ESSEX RIVER — I used the paddle to push off from shore, then quickly strapped it to the side of the kayak because I wouldn’t be needing that primitive relic anymore. Not in the future I was about to enter.

Using a cord mounted on my left, I carefully lowered the trolling motor into the water, through a slot in the front of the kayak, and felt a satisfying click as it locked into place. Then I picked up the remote control that was hanging around my neck, pressed a button to turn on the propeller, edged the power up to 90 percent, and folded my hands behind my neck because apparently I didn’t need them anymore either.

Then I sat back and held on as the “Autopilot” kayak shot me through the water at a pace that left me no other choice than to laugh like a movie villain.

Paddling is for suckers. I know this now, and, interestingly, it was the folks at Old Town Canoes & Kayaks who taught me. That’s the beloved Maine company that since 1898 has been making people fall in love with paddling. That is until they went electric.

In 2020, they introduced the Autopilot series of kayaks, retailing for between $3,999 and $4,499 and powered by a Minn Kota trolling motor that took the paddle out of the equation and, amazingly, allowed you to anchor without an actual anchor. The release of the Autopilot immediately took the Internet by storm, with breathless reviewers calling it the future (or the death) of kayaking.

I’d smirked at the videos — everyone seemed fixated on the idea that you could drive it like a remote drone, without ever having to actually get in it — but lied to myself and pretended I was too much of a purist to ever put away my paddle. That is until the next time I tried to paddle against a current and remembered that it is about as much fun as my annual job review.

So I convinced the folks at Old Town to let me borrow one for a day — they’re sold out until next year — and after putting in at Clammer’s Beach in Essex, I made a beeline across the marsh toward the tip of Crane Beach in Ipswich, heading straight for the best test I could come up with.

The sandy point has a reliably strong rip current, and as I got sucked into it, I reached down and dropped the anchor.

And by that I mean I hit a button on the remote, because the anchor is digital in this future.

The anchor button activated Spot Lock, a feature that promises to use the trolling motor to keep the boat within a 5-foot radius of where you initiate it. In a split second, the trolling motor revved and swung the boat around and pointed it straight into the current as the algorithm made constant adjustments to the power and direction. I won’t pretend to know what was going on, but I will tell you what happened: It held like a magnet, as the emptying marsh tried to shoot me toward Portugal.

After a few moments of shouting, “Did you see that?” to absolutely no one, I was so confident that I did something absurd: I stood up, and started fishing.

The Autopilot is technically a fishing kayak and an evolution of the pedal-powered fishing kayaks that Old Town and others have been developing in recent years. Pedal kayaks were faster than their ancestors and required less energy to operate, but the big revolution was that they allowed the angler’s hands to be free to work a rod.

The pedal kayak has been a game-changer, no doubt, but if you stood, you drifted. And less energy is not no energy. Enter the Autopilot.

Old Town, which is based in the Maine town of the same name, is now owned by Johnson, a huge name in outdoor products that also owns the Minn Kota brand of trolling motors. Marrying the two was a natural decision, especially after Spot Lock became a revolution for boat owners. Being able to lock in place without having to drop an actual anchor is a huge advantage for anglers, ditto the cruise control setting, which allows you to slowly troll an area, or meander past boats anchored off the backside of Crane Beach, arms folded behind your head, yelling, “I’m on a boat” to people who do not care.

The motor on the Autopilot is relatively small, and reminded me of a motorized cormorant, fit neatly into a rectangular opening in the hull, craning its neck as it kicked along below. There are two ways to steer, either using the remote to turn the motor itself or using foot pedals to control a rudder, which saves battery, though that was not my goal. No, I was trying to see what it took to kill it, and after four-plus hours, most of it at or near full power, the Autopilot still had a quarter of a tank when I reluctantly handed it back to the Old Town rep.

My only complaint about my time with the Autopilot is that I didn’t fully appreciate what the rep had tried to tell me when we spoke on the phone the previous night, when he said, “There’s enough room behind your seat to hold a full-size cooler.” So I spent the day being taunted by the two cup-holders, which sat beer-less on either side of me, whispering “amateur.” Clearly, in this future, I did not understand how unnecessary I would be.

Billy Baker can be reached at billy.baker@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @billy_baker.

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