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Day 7 (A short day, but back on the water at last)

12/12/2009

13 Comments

 
Daily Stats
Start: 10:10 AM- Gafton Illinois
Finish: 3:00 PM - Alton marina - Alton Illinois
Time: 4:50
Daily dist: 15 miles
Total dist: 105 miles
Companions: Jason Cummings
Weather: Overcast with drizzle becoming steady rain after dark
Notes: David Diederich met us at the put in and offered his sailboat to stay in.  Thank you so much Dave!
As I write this the wind is driving a cold rain that is pushing across the area in a fast moving weather system. All day long I paddled in and out of rain showers thinking that it was going to be a long cold night camping in these conditions. Thankfully, I’m not out there. Instead I’m warm and dry inside a cozy heated sail boat.

Picture
Me with David Diederich
At the put in this morning in Grafton Illinois we were met by David Diederich who is a local paddler and general river enthusiast. David showed up at the put in with a huge banner that said “Good Luck Jake” as well as printed charts highlighted to show key landmarks in the area. Two of those landmarks included the location of his cabin on an island a few miles above Alton or his small but heated and cozy sail boat in the Alton marina along with an invite to stay at either if the necessity should arise.
Picture
Sign that Dave made
It was a bit of an ordeal to get all of my gear loaded into the Ikkuma for the very first time. Loading all the gear in a kayak for a long trip always seems to go through an evolution. On the first go it’s a tedious pack and re-pack process where you end up all but standing on the hatch covers to get everything in the overstuffed hatches. The second time around you fill little nooks and crannies you missed the first time and gain a little more room and everything starts to fit. A few more times and everything seems to have a place and you can load up and get underway almost with room to spare in a timely manner. Today was the “stand on the hatches” stage of boat packing and it took quite a while for me to be ready to launch. So it was that finally at 10:10 AM I pushed off from shore and was underway once again.
As luck would have it, just as I launched a local paddler, Jason Cummings, paddled up in the beautiful strip built kayak he built himself. Jason paddled with me for the first five miles back to a boat ramp near the town of Portage Des Sioux where he put in earlier this morning. As he noticed as we paddled along he did a bit of a Portage to Portage paddle of his own.
Picture
Jason Cummings
After leaving Jason off at the landing I burned twenty minutes fussing with my camera which had just decided to start taking green pictures again which is a problem it had earlier this summer. It was a problem I needed to have sorted out before I passed St. Louis by completely as it would be the last chance to go into down to get a replacement camera if, god forbid, it was necessary. The wind was a factor today as it blew directly upstream cancelling out any help the flowing river would give. Because of that, it was a bit slower go than I expected and I crawled the sixteen miles to Alton in about four hours. I stopped at a park on the south shore opposite town to eat lunch and take one more try at fixing the camera. Luck was with me and the camera finally quit taking photos that make everybody look green.
My daily plan now is to pull off the river by 3:00 to allow enough time to set up a comfortable camp before dark. It was 2:00 and I was about two miles above the first lock which meant that by the time I got done with that I wouldn’t have much more time to paddle before it was time to set up camp. The red circle showing the location of the cozy heated sail boat was just across the river so in the sputtery cold rain I decided to trade 4 or 5 miles of down river progress for a warm night out of the rain. With the cold rain sputtering against the deck of the boat I know that was one of the best decisions I’ve made on this trip so far. And once again I’ll be eternally thankful for the kindness and generosity provided me by almost total strangers.

Picture
Warm and dry inside Dave's sailboat
Tomorrow I’ll be getting a nice early start and will have the new experience of locking through two different locks before I get to the free flowing river and paddle past down town St. Louis. With luck my camera will keep taking good pictures and my blog won’t include photos of a green tinted arch.

13 Comments
Thom
12/12/2009 12:13:01 pm

Way to go Jake. Glad to see you're back on the water and making progress.

Reply
Jan Kleck
12/12/2009 10:18:02 pm

Way to go Jake - and Jason - and Dave. I guess it is true what Jen says - "the greatest people in the world are kayakers" - and I now add sailors to that sentiment. The way people respond to your adventure and needs is the greatest part of this story. How uplifting at this special time of year of giving to others! And you are the one making this happen and then sharing with all of us. As Thom says, "Way to go Jake." Hope you have a good day of paddling!

Reply
Brenda Holdorf
12/13/2009 01:24:14 am

Hey Jake. I am enjoying reading your blog. Keep posting when you are able. Hope now that you you are back in open water things go smooth.

Reply
Larry
12/13/2009 02:23:57 am

Way to go Jake. For your next gadget, consider a small solar recharging unit. Some can also act as a second battery as well.

Hang tough!

Reply
Patrick Staley
12/13/2009 03:26:33 am

What type/brand/model of camera are you using? Someone here can research the green tint problem. Sometimes these cameras try to do color correction at capture time. My canon G10 has several color correction setting that I sometimes turn on accidentally. Canon calls them "scenes", e.g. underwater, night lights, incandescent, etc. Or you may have accidentally reset the white balance. If you can manually set the white balance that should fix things. These cameras can also be sensitive to temperature swings.

Reply
Patrick Staley
12/13/2009 04:04:17 am

More ideas on the green tint problem:
You could email the photos to someone who can do the color correction for you. If you don't have someone perhaps I can find someone to do it. Send me the "good luck jake" jpeg (<3MB please) and I'll look into post capture color correction. This is probably doable with photoshop elements. This process can be quite easy if you carry a grey color card with you and include it in a photo that needs correction. The same correction should work for all the other photos.

Reply
Patrick Staley
12/13/2009 04:17:37 am

Here is a color corrected version of the "Good Luck Jake" photo:
http://www.patricksphotos.com/s/Jake/luck.jpg

Reply
Jane Hardy
12/13/2009 09:38:52 am

Among your San Diego paddling pals, the Season's Greeting is: Have you read Jake's blog today? We're all with you!

Reply
Branden link
12/13/2009 09:43:01 am

once again I am living vicariously through you! Best of luck!

Reply
ME Jake Stachovak
12/13/2009 10:20:46 am

Patrick. The camera is an Olympus stylus 1050SW. I think the problem does have something to do with some sort of color correction setting. It seems as though the solution is to take a close up photo of a plane white surface. I did that out of frustration yesterday and poof my pictures look normal again. Thank you for looking into how to fix the green pics I have. If you could find out if this "fix" I discovered isn't a fluke I'd appreciate it.

Reply
lyn stachovak
12/13/2009 10:48:05 am

Maybe your camera started taking good pictures when you were taking pictures of SNOW (it is white). Just a thought.

Reply
Portag dug
12/13/2009 12:45:33 pm

Loving the portage to portage paddlers out there.

Weather update from Portage, Wisconsin:
Today a high of 32 low of 27.
Portage received 16" of snow Tuesday into Wednesday. The actual air temperature on Thursday got to 0, (zero degrees). Not much good for paddling here today so I settled for a Packer victory of dem Bears and some more downhill skiing!

Keep on keeping on!
Why to go America, looking out for our native son!

Reply
Tom Schneider
12/15/2009 08:09:13 pm

Best of luck on your trip. I wish I was with you, but will follow you on here. You will get the hang of packing soon. It's a pain at first.

Reply



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