Suffering Spontaneity’s Consequences
Camp-cruising desert waterways in an 11-foot wooden sailboat
Article and photos by Kitrick Nielson
Today I've hiked into town before the Dollar General opens and it's already miserably hot. I find some shade and connect to the store’s free WIFI to try and make my new phone’s SIM card work. Here I get the same message I got all day yesterday. “Try again later.” Yesterday I woke up phoneless and stranded, and last night I had to rush to beat nightfall and row my little boat back out into the Colorado River where I camped on an island 100 feet from the gaze of waterfront patios. At least today started with a phone that works on Dollar General WIFI. Things today are going better than they had been.
Plans for this trip solidified a couple days earlier when my nephew asked what I was doing this summer. Family gathered to celebrate his high school graduation. “I’m going to sail to Mexico.” He chuckled. Paused. “Oh. You’re serious?” I explained some ideas I had ruminating. A recently finished 11-foot dinghy made to displace 700 pounds had most of the kinks worked out. I wanted to sail and drift as much as possible of the lower Colorado River between where we live, Las Vegas, and Yuma, Arizona on the border with Mexico. Family members at the table had questions. “What are you going to eat?” There are towns along the way with groceries. “How are you going to get your boat home?” My dad had just retired and volunteered to shuttle me back home. The boat rides well on planks across a pickup truck bed. “How are you going to get over the dams?” I had made a little packable cart and scouted out at least the first dam. Even though the boat had to be hauled over a couple concrete barriers, with a moving blanket, two canvas tarps, and some beach rollers, it should make it. Yuma being the end of the navigable Colorado River, was the goal. Some sailors overplan and execute great passages. I prefer to plan poorly and suffer spontaneity’s consequences. I would have a phone and strangers on the river if I got in trouble. Though in a twist I couldn’t have planned for a malicious stranger was what nearly turned my trip into a failure.
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