A little problem with the paddle.

I was just out canoeing on the bay this morning and encountered a problem I hadn't experienced  before. A couple of years ago I purchased a new shorter kayak paddle, to use in the mangroves. I use a solo canoe so a kayak paddle works best. The last few years I haven't gotten out as often as I would like so things sit around. When I went to put the two piece paddle together the button was rusted. This surprised me as I have another much older paddle that this has never happended to in twenty years.
    Now, how to fix at the launch site? I have a disk on my keyring that has several screwdriver sizes. I used that to pop out the button but then it still wouldn't move in and out as intended. It needed some kind of lubricant to help break up the rust and corrosion. What I had was a can of mosquito repellant. As this has some petroleum ingredients (turns out to be: butane, propane, isobutane) it worked. This is what causes the repellent to destroy plastics, etc. when you spray this stuff around, and probably contributes to that burn you feel when you spray it on bare skin. I'll have to follow up and clean that corrosion off the button and figure out what to lubricate it with to prevent this in the future.

This is the button pushed in, the brown is corrosion on the button.

The repellent along with some prodding and pushing got the button back working and we were off on a lovely paddle on the bay.

 Here's a photo of the canoe last year when I was doing some upkeep on it. It's a Kevlar and fiberglas sandwich that they don't make anymore, 15' and weighs 45 lbs.

I restored the canoe last year, replaced the seat, some hardware and painted the gunwales.