Tall Tom's moonlight paddle was a fine example of the difficult challenges a trip leader can face when things don't go according to plan. Every year Tom leads a full moon paddle out of Columbia Island Marina. It's pretty spectacular paddling on the darkened river and watching a big spring moon rise over the monuments of DC.
This year a group of about eight of us headed upriver in the early evening, figuring we'd catch the moon on the return. As we approached Georgetown we began to see lightning north of us over Montgomery County. Now, the water is a terrible place to be in a thunderstorm. I always think of my former co-worker Chad who survived a lightning strike on the water but was left with permanent hearing loss. I wasn't looking to subject my ears - or my ticker - to that kind of stress.
Suzanne and I, who were the unofficial sweeps of the group, along with other experienced paddlers, started to grumble. Tom responded by putting into shore at Roosevelt Island. The problem was, the storm was still pretty far away and trying to wait it out on the island looked to be an all evening affair. The grumblers felt the best option would be to turn around and head back ahead of the storm. However, that would have deprived the group of promised moonlight views. Tom decided that, the group having rejected his bailout to shore, he'd lead on. So, the group continued upriver past Key Bridge.
Through all this I was faced with a dilemma of my own. I really wanted to head back at the first sign of lightning, but I also didn't want to abandon the group, particularly since I had been dragooned into being the sweep (the person who stays in the back to make sure no one else gets left behind). At what point, I kept wondering, does concern over personal.safety take precedence over commitment to the group? After all, we're a kayaking club, not a Marine platoon.
At Key Bridge the grumbling finally started to get the better of Tom and he abandoned his plan to head farther upriver and turned around. By that point we were seeing flashes on a regular basis, which was unnerving. Our major hope was that the storm seemed to be tracking southeast, meaning it appeared to be going around us. Indeed, as we headed downriver it went from being behind us to being off to our left - in eastern DC or PG county. We started feeling the effects of the storm: the wind and the water picked up - but the storm never came over top of us. We all returned to the marina safe and sound, and quite dry as well. And we did get to see a gorgeous moon rise (no one got a picture of it - we were all focused on paddling by that point).
Was it right to continue on in the face of lightning? Should we have gone back through the more protected waters of the Boundary Channel? Should the faster paddlers of the group have slowed down to keep a tighter formation instead of bolting and leaving the back of the group behind? I don't know. The choices Tom made got us an enjoyable, pretty paddle and got us home safely, so I guess they were "right enough".
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