half-paddling, half-swimming, I forced my kayak onto the ramp, just as she finally gave up ghost and sank beneath the surface. I emerged dripping from the waves and staggered ashore, dragging my erstwhile craft behind me. A quick look at my phone (providentially double-sealed in Ziploc bags) confirmed that I had reached the Ecorse public launch – only about a mile from my bike.
Standing beneath a line of whistling pines, I neatly folded what was left of my kayak. A gentle shower of pine needles drifted down to cover the remains. Then, after a moment of silence, I turned south along Jefferson, streaks of water from sodden clothes painting the pavement in my wake.