Daily Photo: River Bliss

Photo: Out of Sight Out of Mind — Daily Photo: River Bliss

Environmental paddling activists, Out of Sight Out of Mind traveled to the island of Kauai in Hawaii in March 2013 to shoot a segment for their upcoming film, Search for the Perfect Day. “We made our way to the North Shore and paddled the Hanalei River through taro fields and jungles of flowering mango trees. North Shore Kauai is one of the cleanest places we’ve ever paddled,” the team write on their blog. “In contrast to the South and East sides, we only found two pieces of litter the entire day here. Inquisitive sea turtles appeared frequently, swimming right up to our kayaks to check us out.”

Read all about Team Out of Sight Out of Mind and their exciting upcoming films in the May issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App.

Daily Photo: Back Seat Driver

Wherever you’re sitting, the view is fine around Georgian Bay’s Franklin Island. Photo courtesy of Ontario Tourism.

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Shaking the Chill

Stories

Photo: Aaron Peterson — Shaking the Chill

A paddling buddy once told me that kids are like orcas—beautiful in pictures and best admired from a distance, hard to care for and most likely fatal if you get too close. I used to think this was funny—but now I know better.

My wife and I are standing on a frozen beach that winter has wiped as clean as a baby’s bottom. We have a date with each other, the first one in months, but more importantly, we have a date with the water—the first time we’ve paddled together since our oldest child was born four years ago.

I watch her dress in layers of polypro and Gore-Tex with latex accents. Bend to pull on—good gawd—knee-high neoprene boots. Gulp. It’s March in the North Country and a heatless spring sun tosses its rays across the near freezing water, but right now she’s looking hotter than the Bahamas.

What you need to know is that we fell in love on the water one star-crossed and kayak-crazed summer half our lives ago. Paddling is more than what we do, it’s who we are—or more like who we were.

Hoisting the boats hip-high we crunch through rotten, knee-deep drifts down to the water’s edge. In the distance I hear a county plow truck scraping along the highway, but on the water all is still. Our cores are like jelly donuts and the boats seem unsteady. I’m flapping wildly with little to show for it, like a baby bird falling from a nest. I’ve paddled a bit since the kids arrived but it was always in a fog of guilt thick as stink on neoprene.

A few miles go by and now we’re falling into our old rhythm, matching strokes and talking easily. The beach fades behind us. We talk with hope about the upcoming summer. We will hire more babysitters. We will guilt-trip the grandparents. There will be more paddling.

We’re getting out to the point now. It’s a northwest-facing stab of sandstone cliff that gathers ice like crumbs in a car seat. Our bright boats are swallowed whole in the hushed kiss of brash ice whispering an endless parable of change. It’s a tale of winter’s dwindling youth and the lake’s growing wisdom. In the back of a sea cave, meltwater plip-plops a lecture on glaciers and patience. I close my eyes and see birthday cakes, a used tandem, salt-and-pepper eyebrows and laugh lines. The water is electric cold but I dip my hands to the cuffs and hold them there as long as I can.

On the paddle back we’re trying to figure out how four years passed so quickly. We decide child rearing can be like hypothermia—it’s no big deal at first, you’re just a little cold and wet but then that becomes normal and numb and by the time you need to do something about it you can’t. You can’t rely on your friends to help because, let’s face it, they’re already goners. You just glubglubglub down into the orca-filled waters of minivans and soccer practices, dance recitals and dental appointments.

We pull off the water at dusk, drive into town and get a good meal and a better room. Today we shook off the chill of a four-year bout with hypothermia and paddled like it was the first time. But tonight we’re not taking any chances: I’ll be dressed for immersion.

Aaron Peterson is a well-adjusted full-time writer, photographer and toddler wrangler.

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Wild Man Harry Whelan

Photo: Glenn Charles — Wild Man Harry Whelan

“In the economic downturn we need to be creative to get business,” Harry Whelan smiles, “Anything quirky sells.”

Whelan, 43, manages a youth and community center in Central London on the tidal Thames, taking nine- to 19-year-olds out on the water for just £10 a year, and providing family therapy programs through kayaking.

But it’s the commercial arm of the center to which Whelan is referring. The money raised from his off-the-wall guided trips helps run the affordable community programs, or as Harry puts it, “The mad shit raises money for young people. It creates employment and helps buy equipment.”

Alongside predictable Discover London sightseeing tours, Whelan has dreamed up unusual crowd pleasers including a paddle to Putney for pizza, and speed dating in double kayaks where the paddlers swap seats every few miles. You can join a Valentine’s Day love float or don a Guinness hat, grab a green kayak and belt out raucous Irish songs during the St. Patrick’s Day “Paddle for Paddies.”

On a Rave River trip, paddlers are joined by DJ Splash, who dresses like Darth Vader and plays trance music from the front of a double kayak. “It’s the ultimate pre-club club,” says Whelan. The most recent offering is “kayak-aoke,” where Michael Jackson fans can sing along to Jacko classics while paddling speaker-equipped boats to a statue of the King of Pop.

The tidal Thames can be a challenging place to paddle, with a seven-meter tidal range, four-knot currents and busy boat traffic. But Whelan knows it like the back of his hand, which allows him to take out complete beginners.

“There is so much history here,” he enthuses, “If this is all I could ever do, paddle five miles upstream and back, that would be fantastic.”

Whelan is rarely serious, but on this point he is consistent. He is starting his third circumnavigation of his native Ireland this May. He’s also been around Britain and plans to go round again sometime in the future.

“You don’t need to go far away and waste jet fuel. All headlands are the same, a cliff is a cliff, a seagull is a seagull”, he quips. “Kayaking is very repetitive, you’re repeating what you do with every forward stroke. The variety comes from the different sea conditions—it’s never the same twice.”

Whelan also finds variety at home on the Thames. Before work, he often launches the Taran that he raced around Ireland in 2011 in a record 25 days. In the dark, he seeks out powerboats whose owners let him surf their wakes. He started off carving the wave behind the boat but has progressed to surfing parallel—his longest ride is about three miles.

Churning propellers inches from his kayak—or daunting funding challenges—don’t faze Whelan. “If you look at things in a different way,” he advises, “you will see opportunity.”

Justine Curgenven just released the fifth film in her hit kayaking series, This is the Sea.

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. To watch a preview of This is the Sea 5 featuring Harry Whelan, download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Chillcheater Touring Cag Gear Review

Gear

Photo: Reed Chillcheater — Chillcheater Touring Cag Gear Review

A review of the Reed Chillcheater Aquatherm Touring Cag from Adventure Kayak magazine.

With a unique, ventilating zippered neck and a removable hood that’s one of the best-fitting we’ve ever tested, we’d love the Touring Cag even if it wasn’t made from Reed’s remarkable Super Stretch Aquatherm fabric. Worn by the likes of Freya Hoffmeister and Batman (check out the Dark Knight’s tights in Batman Begins—Reed also works extensively with the film industry), this material uses a soft, polyester stretch knit bonded to an ultrathin polyurethane outer. The result is a light, shirt-like feel and fit that’s waterproof, thermally insulating and longwearing with unmatched freedom of movement.

www.chillcheater.com / www.reednorthamerica.com | $225

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

Daily Photo: Tropical Treat

Photo:Virginia Marshall — Daily Photo: Tropical Treat

Thailand’s Ao Phang Nga is a vast bay filled with subtropical karst islands, towering flowerpots, caves, perfect sand beaches, traditional fishing boats and little-known campsites accessible only by kayak.

“The beginning of the rainy season in April makes for moody skies and welcome relief from the heat and humidity,” says Adventure Kayak editor, Virginia Marshall, who spent four days exploring the bay.

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Saturna Island Kayak Trip

Trips

Gulf Islands National Park Reserve

In British Columbia’s Southern Gulf Islands, the longest stretch of undeveloped coastline—all of four kilometers—is found on Saturna Island, within the Gulf Islands National Park.

Seal haul-outs, bald eagles, feral goats and these spectacular sandstone cliffs near Murder Point make circumnavigating the island (~35 kilometers) a perfect weekend escape. Plan to camp at one of the national park sites on tiny Cabbage Island, across a shallow, sheltered channel from Tumbo Island.

Learn more at http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/bc/gulf/index.aspx

Daily Photo: First Outing

Photo: Tony G — Daily Photo: First Outing

The first outing of the year is a special one. Tony G. made his on the Allegheny River, eight miles below Franklin, PA.

This photo was taken by Tony G. Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.

Daily Photo: Through the Looking Glass

Photo: Sue Vokey — Daily Photo: Through the Looking Glass

Adventure Kayak reader Sue Vokey can often be found paddling Sudbury, Ontario’s waterways after first break-up, when chunks of ice resmeble window panes. Here, through the looking glass, she spots Birgit Kuhle.

Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.

Rodeo Rescue Canoe Technique

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

In the deep, fast rivers of the north and west a capsized canoe could float for kilometres before being spit out of the current and into an eddy. Often a spray skirt and tied-in packs will make a canoe-over-canoe rescue impossible.

For the sake of the paddlers, the capsized canoe, the jettisoned packs and the rest of the group, you need a way to get a current-borne canoe to shore.

The paddlers in the water are your first concern—regardless of which food barrel was in their canoe. The canoe will be like an iceberg, more below the water than above, so use caution in shallow water to avoid getting people between the capsized canoe and obstacles, or getting the canoe pinned.

To properly envision a rodeo rescue, imagine yourself with chaps and a lasso, but keep it clean. Think of a cowboy roping a calf at the Calgary Stampede. You’re going to attach a rope to the canoe, wait for your moment, then paddle as fast as you can to shore where you can pendulum the canoe to safety. You’ll need a number of throwbags linked together with carabiners.

On some wide and fast rivers you could use up to four 20-metre throwbags.  Have the ropes ready with the free end of each rope clipped to the next bag’s end loop. When you reach the capsized canoe, you as a stern paddler should clip the free end of the last throwbag to the downstream end of the capsized canoe and then wait beside the floating canoe until the canoes enter a “belay zone,” a stretch of river where the shore is close enough and the current is slow enough that you will be able to paddle downstream to shore and get out of the canoe before the rope goes taut.

When you get to shore, jump into the shallow water or onto shore, anchor yourself with a safe stance or with the rope braced around a tree or rock. As the rope becomes taut there will be a strong pull. As long as you hold fast the canoe will swing in to shore.

It is tempting to rush, but if there isn’t an upcoming rapid, it’s better to wait until you have a sure belay zone where the stern paddler will be able to get out of the canoe with the rope while the bow paddler secures the rescue canoe.

As you paddle toward shore you’ll be in slower water so the capsized canoe may overtake you. If you run out of rope before you reach shore, you’ll end up trying to tow more than a tonne of canoe, gear and water. The capsized canoe will soon pull you directly upstream of it. Try to ferry toward shore, but if you are being overpowered pull some rope in, turn downstream and overtake the canoe until you see another belay zone.

The safest method for retaining your end of the rope is to hold the last throwbag down with your knee. This lets you paddle freely and release the rope quickly if the capsized canoe seems intent on running the next rapid. Make sure there are no loose coils of rope in the canoe that could wrap around your leg.

If you are in the capsized canoe and no cowboys are coming to the rescue you can try to wrangle the canoe yourself by swimming to shore with a rope. For this attempt you’ll need to have the rope already clipped to a grab loop, with the throwbag held down with shock cord as described on page 23 of the Spring 2008 issue of Canoeroots (read online at canoerootsmag.com). Be patient and wait until the canoe floats into a very good belay zone so you won’t run out of rope and be towed back into the faster current.

Mark Scriver won’t say how he knows you shouldn’t fasten the rescue rope to your canoe, only that it involves a class IV rapid on the Yukon’s Firth river.

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2009.