My longest kayak...

...tow: twenty miles! The boat is only my second longest. Since moving to a house with frontage on a brook that is big enough to paddle when there isn't a drought, I bought a kayak to explore beyond that 200 feet. I liked paddling a boat, so when the summer drought did come, I extended the neck of a cargo trailer to make it long enough to tow the kayak to the Connecticut River, which is quite a bit deeper. It's also longer, so I bought a longer, narrower boat that can, or will, move faster through the water, once I repair a minor divot in the hull from someone being a little too exuberant with a ratchet strap.

In the interim, I bought another really cheap plastic boat, with an easy hull repair that I did complete, because it didn't need to be perfect. So now I have a guest boat for when one friend visits. Fortunately, I'm unfriendly enough that one guest boat has sufficed, especially since the two friends who just moved downstream from me bought their own kayaks. Conveniently, the guest boat was bought from a neighbor only a third of the way to their house, maybe a mile away.

That made three boats. Really, no really, I don't want even a quarter as many kayaks as I have bikes, but when someone offered a free boat from the far side of Northampton, without a seat, but with a minor patch already completely, I couldn't say no even though apparently everyone else had said just that for the couple weeks I was gone. At thirteen and a half feet, it is exactly half way between the two boat sizes I had, and made of fiberglass instead of plastic, it weight only as much as the small ones. It's also still short enough to fit the existing trailer without further extension. 

And hey, a patch job was already done, well enough that I stopped at the river on my way home, after the boat had received a compliment, while I ate my lunch, from someone who recognized the model. No, it didn't leak, but yes, it is faster than the shorter plastic boats. And one more bonus, I confirmed paddling could be really good physical therapy to help rebuild strength in my arm after my nerve injury. And the final bonus? Closing with the quip from Adele, whom I saw at the close of my lunch: catch of the day!