Writer and adventurer Jon Bowermaster is following a long line of household names. We’re not talking about Mr. Clean and Aunt Jemima. More like Robert E. Peary, Jane Goodall and Jacques Cousteau. It’s an impressive legacy of National Geographic–sponsored adventurers. Bowermaster is nearing the final leg of the oceans 8 expedition, which seeks to explore the social and environmental state of each of the world’s largest water bodies from the seat of a kayak.

Bowermaster has seen it all: the rugged Aleutian Islands, the wild coastlines of west Africa’s Gabon and the island paradise of French Polynesia. All, that is, except for the last remaining chunk of his global voyage: Antarctica. If he’s not on the ocean or talking with local people who live from it, he’s travelling the world, re-telling the story of his expeditions to riveted audiences.

Bowermaster’s eureka moment came at 15 when he discovered, while others were sucking back their first cigarettes, that he had a talent—and a penchant—for writing. Since then, he’s gone on to a 20-year freelance career. He’s written for almost every major glossy monthly from Outside to Men’s Journal and edited the pages of Rolling Stone.

Not all the gigs have been replete with coconuts and sarongs. He’s written on such arcane topics as “The History of the Jacuzzi” and profiled ‘80s pop singer George Michael and a long-past-their-prime Osmond Family. “A lot of it was like filling in blanks,” he says—not exactly the adventurous writing career he was aiming for.

But now Bowermaster has found his niche, pursuing his epic life-work with help from the national geographic expeditions Council.

“My first grant was actually quite a surprise,” he recalls. “I was convinced I would not get it [and] that the first trip to the Aleutians would never have happened. I got notice quite late in the process and then realized, ‘oh shit, now I have to actually pull this off’.”

Pull it off he did, and now he wouldn’t trade his job, as they say, for all the oceans in the world.

IN OTHER WORDS:

Aim for meaning over mileage
“I use kayaks as floating ambassadors. My trips have an adventure quotient, but they’re not only about adventure. Circumnavigation is not really interesting to me.”

Learn to barter with sleeping bags
“I have corporate sponsors that put up some of the money. And I don’t have to buy gear for the rest of my life. But you can’t trade sleeping bags for a mortgage. I would like to have a direct paycheque, a retirement fund and health care…but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Every time I think about another job, that thought lasts about 60 seconds. Plus I realized long ago that I can’t do anything else.”

Suffer the writing
“We’re out here having a great time. The hard part is the physical sitting down and writing the story. It’s very painful. Anyone that tells you they like writing is lying.”

Be good
“Advice I would give to somebody who wants to get into this type of work: be persistent. Don’t give up. I knocked on the door of national geographic for a long time before I got in. It’s also important just to be a good person.” 

This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

It was 1979 when a young couple pulled ashore on then-remote Read Island. These latecomers to the back-to-the-land movement arrived in B.C.’s Discovery Islands like a couple of latter day pilgrims. They’d sold a photography business for a down payment on a 50-acre parcel of waterfront land to hatch their dream of building a wilderness adventure lodge. They came in a leaky aluminum skiff packed with their worldly possessions: tent, chainsaw, lopping shears, a table, rocking chair, spinning wheel and a transistor radio.

The learning curve on coastal homesteading is steep. The first step was to clear building sites for a family home and lodge, gardens and outbuildings. Next was to mill their own lumber from salvaged cedar logs and erect a post- and-beam house. The plan to produce their own hydro power from a nearby stream short-circuited at first when their newly installed turbine was stolen. To support themselves while their dream took shape, the Kellers worked odd jobs like treeplanting and construction.

Although it was originally the alpine environment of the coast Range that Ralph and Lannie envisaged taking their guests to, the fledgling interest in sea kayaking caught their imagination and in 1987, eight years after arriving on Read Island, they welcomed their first guests to Coast Mountain Lodge.

With two children Emily and Albert now completing the Keller family, they continued with the tasks—Ralph working as self-described “systems manager and kayak guide” and Lannie as “mom, gardener, cook and logistics.”

Inquiries began to trickle into their post office box in Surge Narrows and over the past two decades visitors have come from around the world to share the Kellers’ life in the wilderness.

In 2001, the business expanded to include a second lodge, Discovery Islands Lodge on Quadra Island, operated as a kayaker’s B&B and hostel. Both operations squarely put the “eco” in ecotourism with local food, composting toilets and homegrown power from solar, wind and small hydro. It sounds like a dream come true.

IN OTHER WORDS:

Sink the nest egg
“We wanted to have some adventure in our lives. We had taken the plunge and put all we had into buying a piece of land in paradise. We needed a way to make a living where we lived. Kayaking was one of those late-night brainstorms that seemed like it might work.”

Don’t specialize
“We had to provide everything for ourselves, from water to electricity to communication. Every system you take for granted in town we had to figure how to build and then keep it functioning—even our first four fibreglass kayaks, from a borrowed mould.”

Commitment is its own reward
“Make sure you like what you do and be prepared to do a lot of it for free before you get paid for it…. If you refuse to fail, sooner or later you are bound to succeed.”

This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

So your dream is to run a paddlesports company? How about six? Nando Zucchi
 is the general manager of Johnson Outdoors Paddlesports, which means that he runs six major brands: Necky, Old Town, Ocean Kayak, Extrasport, Carlisle Paddles and the newest addition, Lendal Paddles of Scotland.

The Johnson company association runs deep for Zucchi. Not only did he graduate from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of management (yes, that Johnson), he also worked for Johnson Wax after graduating. Then he left the fold and headed to Kodak, running their 35mm film business for North America, but eventually he was drawn back to Johnson four years ago.

So, is Nando a suit-wearing corporate master, or is he living the life and following the dream? Sounds to us like more of the latter, especially when it comes to paddling toys. He has his pick of Necky boats, and his personal quiver includes a Chatham 16 and a carbon Spyder surf-specific kayak. “If I’m going to do a fun race or something I’ll just go grab our in-house Looksha II race boat. I also get out in prototypes that are still in development—they usually look terrible but paddle great.”

“The whole ‘corporate thing’ is kind of funny,” he says. “People think that we’re this huge company with limitless budgets, but it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels like total grassroots hands-on stuff, and I wear a lot of different hats on a daily basis—one minute I’ll be working with the folks in R&D and the next I’ll be working with the guys on the production line. I bring my dog Connor to work every day and neither of us wears a suit.”

IN OTHER WORDS:

Impress the boss
“I was recruited for this job by group vice president of watercraft Mark Leopold. They had pretty specific criteria. They wanted someone who paddled, did not currently work at Johnson, and had extensive knowledge of packaged goods marketing. I had been the marketing guy at Johnson for Pledge, Windex and Raid, so they knew me and my abilities, and one day my name came up.”

Work hard, play hard
“You’ve also got to get out and use the gear. At the end of last summer we put together a trip to the Broken Group on the west coast of Vancouver Island to do some product testing and generate some photos and video. The paddlesports management team and a couple of guys from R&D went, and about two weeks before the trip, Helen Johnson herself (chairman and CEO of Johnson Outdoors Inc.) heard about it and asked if she could come. How cool is that? And, the first day of the trip was my first day back ‘in the office’ after my vacation.”

Stop and chop
“I’m the guy who actually stopped the Necky production line. That was tough. In those very early days after moving production from B.C. to its current location in Ferndale, Washington, we had major issues, and we needed to relearn how to make good boats. We unwrapped and inspected close to 700 finished kayaks. About 230 were chopped because they weren’t good enough. It was terrible, and we took a huge hit on it, but it was the right thing to do.” 

This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

These are some big dreams: Escape rat race. Become pro kayaker. Start successful business. Build oceanfront home. Make the world a better place.

Check off one or two of these in your lifetime and you’re doing pretty well.

Check all of them before you turn 34 and you’re probably Dave Adler.

Dave is a business visionary disguised in the uniform of a ski-lift mechanic—scruffy beard, Carhartts and fleece. He is founder of East Coast Outfitters (E.C.O.), a community-based ecotourism business in the village of Lower Prospect, Nova Scotia—a tiny, rocky, one-road town with no traffic lights or stop signs or store. Like a lot of East Coast ports, there aren’t many jobs since the fishery collapsed.

Dave dreamed up E.C.O. to be the cornerstone of an economic revival. It’s not the “park, shit, paddle, and leave” model of tourism that gives nothing back—townies run the office, drive the boat, and cook dockside seafood dinners for eager kayakers that come and go by the vanload from Halifax.

It all started in 1997, when this brainy, former whitewater slalom racer with a sponsor- ship from Dagger Kayaks arrived in Lower Prospect looking for an offbeat place to live while he studied for a master’s degree in “benthic oceanography.” He rolled in like a paddling pied piper towing a trailer-load of boats and pretty soon kids were knocking on his door for lessons. Dave made a deal—if they could get three or more friends together, he’d take them out for free. “Kayaking with Dave” became a weekly tradition and today some of those kids work for him as guides.

A few years later, when it came time to decide, should he spend his life in school
or start a business and help save a town, Dave chose the less-travelled road and hasn’t looked back.

IN OTHER WORDS:

Plant roots
“I didn’t move here to start a company. I moved here to go to school. I knew I didn’t want to live in the city. I wanted to live somewhere I could drink coffee and look at the ocean. I basically drew a ring around Halifax that was within a reasonable commuting distance and started driving. I got to the end of the road and it said Lower Prospect and I thought, ‘that’s about right’.”

When opportunity knocks, answer

“There was a plane crash over that way—Swissair—in early September 1998. The kids were paddling a lot and they were loving it and the paddling industry was definitely about to hit a real burst. I was toiling away studying Arctic mud in this lab downtown. It was one of those moments that makes you think about what’s important. Then I got a knock on the door and it was one of the mothers of the kids and she said, ‘Why don’t you start a company? The kids are good at it. We can work in the office or whatever.’ So that’s what we did.”

Build it and they will come
“As soon as things started happening—liter- ally as soon as the first tree fell down to clear the lot—people showed up. Tommy from up the road showed up with a hammer to help! People just showed up to do whatever needed to be done. The strength of an ecotourism operation is it requires lots of different jobs to be done, which is why the fishery was so strong… which is why it can support a village.” 

This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

There’s a picture of me eating lunch. In the photo, four of us are sitting on a beach log in the heart of the lower Columbia River’s winter duck-hunting territory. We’re all wearing identical drysuits—orange and black—and drinking out of Thermoses festooned with stickers from every outdoor company you could imagine. We all have fancy, black-like-my-soul carbon fibre paddles and top-of-the-line British-style kayaks. My buddy Steve is telling a joke, probably a kayaker joke no duck hunter would understand.

My friends and I could be a gang. All that’s missing are tattoos and a secret handshake.

When I started sea kayaking, I thought I’d escaped the world of uniform-wearing outdoor geeks who all drive Subaru Outbacks and wear duds from the North Face—a gang I’d joined gradually over years of backpacking, skiing and mountaineering with guys who must have been born in Gore-Tex.

I found myself venturing away from the mountains and down to the Columbia River, which has a couple of centuries of the blue collar life of commercial fishing, logging and bar-piloting under its belt. The folks who live along the lower Columbia had been out in the elements for generations in lowbrow gear. They loved being on the water as much as I did, and they still do.

Like a breath of fresh air wafting down my home river, the gang colours faded away when I left the mountains. Camo and rubber boots replaced miracle fabrics. Boats built in garages were as common as modern ones. Guys paddled in yellow rubber raingear, Xtratufs and even jeans. I met a guy who built his canoe out of canvas and wood and held it together with large binder clips from an office supply store—and it floated. Whatever our boats were made of, we were rubbing elbows comfortably, enjoying our favourite part of the planet.

Then something went amiss. The gangsters expanded their territory, and I’m one of them, again.

It was bound to happen.

I’ve evolved from a summer
flatwater paddler to one who
seeks out wind, rough water and
surf year-round. Form follows
function: we have high-end stuff
because we are doing high-end
paddling. The orange drysuit is a
great piece of gear, and sure beats
being wet and hypothermic. My pal Andrew has a new Subaru because it doesn’t break down on the way to the put-in like his old Volvo. We’re still nice folks, we just have better stuff.

I have no intention of giving up gear that works, but I‘ve also seen a divide form. To a guy in rubber overalls with a boat made of office supplies, we look like a bunch of super-intense kayaking snobs who will look down our noses at their kit.

Others may see us as urbanite tourists invading their back 40 in space-age suits—the advance guard of the Gore- Tex army that will turn their neighbourhood waters into the next recreational getaway with latte shops they don’t want and can’t afford.

YOU CAN LOOK LIKE A GANG, JUST DON’T ACT LIKE ONE

If we look like a gang, it’s our job to be sure we don’t act like one. If we let the fancy gear go to our heads, we’ll miss the key reasons we kayak: to experience new places, new people, and for the camaraderie of being on the water together.

I make it a point to chat with everyone I meet on the water. It drives my buddies nuts, because I’m the last to load my boat when they’re ready to go, but I remind them that’s how I ran into them too, way back. And I have a new appreciation for a place called the Sea Hag.

The Sea Hag is a watering hole in Ilwaco, Washington, a fishing and bar-pilot town at the mouth of the Columbia. One time after a hard day of paddling, we stumbled in and groped our way through clouds of second-hand smoke to a table in the back, while fishermen hovered at the bar with raised eyebrows. When I went to refill my beer, I decided enough was enough. We ended up chatting at the bar, swap- ping stories about our mighty river. I was amazed by the conditions they’d ventured out in that would have me snug in my bed in Portland. They were equally astounded at where we went in 21-inch-wide boats in December.

Ultimately, drysuits or camo, we’re all just aquaholics enjoying the watery part of the world. And in a society where style often trumps substance, it’s the people we meet on the water who often turn out to be the most genuine. Let’s keep it that way.

See you at the Sea Hag, whatever you’re wearing.

Neil Schulman is an Oregon-based paddler and part-time fashion consultant specializing in waterproof–breathable fabrics. For dining at the Sea Hag, he recommends a yellow rain slicker.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.