On The Line: 11-Week Canoe Trip Through the Boreal Forest

Stories

All Photos: Frank Wolf — On The Line: 11-Week Canoe Trip Through the Boreal Forest

“Draw! Draw! Forward hard! Hard! Hard!” Taku has never been on a canoe trip before so I call out his strokes like a coxswain. He reacts instantly and the canoe slips around a pillowing rock the size of a Smart car before we bash through a series of waves that high-five Taku’s face.

With his hair slicked back into a pompadour care of the Albany River, Taku looks like an Elvis impersonator from Tokyo as we spin into the eddy. Born in Japan and raised in the dirty streets of Chicago before becoming a West Coast boy, Taku had been slow to try out the oldest North American pastime. From backcountry skiing with him in B.C.’s Coast Mountains I knew he had the temperament required for an extended wilderness trip so I asked him along on my 75-day paddle through the boreal forest—there’d be plenty of time to teach him about canoeing along the way.

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Five seven five. Every evening by the water Taku writes haiku in Japanese and Chinese characters using a brush dipped in a well of black ink. We’re 25 days in at the base of Kagiami Falls on the Albany River. Taku sits and writes. His newness to tripping is refreshing—everyday he learns something, sees it in a different way than I do. I want to learn more from him so I press him on his ritual. Looking up from his script to the setting sun, the words come calmly.

“Your daily existence in the boreal is simple—it consists of moving forward and doing what’s necessary for survival and comfort. In the city, all the annoying details of life are a distraction. The isolation of the wilderness removes the clutter and makes me more reflective and meditative.”

He glances at Kagiami Falls then returns to his haiku. In a few words, he has captured this place. Five seven five.

Our 3,100-kilometre trip began in downtown Winnipeg. Carrying our gear down the aptly named Portage Avenue, we parted gawking lunchtime crowds and put in at the Red River. Our route would take us to Parry Sound on Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay via Lake Winnipeg, the Bird River, Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, Lac Seul, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany, Kenogami, Kabina, Pivabiska, Missinaibi, Mattagami, Grassy, Sturgeon and French rivers. The route dances above and below the 51st parallel, the partition that separates pristine boreal forest in the north from the industrialized south. It’s a line on the map you might be hearing more about soon.

A globally significant swath of green, the boreal is like a giant carbon bank, holding 67 billion tonnes of the element in deposit.

In summertime, worldwide carbon levels measurably drop as this great lung of our planet takes in a deep breath for us all. Due to its remoteness, the zone north of this latitude remains the greatest area of undisturbed boreal forest in Canada. The First Nations of this region called for a moratorium on development in 2005 as forestry, mining, and hydro interests began creeping north.

On day 21 we pick up our food parcel from the post office in the Mishkeegogamang First Nation at the head of the Albany River.

The owner of the general store is a sharp-featured woman with dark, curly hair named Laureen Nassaykeesic. She is a former member of band council, well versed in local politics and firm in her opinions. Laureen speaks softly as she twirls a daisy in her hand. “We are prepared to fight to make sure they don’t come and develop the area. The only benefit would be a stumpage fee, which would be nothing. Then, what, wait 100 years for a new set of trees? I have grandchildren and I’d like them to enjoy the green forest and the natural way of things. We’re very lucky to live here.”

Taku is wolfing down pork chops and mashed potatoes provided by our host Norman “Dude” Baxter. We are one week down the Albany at the Marten Falls First Nation. Dude is a fishing and hunting guide with a drill sergeant buzzcut. He found Taku wandering around the village and invited us in just as a ferocious sideways storm swept in. Sixty years ago, his father would spend two weeks paddling from Marten Falls to Calstock to trade furs for supplies. There are no roads even today, just waterways.

“The Albany is our highway,” Dude explains. “It gives us our fishing and hunting—it’s everything.”

Despite the Albany’s status as a provincial park, the Ontario Power Authority has proposed that two major dams be built on the river by 2020, one of them at Kagiami Falls. The projects would carve up the surrounding boreal wilderness with roads and transmission lines as well as flood existing habitat and hunting grounds. A current agreement between the province and First Nations limits power projects above the 51st to 25 megawatts but as power demand increases, so does pressure to renegotiate the deal. Apparently everything is negotiable; everything is on the line.

The first big boulder to catapult its way into the region is the Victor diamond mine on Ontario’s Attawapiskat River, spearheaded by international giant de Beers. The project, already underway, will clear 5,000 hectares of forest, generate 2.5 million tonnes of leeching waste per year and pump 100,000 cubic metres of salty water from the pit into the attawapiskat daily. In all, the entire project will affect an area 22 times the size of Vancouver. All for a mine forecast to produce for only 12 years.

Rounding the corner at the confluence of the Missinaibi and Mattagami rivers we turn away from James Bay and head back upstream into the heart of the Boreal. Taku is not the only one being meditative. Staring down 450 kilometres of upstream paddling makes you live in the moment, fixating on how each stroke—and all too often each stride—gets you closer to the next height of land.

Taku’s head is down as he tracks the canoe and stumbles repeatedly over sharp, slippery rock. The wide, shallow Mattagami River is too low to paddle and seems to stretch endlessly ahead. We are travelling through the industrialized wilderness that exists south of the 51st parallel—still remote, mostly unseen and yet bent sharply by our desires. there was little joy yesterday and today is the same. Taku’s haiku tonight will be a sad one.

The Mattagami drops and rises based on the electrical demands of people who have never heard of it. the water is coffee-coloured with brown foam lining its edges—like a bowl of cappuccino. Fish are inedible due to mercury leeched from flooded ground, upstream mines and mills mean drinking water has to be drawn from feeder creeks.

On the morning of our third day up the Mattagami I peer through the mesh of our tent to the other side of Grand Rapids, but the river is gone. All i can see are piles of broken limestone. Wet streaks between rock piles are the only indication that this was a river the day before.

Three hours later, galaxies of lights and computers turn on far to the south as the workday kicks in. Four unseen dams release and water begins to fill the quarry-like riverbed. It steadily bubbles back to life. The level rises half a metre—enough for taku and i to begin our slog for the day, looking around each point for a feeder creek to fill our water bottles. We pull our canoe up the rest of this formerly great rapid, one the voyageurs used to sing songs about as they pushed to James Bay.

As the collective demand for more comes from the south the Mattagami responds and by midday the water is deep enough for us to paddle. the river is running hot now—an alien high tide with the power grid acting as full moon.

We paddle hard against the steady outflow.

Hugging the shore, we strain through the current at the tops of eddies. Sometimes the paddle strokes seem futile, and i think of the Albany. Sitting in a 16-foot canoe I felt helpless against the current of that great river; on the Mattagami i feel helpless against the current of a society that seems bent on pushing ever deeper into wilderness.

But we keep cranking, because if more people know about what the Albany is like, and what the Mattagami has become, there will be hope for the boreal above the 51st. Stroke after stroke we strain against the current. We know easing up means going backward.

This article on a canoe trip through the Boreal Forest was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Paddle to Cuba

Stories

Photo: Foundation For Nature and Humanity — Paddle to Cuba

It took a trip to Cuba for me to appreciate, a quarter century later, the legitimate genius of Don and Dana Starkell’s canoe trip from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the mouth of the Amazon River.

I was invited to Cuba by the Foundation for Nature and Humanity to help develop a training program for environmental teachers. All was on track until my host casually referred to Cuba as a “canoe culture.” If I looked surprised when he said that, I was speechless when he said, “If you don’t believe me, come check out our canoe museum.” Canoe museum?

There in a back room of the foundation’s Havana office was one glorious canoe—a 42-foot dugout canoe called Hatuey (named after Cuba’s first national hero, a Taino Chief who had warned the residents of Cuba of the impending arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century). Inside the canoe were paddles carved in exotic rainforest leaf patterns. Surrounding it, in glass cases that lined three walls, were fascinating Latin curios including a still-menacing stuffed piranha and, so my host said, the world’s largest collection of erotic pottery. So they not only had a canoe museum, they appeared to have a Cuban angle on the whole love-in-a-canoe theme as well!

But the story got better. In the years leading up to the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ conquest of the Americas, Antonio Nunez Jimenez, the scholar and naturalist who had inspired the creation of the Foundation for Nature and Humanity, decided to play down the European “discovery” of the New World and celebrate instead how people came to Cuba in the first place, long before 1492. That migration, research revealed, was by canoe from high in the Andes in what is now Ecuador.

So they not only had a canoe museum, they appeared to have a Cuban angle on the whole love-in-a-canoe theme as well.

Jimenez commissioned five 42-foot dugout canoes and corresponded with people all along the migration route. In the late 1980s he led an historic reenactment of the founding canoe trip, down the Napo River to the Amazon, along the mighty Amazonas to the junction of the Negro River, then upstream to the height of land in what is now

Guyana, over the divide, and down the Orinoco River to the Caribbean Sea. There, they tied outriggers on their canoes and made their way over open ocean among the Antilles and eventually to Cuba.

As I stood at a map in the Cuban Canoe Museum, listening to my host recount this amazing tale (and yes, he explained how the erotic pottery, the canoe, and a powerboat called Love all factored into the story), I recalled that this term “canoe” that is so near and dear to the hearts of Canadians is likely indigenous to the Caribbean, probably derived from the Arawakan term, canaoua. I wondered why we acknowledge that north-south linguistic connection so rarely.

So often Canadians assume we have the corner on all things canoe. True, considering our own history and the role that the canoe, particularly the uniquely Canadian birch bark canoe, has played as an east-west transportation and communication link, there is a temptation to think that there ends the story. Not so. Remember that crazed guy from Winnipeg who loaded his two sons in a 22-foot fibreglass canoe called Orellana and set out for the Amazon?

It took them two years. One Starkell son bailed out near the Gulf of Mexico. But Don and Dana Starkell covered a large portion of the route through South America that Jimenez and his crew would travel a few years later, rejoining the historic canoe connection between North and South America. Starkell, in his bones, knew that our canoe culture and theirs were related, and that to understand one, we are obliged to appreciate the other.

This article on paddling to Cuba was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Camping Clothes

Stories

The dermatologist assured my mother and me that many other 10-year-old boys also suffered from what he called crotch rot. In case you avoided this itchy ailment, blue jeans and cotton swimsuits don’t dry quickly and where things don’t dry, fungus grows. Trust me.

The treatment was a small jar of white cream, applied liberally twice daily. The solution however is to spend more time—and sometimes money—when shopping for kids’ outdoor gear.

A friend of mine is a manager in a very posh ski shop north of Toronto, a place where the skintight ski suits are trimmed with furry hoods. Yet many of her well-to-do customers refuse to spend $59 on snowboard helmets for their kids. Why? Because they say they’ll just grow out of them.

I want my two kids to enjoy their time camping as much as we do and outfitting them with good gear has been worth every penny.

To me, helmets for kids are a no-brainer in any gravity or action sport. of course they will grow out of them, but what about now? Aren’t their heads worth protecting no matter what size?

Nobody runs, jumps, falls, rolls and climbs more than camp kids—rain or shine. In my mind we should be dressing them in hard-shelled, quick-drying, fuzzy, waterproof, breathable, cool, bug-proof and rugged clothing; whatever it takes to protect them, but also whatever it takes to make their time outside as enjoyable—and rash free—as possible.

The sun is probably the most dangerous and underestimated hazard our children encounter. Too much sun can ruin any camping trip, not to mention cause long-term damage to their skin and eyes. Properly fitting sun hats with good coverage and SPF-rated beachwear are worth it. After five summers guiding whitewater rafts I can barely open my eyes on a sunny day without a good pair of shades. Some parents don’t bother with sunglasses for their kids because they say they’ll just break or lose them.

Do you remember being dressed in a garbage bag instead of a raincoat? How expensive were raincoats that it made more sense for our parents to blow through a box of garbage bags every camping trip? Not to mention the fact that plastic sacks with three big holes cut in them really aren’t that dry.

Socks that fall down in boots are not only annoying, sweaty bare feet in boots get blisters. Companies like Smartwool and Wigwam have virtually eliminated this childhood nuisance, not to mention that these socks dry quickly and resist odours.

Smart shoppers save money by buying clothes that will serve double duty, like long underwear for camping in the summer and skiing in the winter. They choose colours that both boys and girls will wear as they are passed down, or ferret out other outdoor families through the scouts or ski clubs and buy, sell or trade clothes. shopping out of season can save you up to 50 per cent. While rooting around at a used clothing store we found a $28 MEC sunhat for $3. Don’t limit yourself to camping brands; just consider the styles and fabrics that will keep kids dry and warm or cool and shaded.

I want my two kids to enjoy their time camping as much as we do and outfitting them with good gear has been worth every penny. I’ve stopped thinking of this as an expense, but rather an investment. If we don’t invest and outfit our kids with gear that allows them to be warm, dry and safe it won’t only be the clothes they grow out of, it will be the outdoors.

This article on clothing for kids was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Butt End: You Can Take it With You

Stories

Photo: Sandy Easton — Butt End: You Can Take it With You

I’ve been spolied when it comes to camp gadgets. Over the past few years I’ve done a television talk show circuit during which I show off the latest camp gear.

Before the interviews I head to the local outdoor store to borrow the season’s hottest items and then go on air to discuss the pros, cons and absurdities of everything from new mosquito repellent to solar radios to cold fusion-powered lanterns.

One morning a few years ago I arrived at a studio with a pack full of non-essentials—including a device that lets women urinate while standing up. The female co-host looked over the gear before the show and asked a few questions, particularly about the plastic tube-shaped fake phallus, called the Peemate.

The male host, however, hadn’t bothered. He walked on set just as we went live, made some arrogant remarks about how silly camping was, grabbed the Peemate and asked what it was.

“It’s a whistle. Give it a try,” I said. He did, and his co-host fell over laughing. Almost every talk show in the country phoned me the next day asking me to be on their show—provided I bring the Peemate.

To me, a camp gadget is a luxury item you can do without—but would rather not. A camp chair even qualifies, as long as it has a backrest and a cup holder and allows you to sit high up off the cold, wet ground.

I teased him about his chair—until he let me sit in it. He had to tip me out.

A friend once brought a camp chair on a one-month, portage-heavy trip. I teased him nonstop about packing such a bulky item, that is until he let me sit in it for five minutes one evening. He had to tip me out of it.

There’s no sense fighting it. We’ve been trying to increase our comfort and take advantage of the latest wonder of technology since we first went back to the wilderness.

I admire those campers who hold themselves to the primitive approach, but I suspect they have gadget-related jobs and so are desperate for an escape from the high-tech world. Or perhaps they are atoning for something.

Of course, it’s possible to get carried away. I never want to skewer a marshmallow by the light of a laptop. But if you follow the simple rule, “If you want to use it, you carry it,” we should be able to keep things below the gunwales.

This article on gear was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Betcha Didn’t Know About… Turtles

Stories

Photo: Ian Merringer — Betcha Didn't Know About... Turtles

The first turtles are thought to have (slowly) roamed the earth 215 million years ago, before lizards and snakes.
Painted turtles spend the winter buried half a metre deep in the mud at the bot- tom of lakes and ponds. They breathe through gas-exchange sacs below their tails.
Turtles play a key role in many aboriginal creation stories. According to Ojibwa legend, North America rests on the back of Maukinauk, the great turtle.
Baby painted turtles often spend their first winter in a semi-frozen state, with their heart and breathing stopped.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a comic series, television show and movie in the 1980s and ‘90s, told the story of four turtles that evolved from sewer ooze and fought evil with martial arts. It was inexplicably popular.
Courting wood turtles dance side to side for up to two hours before making things official.
According to the book Up North, the Soviets sent the first spaceturtles around the moon in 1971.
Snapping turtles can live to be 90 years old.
An overturned turtle can lever itself back upright with its neck.
Since turtles can’t expand their ribcages, in order to breathe when out of water they use an air pump to draw in air.
Four of Canada’s 15 species of turtles are listed as endan- gered under the federal Species at Risk Act.
Nestlé Turtles blend caramel, pecans and cashews inside a milk chocolate shell. Each turtle contains 90 calories— enough energy to paddle a canoe for about 20 minutes.
A group of turtles is called a bale. No deaths have ever been attributed to stampeding bales.
A turtle’s shell, just like a geo- desic tent, gains much of its strength from its dome-like shape.
Californian pop-rock band The Turtles were originally called Crossfires from the Planet Mars. They crawled to the top of the Billboard charts in 1967 with the single “Happy Together,” dislodging a song called “Penny Lane” by another band known for its hard shell.

This article on turtles was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

A Dark and Stormy Night

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/danecronin — A Dark and Stormy Night

We had no radio warning of the storm. It swept out of the arctic and down the eastern seaboard, the fiercest norther of the season, wrecking pleasure boats and capsizing a barge under tow off the Carolinas. In two doubles we were five hours into a 75-nautical-mile (139 km) crossing from Haiti to Great Inagua when a string of sausage-shaped clouds appeared along a glowering northern horizon. Astern, a line of mountains lay against a hazy sky.

We pulled the two kayaks close to discuss options. it would be dark in an hour, and the Haitian coast in a night storm was unthinkable. Meanwhile the cloud at the edge of the front raced towards us like a roll of fuzzy carpet. a waterspout materialized. As it veered a quarter-mile to the west, spirals of ocean twisted up the column into the low grey clouds. Uncertain puffs of wind teased us as we edged forward with a mixture of dread and excitement.

I snapped a cyalume light and attached it above the brim of my hat as a cloud of spray headed our way. We leashed our paddles. in the other kayak, Ken did the same. The first blast took our breath away and almost took the paddles as well. Darkness rushed in.

“Keep your stroke low!” I yelled, but I doubt my wife, Bea, heard me.

Spray flew so thick we could only open our eyes off the wind. It streamed off our coats and down our faces, filling our mouths with salty water. On the fringe of my vision i could just make out the hazy light on the other kayak, yet, whenever we drew closer we risked collision.

AN EMPTY HORIZON

During the next hour the wind blasted us through 360 degrees while we directed all our efforts to staying upright, gripping our paddles and not losing sight of the other kayak. Water sloshed about, inches deep in our boat. Only when the wind swung to the north and settled to a steady 20 knots were we able to open our spray skirts enough to pump.

For the remainder of the night, we slogged into the wind. At dawn, instead of our destination we saw an empty horizon. Ken thought he could see land to the southwest, Cuba, but as we watched, it morphed into cloud. With no better options, we held our course, grinding into the strong headwind.

By noon the troops were getting restless. I had sailed these waters 10 years previously and assured everyone that there was a huge lighthouse on Great Inagua, so keep an eye open for the tower.

By three 3 p.m. we were fading. Richard, in the front of the other kayak, was clearly in pain as he dragged his paddle low across the deck. Ken, who needed extraordinary amounts of water, was looking grey and drawn.

“I’m about done for,” said the SAS veteran.

“How about you?” I asked Richard. Richard was a recent replacement for an injured member and this was his first crossing in a kayak.

“Bit of the old chaffing I think,” he grimaced.

“And you?” I asked Bea.

“I’m okay,” she said, adding, “I could do with some sleep.”

“We’re almost there,” I said. “As soon as it gets dark you’ll see the loom of this light. It is visible for 30 miles.”

“I reckon that storm took us west and we’ve passed Great Inagua,” said Ken gloomily. I knew he could be right but we held our course.

Half an hour later, “I’m finished,” yelled Ken.

We paused and looked back. Ken slumped, head in hands, while Richard, his elbows locked at his sides scraped at the water by rotating his body. Beneath his coat, his T-shirt was soaked with blood.

Bea and I hooked up a towline, and then an extraordinary thing happened: a flood of new energy swept over us. The pain and exhaustion from the past 30 hours vanished and new life streamed through our bodies. The towline went taught and we churned the water.

THE FIRST HALLUCINATIONS

As night fell we searched the horizon for the loom of the great light. Nothing.

“I don’t understand it.” I admitted. “We should see it.”

Then the first hallucinations started. We needed sleep. We tied off our paddles, floating them alongside the kayak, then slumped down for some shut-eye, boats still linked by the towline.

I felt like I’d barely fallen asleep when I awoke to see the lights of a tugboat bearing down on us; a chance to fix our position. But no sooner had we drawn alongside than strong hands hauled both folding kayaks aboard, breaking their frames.

Mugs of hot coffee were thrust into our hands as news came through that we were just 11 miles from our destination and on course. The light on Great Inagua had died.

“Well you’re on your way to Tampa, Florida, now,” the skipper said. “Hell no!” said Bea. “Put us back and we’ll paddle in.”

For the rest of us, relief turned to dismay. She was right of course.

From the height of the tug’s deck, we could see the lights on Great Inagua. Once again the tugboat hove to and we were lowered, broken boats and all, over the side off the rearing, plunging after deck. Then, as she pulled away, we paddled, dazed, for shore 40 hours after leaving Haiti.

An ancient stone fort passed to port as we weaved a precarious route through old pier piles that protruded wickedly from the sea. Bea illuminated them with our searchlight while I manoeuvred the kayak. As we glided into a protected marina, a grounded Haitian refugee boat lined with blank-faced refugees greeted us. We dragged the boats up onto the beach and fell asleep on the sand.

I awoke, sweating in the heat of the mid-morning sun. There was no Haitian refugee boat, no old Spanish fort, and no wharf piles in the water, just a shared hallucination and two kayaks in need of repair.

John Dowd paddled from Venezuela to Florida in 1976–77 with his wife Beatrice, Ken Beard and Richard Gillet (who replaced Stephen Benson midway). This piece is abridged from an upcoming book about his kayaking and diving adventures.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Survival Tips for Sharks, Storms, and Rough Water

Skills

Photo: Flickr.com/umnak — A sea kayaker packs their sea kayak on the shores of the ocean.

The top nine survival tips for ocean sea kayaking expeditions, according to expert instructor John Wilde, include staying fit and always having a plan B. John “Wildey” Wilde started paddling on the open sea as a teenager, growing up on England’s exposed northwest coast in the mid-1960s. For the next two and a half decades, he paddled rivers, and competing in slalom canoe on the British and Australian national teams. He’s also taken part in more than a dozen Himalayan paddling expeditions, including leading the first descent of Nepal’s Sun Kosi River.

These days, John spends more of his time sea kayaking, putting his rough water skills to use along the big-surf coasts of eastern Australia. He is also the highest-qualified sea kayaking instructor in Australia. John recently undertook a solo paddle down Tasmania’s rugged east coast, notorious for its foul weather conditions, and survived paddling against 60-knot winds and a love bite from a giant shark. Here, John shares the extra preparations that he credits with saving his life.

Stay fit

“When an un-forecast 60-knot offshore wind came up towards the end of a 60-kilometre day, I was faced with a huge struggle to get back to shore—or the next stop would be New Zealand!” John says that if it were not for his strength and conditioning, he would not have made it. “For me, my fitness routine means paddling several times a week—if nothing else on the local lake, as well as rollerblading, some gym work, cross-country skiing in season and, of late (and to combat old age), yoga for flexibility.”

Have a bombproof (and toothproof) boat

When paddling in deep water offshore, John felt a sudden bump as his kayak lifted out of the water. Heart pounding, he sprinted to shore, to find big grooves in the gel coat and compression cracks in the hull just forward of the seat—and two glistening white shark’s teeth embedded just centimetres from where his thigh had been!

John’s usual sea kayak is a lightweight graphite-Kevlar layup. “It is close to 10 years old and I love it, but it is light and easily damaged. My main thoughts were about dragging it up remote beaches fully loaded on my own, or landing in big surf.” So he switched to a heavier, more robust boat, which ended up not only saving the boat from damage, but protecting John himself.

Paddle hard and carry a predictable stick

For the last four years, John had been has been paddling mostly with a wing paddle, which is much more efficient for a forward stroke. “But it is hard to brace with, and generally more unstable to use. So I went back to a standard, spooned blade, more stable for bracing into a breaking wave and generally more predictable to use when the going gets tough.”

Supersize your rudder

If you use a stern-mounted rudder, chances are that in big seas, it spends most if its time out of the water. A handy friend of John’s made him a new rudder, six centimeters longer than the standard. “This bites much better in a following sea, so I have more control, especially when I am under sail.”

Practice, practice, practice

“I spend a lot of time surf kayaking. This involves lots of rolling, a really basic skill in surf, as well as bracing, balancing and judging waves. All these are essential to serious expedition paddling.”

Know where you are

Practice navigation skills too; don’t rely on a GPS. John says that expedition paddlers should try to work with charts and maps fairly regularly.

Test your gear in real-world conditions

Like many Australian paddlers, John frequently uses a kayak sail on the open sea. When testing the sail he intended to take on the trip in gusting 30-knot winds, he suddenly found himself upside-down. And to make things worse, with the weight of the mast and a sail dragging in the water, he was unable to roll up. From this gear test, he chose to completely revamp his system, purchasing a new, smaller sail that is more manageable in high winds along with a much shorter mast.

Have a plan B

John says, “Finally I bought a top-of-the-line paddle float, something I have never used before as my roll is usually strong. I had it strapped to the back deck the whole time. It’s always handy to have an insurance policy!”

Do your rescuers a favour

“If something goes wrong, someone is going to spend a lot of time looking for you.” John feels that you owe it to rescuers to be able to make contact, so he carries a phone secured in a waterproof pack, as well as a VHF radio, PLB (personal locator beacon), and flares stashed in the pocket of his PFD—accessible in case he ever ends up swimming.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine.

Survival: In Cold Water

Skills
Stories

Photo: flickr.com/liomere — Survival: In Cold Water

In the 1980s, sea kayaking was just becoming popular in the Great Lakes. I was lucky enough to become part of a community of paddlers led by Stan Chladek, an outspoken Czech immigrant who first brought Valley sea kayaks and the BCU to North America. In April 1988, Chladek invited five of us on a trip along the coastline of Lake Superior Provincial Park that he dubbed the “Icebreaker Rendezvous.”

We launched near Wawa, Ontario, and spent two days paddling in perfect weather. On our third day we stopped early at Noisy Bay, a steep beach of melon-sized rocks within a two-hour paddle from the take-out. At this point, I started getting nervous. This would be an awful place in bad weather. But I was the new guy in the group and kept my concerns to myself.

Sure enough, within minutes of making camp, the wind picked up. It blew 30 knots all night, driving crashing surf into our cobblestone campsite. I barely slept a wink. At dawn, I found an old footpath leading to the highway and thought, prob- lem solved. I could pick up my boat later. But at some point, I changed my mind and started getting psyched about conquering the towering waves. I rushed the group through breakfast and hurriedly climbed into my drysuit.

KNOCKED OVER INTO THE ICE COLD WATER

Dave Ide, a strong paddler who would become North America’s first BCU coach, launched first. His 18-foot Nordkapp nearly pitchpoled backwards onto the rocky beach, but he powered through the breakers. I launched next and promptly got May- tagged and pounded back into the shore. As if this wasn’t good enough, I tried again, this time clawing my way beyond the surf.

Things went well for a kilometre or two until I was knocked over by a three-metre wave. I made a half-assed attempt to roll in the ice-cold water before wet exiting. The guys got me back into my boat and Ide clipped in with his towline. I sat helpless with a float on each paddle blade for stability. It took Dave an agonizing three hours to tow me the seven-odd kilometres to Michipicoten.

The accident really shook me up. My zeal for rough-water paddling was gone. When things really go wrong and you’re in the water, it is far worse than you can possibly imagine. Later, as I made my way through the ranks of the BCU, I had good reason to believe their mantra of placing sound judgment above all else.

Bruce Lash is a firefighter and sea kayak guide living in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He began sea kayaking in the early 1980s.

No Tornado Warning

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/jimmybrown — No Tornado Warning

When my eldest son Jason was 16, we planned a father–son kayaking trip from Flowerpot Island near Tobermory, Ontario, all the way home to Windsor. The first leg of this journey would take us down the east side of Lake Huron’s Bruce Peninsula to the town of Wiarton.

At daybreak on the first day the air was warm, hazy and heavy. Normally I would have checked the weather on my VHF, but I had made a foolish agreement with my son—no electronic distractions, no Walkman, no video games—so I did not bring the VHF radio either. It was a mistake I would never make again.

A mile offshore, the water was waxy smooth but there was a roll to it. To the northwest, there was a dark blue, steel- grey line in the sky.

A half-hour later came a noise like the drone of hundreds of motors behind us. Something big was moving in. Things darkened so fast, only minutes before the sky had been clear. The air began to swirl. Flowerpot Island, now miles behind us, vanished from left to right behind sheets of rain. We could now see the leading force of the wind front on the surface of the bay. There was no thunder, no lightning, just the deafening roar of rain racing full throttle over the emptiness toward us.

I knew it would reach us before we reached the mainland, still about 20 minutes away.

“THE SKY DID STRANGE AND AWESOME THINGS”

Things in the next moments happened very, very fast. The sky did strange and awesome things. The air temperature plummeted to that of a blustery November day. Boiling clouds of purple and green rolled towards the surface and us with the action of an exploding fireball.

I fixed my eyes on my son and—wham!— at that split second, it hit! This force of air was so violent that it blew me over. I struggled to brace and roll up into the maelstrom.

The low, green sky said “take shelter” to anyone from the Midwest. We knew this, yet there was no chance of shelter. Ex- panding contorted clouds, looking as they would burst, only acted as a harbinger of worse yet to come. The sheets of rain found us and giant drops stung as they hit, then hailstones added blows to the head.

Again I swung my gaze toward Jason. One cloud beyond him caught my attention. An ominous spin had begun and soon a funnel hung. The father instinct kicked in and I sprinted toward my son. I yelled to him to raft up but he could not hear.

The funnel, for some reason, held at a distance above the water. Below it, spray began to blast up from the seas as if some giant, invisible food processor had touched the surface. Blasts of spray began to rise and spin. Then, for a short moment, it all seemed to stop until—“whoosh”—the spinning spray jumped up and joined the cloud. Georgian Bay was being sucked up into the sky. The birth of a waterspout, right before our eyes!

I could not reach Jason in time.

When the waterspout came it was as if we were standing far too near railroad tracks as a speeding locomotive passed. Ears hurt. It was hard to breathe. Kayaks felt the pull toward it as metal to a magnet.

It missed.

We had survived.

Jason had held firm and strong. I was so proud of him.

Our ordeal was not over yet. The seas had become too large to land. We decided to paddle on to Lion’s Head Harbour, over 50 miles from Flowerpot Island. After nine and a half hours of paddling we entered the harbour just after dark and found a motel.

The next morning, I ventured outside to survey our chances of paddling. It was dreary and miserable. Some fishing tugs had pulled into the harbour during the night. The boys on the first tug welcomed me aboard and filled me in on a very bleak extended weath- er forecast: gale- and storm-force winds, rain and high waves for the next five days.

I called my wife: “Ingrid, can you get out the map of Ontario? See the village of Lions Head? Come and get us, love.”

Steve Lutsch has been an avid kayaker since the 1970s. He lives in Windsor, Ont. Jason went on to buy a fleet of kayaks. He likes rough water, but never wants to paddle 50 miles in one day again.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

“Old” Men and the Sea

Stories

Photo: Joe Mullen — "Old" Men and the Sea

In the late afternoon when most septuagenarians head to restaurants for early bird specials, Ed Engel, 71, and Joe Mullen, 76, are more likely landing their kayaks on the beach, riding the final wave of their weekly “out of sight” trip, which involves paddling into the Gulf of Mexico until they can no longer see the condos of southwest Florida. People of any age could get exhausted simply reading about the treks and trials of these kayak veterans.

Ed and Joe have been best friends for eight years. Together, they have completed the WaterTribe Challenge, a 300-mile unsupported race from Tampa Bay to Key Largo, four times. Having organized and guided several Baja tours, they returned to the Sea of Cortez last fall for a challenging circumnavigation of Guardian Angel Island. They’ve paddled the Maine Island Trail and the St. Lawrence Seaway (during a journey from Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain). They have wetted hulls from the Gulf of Alaska to the Sea of the Hebrides. Having already paddled the Inner Hebrides, they will return for five weeks to paddle the Outer Hebrides this summer and then follow the Caledonian Canal system across Scotland, passing through Loch Ness.

Though paddling about 200 days a year sets this pair apart from most retirees, Ed and Joe have a typical Florida lifestyle. Ed traded New Jersey suburbs for a bungalow on an island only accessible by boat. (When he misses the last ferry, he paddles home.) When not paddling, he plays tennis. Joe frequents the greens, having moved to a golf course community from Maine.

COMPANIONSHIP, WANDERLUST, AND A SENSE OF PLAY

A retired engineer, Ed tinkers constantly. He holds a patent on a kit boat he designed and produced in his backyard, and he teaches Greenland paddle making. He builds skin-on-frame kayaks out of PVC pipe and blue plastic tarps. Joe’s enthusiasm makes him the social director. On trips, he arranges nightly wine and cheese.

Their grandfatherly style has made Ed and Joe popular kayak guides and instructors. Both ACA-certified, they have inspired hundreds of students. Their outgoing nature has led as easily to worldwide friendships as it has to the rescue of complete strangers.

What drives these guys? Companionship, wanderlust and a sense of play that come with second childhood. They tease each other incessantly and throw back cold ones with thirtysomethings at the take-out. They volunteer as students or victims during BCU and ACA training sessions, hamming it up like Academy Award candidates.

These chronologically gifted chums seem to have uncorked a fountain of youth whose secret ingredients are kayaking, relationships and adventure. And a positive attitude doesn’t hurt. When asked what injuries plague them, they recite the golden rule that pushes them across the nautical miles: No whining!

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

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