Paddling across Lake Ontario

[spider solo]

Excellent !

Great pictures !
Nice trip report.

I have often wondered how people remain seated for such a long crossing (I max out after about 2 hrs).
Now with the big crossings experience you might hear the Saint Lawrence calling to you...Anticosti in particular comes to mind...:->

Congratulations to both of you that was a huge crossing !

 

[ALGonquin Bob]

Now with the big crossings experience you might hear the Saint Lawrence calling to you...Anticosti in particular comes to mind...:->
!

Though I paddled in the Thousand Islands the past 2 summers, I never thought of doing the river from Lake to Ocean (Anticosti?); thanks for the idea (I think). I'll research it!

PS: I looked it up - that's one big and remote island! The river, at approx. 800 miles in length, is intriguing. Anticosti Island is a trip on its own. Maybe next year...

 

[Nessmuk]

I have often wondered how people remain seated for such a long crossing (I max out after about 2 hrs).
Now with the big crossings experience you might hear the Saint Lawrence calling to you...Anticosti in particular comes to mind...:->

Think bigger! On the Yukon River Quest, the first mandatory stop (and for many paddlers the first and only stop up to that point) happens after about 21+ hours upon reaching Carmacks. Not even half way finished. But then you get to rest there for 7 hours before the next leg.

The Yukon 1000 is paddled for 18 hours straight each day before mandatory 6 hour stops (at no particular location) each "night". Every day for a week. In fact we stopped about twice each day for the "greater necessity", averaging 7 minutes each time. We found the best butt saver by far is a 1" thick slab of high density gel, that a crewmember found at a nursing home. You also need to use "glide" or some other sort of butt lubrication cream to prevent cheek-cheek rubbing causing very sensitive blisters.

 

[sardog1]

Lake Ontario recently inverted, meaning the warm water on top and cold deeper water flip-flopped, dropping the surface water from 72 degrees to about 50F.

I remember well as a kid crossing the burning hot summer sand on the beach in Duluth, MN and the unbearably cold water of Lake Superior. Very few people actually went swimming for any length of time, and most of the wading was also of brief duration.

When the military trained pilots in Duluth before the era of helicopter rescue, they didn't bother to give them much advice on what to do if they ditched in Lake Superior. The implicit understanding was that no one was really expected to survive a ditching, regardless of their condition when they climbed out of the cockpit. Help was going to be a long time in arriving ...

 

[ALGonquin Bob]

Next up...

If things work out, my next adventure will paddling in a 8-person voyageur canoe in the 90-Miler. After that, I might tackle paddling the Erie-Barge Canal from Waterford (Hudson R.) to Tonawanda (Buffalo) where the canal ends at the Niagara River. I could then walk home the remaining 5 blocks. I know that everyone does the canal west to east because most of the locks go down if traveling east, and the wind is less of an issue, especially on Onieda Lake, but I'd like to get dropped off at the Hudson and paddle home.

 

[Stan]

Heard on the news this morning that a young woman swimmer made this crossing, raising $90,000 for charity. ALGonquin Bob's report lends even more admiration for the latter achievement.

 

[spider solo]

just to tempt

Just to tempt you for paddling the Saint Lawrence this fellow, a retired Maine professor, has paddled extensively through the region http://www.zollitschcanoeadventures.com/
he makes for some nice reading if you want to check it out.

Anticosti just a short ways by comparison from the Mingans...add a few tides and a whale or two and Viola !