On a dark, cold December morning, my friend Craig shows up 15 minutes before the 6:00 a.m. departure time that he’d deemed two hours too late. His compact pickup truck is buried beneath three boats—a sea kayak, whitewater kayak and his surf kayak. As my wife, Kim, and I scramble to pack last-minute items and secure our four boats atop my equally half-size pickup, Craig tells us how he typically drives 16 hours a day.

“But I only slept a few hours last night,” he adds, “so we may have to stop an hour or two earlier today, if that’s okay?” Kim flashes a look of relief. With that, we hit the snowy northern Ontario highway, en route for five days of Christmas surf kayaking in the southern United States.

Craig has made a habit of this annual migration, driving south for two weeks of paddling when the grip of winter seems never-ending. To flip the pages of a Rand McNally atlas with him is to learn of the vast potential of winter paddling options: On one trip in the Florida Everglades he paddled at night through a minefield of alligators; another time he dodged board surfers at Cape Canaveral; and then there was the off-season island-hop he and a friend made to Ocracoke Island, North Carolina.

Two years ago, Craig and our friends Jorma and lorraine spent the holidays surfing ocean waves off the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina and whitewater boating on Appalachian rivers. The three of them (and two dogs) piled into roadside motels, bartering for discounted holiday rates and cranking bathroom thermostats to dry their gear. It was on this trip that Craig was given his Wave Terrorist CB handle for his reckless abandon for paddling, and Jorma and lorraine’s rusty Escort wagon became known as the Doghouse.

plans for a sequel came together seam- lessly. Jorma, who was previously featured as Adventure Kayak’s thrift store expert, Lorraine and the dogs would drive down a few days early to get their whitewater fix. Meanwhile, Craig, Kim and I hit the road to rendezvous in the town of Surf City on Christmas Eve. Trip goals were simple: Endless surf, lots of laughs and cheap accommodations.

Somewhere in Michigan, Craig gave us the dash-mounted GPS he’d borrowed for the trip. he said it was too hard to track the screen and drive at the same time.

From the cab of our truck, Kim became chief navigator, calling out directions and relaying them to Wave Terrorist by way of a Motorola walkie-talkie. Approaching Columbus, Ohio, in pre-Christmas rush hour, our convoy fell apart. Traffic thickened and sped up, exits blurred past and Craig’s truck was swallowed by a pulsing tide of last minute shoppers in SUVs.

“Wave Terrorist, you’re in the wrong lane,” blurted Kim as Craig disappeared up an off-ramp heading for downtown.

“I’ll find you,” was the only reply.

After an hour of waiting on the shoulder of I-270, Kim and I agreed to carry on. Then my last, shot-in-the-dark call for Wave Terrorist was acknowledged, albiet by garble.

Minutes later, Craig pulled over. Downplaying his adventurous lap of the Columbus’ city centre, he was ready to get back on the highway and make up time. After another navigational blunder amid a confusing network of highway junctions along the Ohio-West Virginia border, we eventually red-eyed to one-star accommodations south of Charleston, West Virginia, for the night.

If you drive a two-day, 2,000-kilometre diagonal from the great lakes across the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic seaboard, you’ll hit Surf City, North Carolina.

This tourist-trap town is located 150 kilometres north of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, at the southern tip of a 300-kilometre-long strip of sandy islands that shield the U.S. Intracoastal Waterway from the outer coast. While the popular surf beaches of Cape hatteras and the northern Outer Banks yield larger, more reliable waves year-round, Surf City waves average over a metre in December. The town is less popular among turf-warring board surfers and is generally free of strong currents and sharks. For barely $100 per night, the five of us rented an apartment-style motel suite a stone’s throw from the ocean. 

Ginni Callahan is a sea kayak guide on the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, in winter and on the Columbia River and Oregon Coast in the summer. She owns Columbia River Sea Kayaking and Sea Kayak Baja Mexico. 

This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Off you go with your paddle (left and right ends), don’t forget to make sure the whistle is still attached to your pFD, don’t forget your pFD, and pump, and paddle float, throw bag,