Everyone shit talking about the Midwest needs to visit northern Minnesota. We're talking a few miles south of the Canadians. I've been going to the same lakes at least once a summer for the past 13 years*. What do we do up there? We canoe. Lots of paddling. We paddle through lakes and pack through portages and typically stay in a good campsite for a few days. The campsites are only very small clearings with a fire grate and uncovered latrine in the woods, so the experience can be pretty intense if you aren't prepared. However, we manage to fish from sunrise to sunset, drink several liters of scotch and whiskey and Bailey's (in the morning), smoke a good deal of cigars, eat fantastic camp food and enjoy the solitude. We often make long day trips through rivers and long portages and have a great time. We've seen about all of the wildlife you can and have caught many many many fish. We go far enough to be completely out of cell phone contact, so nobody back home can bother you (and yes, we are prepared if shit happens and we can't call people). A canoe and a paddle can be all you need to find peace at times. The first year I went was absolutely epic. I was 8 years old, a tiny little kid, and I was going camping with my dad and his buddies from work. It was the first big canoe trip I had been on and easily the most badass camping yet. When we paddled into the lakes, we faced harsh thunderstorms and were paddling into the wind. At times the waves were whitecapping and almost going over the canoe (which was heavily laden with gear). We made it, but damn it was a trip. It rained every single day of that trip, yet we were still out in the canoes nonstop and fished as much as we could. I have always been comfortable in water and swam on a youth team at that age, so water normally didn't scare me that much, but the thought of swamping a canoe in cold water in the middle of a lake during a thunderstorm was, well, bad. To make matters worse one of my grandfathers died a month earlier while out fishing by himself. Yeah, my mom was not happy to hear about the weather. I was never really afraid, but always cautious when canoeing after that trip. Sure, if I'm hanging out with friends at a lake I'll do whatever with a canoe in shallow water, but I don't like to take risks while out camping. Besides, there's nothing wrong with waiting a storm out by lighting a fire and sipping on liquor. It doesn't exactly count since the lakes are frozen over, but the bitching cold landscape in the dead of winter offers a mysterious sort of beauty. Awesome hiking, if you've got sleds. I need to make a dogsledding trip at some point. *The first trip I missed was this past summer. It made for a miserable week at work.
I've posted a couple times about my passion for paddling Hawaiian Outrigger Canoes. Just 2 weeks ago, we had our 27-mile Pacific Northwest Challenge, which consists of a 9-man team, with 6 men paddling at a time. Every 20 minutes, 3 paddlers jump out, and 3 more jump in. This year's winner (with a time of 3hours, 16 minutes) made a video of their performance, and it gives a pretty good idea of what I train so hard for.
My only funny boating story happened about a year and a half ago. I was in a little 15 horse power inflatable boat messing around in a sheltered bay. I was going as fast as the boat could go when I went over another boats wake. A second or two later I noticed that I was being sprayed with water. I turned around and saw that the engine had come off the back of the boat when I hit the wake and was about to start sinking (only reason it didn't was because it was attached to the petrol tank that was still sitting in the boat). I then had to kill the power and heave the engine back into the boat. I managed to do get it in, but couldn't get it to turn on again. I didn't have to row all the way back in as I was able to get towed back in. We did get the motor to work again though.