Not even a week earlier, I lay in my tent in broad daylight, putting drybags up against the mesh door so the splatter from the near-horizontal rain wouldn't get my stuff wet. I remember thinking, wow, if you had to be out on the water in that kind of storm, you'd be in trouble.
And then it's Friday afternoon, and I'm at Dillon and David and I are loading up our kayaks. We knew that other people had shied away from making the trip out to the McCoys that day because it was too windy - we knew that when we met up at White Squall. "Oh, but the storm's come through already, it's hardly windy now," I said, knowing that this was hardly true. Packing up, we turned on the VHF and listened to the marine forecast. I can be forgiven for dismissing a small craft warning, perhaps - I've paddled during many of these. But the voice in Thunder Bay also said something about waterspouts, we both heard it. And looked at each other, and concluded, let's just see...
And paddled out. The first six or so kilometers are fairly sheltered, though with an east wind that meant we had the wind in our faces. "It'll just take longer and we'll have to work harder," I said. We pulled in for a pitstop at the last sandy beach before you hit more open water. I didn't even get out of the boat - I was actually eager to push against that wind some more.
I never said I wasn't stupid. We pushed pretty hard. At one point, it felt like we weren't going anywhere, so I turned on the GPS. With full effort - the kind that would net me 9 km/hr or more in calm conditions - we were doing well to keep it just above 4 km/hr for the most part. We had maybe a 25 knot headwind. Nothing we haven't done before...
Realistically, with a 25 knot headwind, you don't paddle long. You find a camping spot, and make up the distance when the going is easier. However, our friends were already out on the McCoys and maybe a tiny little bit of cockiness was at work: other people had turned back because it was too windy, *I* can make it (I don't speak for David here.) So we pushed. It was tiring. We were less than 300m from the shelter of Herzberg, before our only real crossing, when David said we should take another break. We both saw a cold front bearing down on us.
We didn't make it to shore. It sounds so unexpected to say "all of a sudden, the winds went from 25 knots to well over 50,", but really... we had every reason to expect this. We just didn't pay any attention to it. All I know is that I had my rudder down and I was wearing my goretex hat and long sleeve shirt when this horrendous stinging rain and high wind picked my boat up and spun it so the wind was broadside. For the first time in my life, I could paddle at 100% exertion and not get my bow back into the wind no matter how hard I pushed and how deep I dug. In addition, I couldn't see much because of the rain, and where my skin was exposed - my face and hands - it stung far more than it's ever stung from rain. It took all the strength I had to just hang onto my paddle, the wind was ripping at it so much, and keep paddling with a super high cadence but low angle stroke so that I wouldn't go over.
I didn't go over. I even managed to work my way to behind a shoal with the wind broadside, were I finally - finally! - managed to turn my bow into the wind and hover in place with full exertion (at that point, I felt much more stable.) I had no idea where David was, and he couldn't know where I ended up. And then the front passed, I saw David about 400m from me, and all we were left with was less wind than before and a vibrant double rainbow. And, in my case, a heartrate that didn't come down for hours. Also, still, that crossing, with another dark line upwind of us. We motored. Even with the wind broadside now, we were making >8km/hr on that crossing, fueled by fear and lots of leftover adrenalin from the storm.
I don't ever want to do that again. It felt great to stay in my boat and not smash said boat during it, but the next time I might not be so lucky. Behind that front, by the next day, we had brilliantly sunny skies. The water had cooled off by several degrees (this happens on Georgian Bay when it gets all churned up like that), and the air had a tinge of fall to it. It truly did feel like summer ended during that one front. In the aftermath, we saw a powerboat, seemingly wrecked on a shoal (the hull seemed intact, and I found out later that it was already up there when the front moved through, it ran aground during the mere 25 knot winds during the day...)
The rest of the weekend seemed uneventful. Sure, we played in the water, David cooked some good food, I got to hang out with Ron and Nancy and Gord and Bill and Dave, the McCoys were stunning as always... but really, after that storm, the only thing that *really* got my attention was the Monarch butterflies gathering in a grove on Big McCoy. That was one of those magic moments, and I was too amazed to even remember to take a picture. But next time the VHF says water spout, I'm staying on land - even if you promise me a carpet of butterflies.
