Sunken Klepper

On Monday (Labor Day holiday here in the States) I did a 15 or so mile kayak trip out in Jamaica bay with Sebago.  On the way back, we encountered a sunken Klepper in our basin, and ended up rescuing it.  OK, I know you're asking, "what the hell is a Klepper"? 

It's actually a folding kayak, designed by Mr. Klepper back in at the end of the 19th century.  There are of course more modern versions of these boats, but the model we rescued was introduced in the 1950's, and apparently is still current product. Hannes Lindeman famously paddled one of these across the Atlantic in 1956 carrying 72 cans of beer and some canned food.

I first encountered the infamous Klepper in 1996 when I paddled the Sheenjek river above the arctic circle in Alaska with NOLS:

We used them because they folded up into a bag, and fit into the bush planes we used.

Anyway, the guy we encountered had a sailing rig on his Klepper, and managed to capsize and sink it (a real accomplishment) just as we were coming back into our home basin.  Rescuing him and the boat was a lot of hard work at the end of a long paddle, but it was actually pretty fun, and my friend Bonnie has a whole write up here (in the story, I'm John, not "Commodore John").    Here's a photo of Bonnie and Phil and me towing the sunken monstrosity back to our dock (it turns out he wasn't even a member of our club):