An Experiment In Kayak Sailing

Stories

Travelling on the ocean and not using wind power is like driving an electric car in Saudi Arabia. Wind’s such an obvious and available source of power, what paddler with places to go and wind breathing at his back doesn’t dream of lassoing that force with a kite or sail?

Person on a kayak with sail at the front

5 Tips To Learn How To Sail A Kayak

An experiment in kayak sailing

I put my sailing aspirations to the test on a weekend trip last October with my photographer friend Dave Aharonian. We planned a crossing of a windswept stretch of the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver Island 19 kilometres to Lasqueti Island. From there we would paddle or sail around Lasqueti’s southern tip to Jedediah Island Marine Park, an idyllic camping spot in a cluster of islands in Sabine Channel between Lasqueti and Texada Islands.

As a skeptical participant in my breezy adventure into new technology, Dave played the role of the curmudgeonly Luddite. Wasn’t sailing more trouble than it was worth? Wouldn’t I spend more time setting up and taking down the sail than I’d gain in speed?

In fact, Dave and I did an 80-day trip down the B.C. coast a few years ago, paddling 1,200 kilometres with prevailing summer north-westerlies at our backs day after day, and it was just this attitude that prevented us from trying sails at all. Dave, like the caveman who didn’t want to experiment with fire, was happy to paddle along at four knots. You could say that when it came to wind, he was content to pass.

Throwing caution to the wind

A few years after the fact, I was determined to find out what we’d been missing. By making the 19-kilometre crossing to Lasqueti, scudding before the infamous Qualicum wind that rips with such force through the mountain pass from Port Alberni that it has earned its own name, I figured we’d make quick time and save a few bucks on the ferry. The ultimate goal, however, was to sail with an irrefutable success that would trounce Dave’s skepticism and prove my elemental experiment was worthwhile.

[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all sails, shades & rigging ]

The sail that I most wanted to try was a full-fledged upwind rig from Balogh Sail Designs. You may have seen pictures of the Balogh Batwing trimaran rig from adventurer Jonathan Waterman’s expedition to the Northwest Passage. The upwind rig enabled him to sail almost half the trip, even though he was going against the prevailing winds. He was even able to lash the whole collapsible rig to the deck of his single Klepper for ordinary paddling.

Sailmaker Mark Balogh started out in windsurfing and regular big boat sailing but was won over by the portability and versatility of kayaks. Although some of his customers are long-time paddlers most true kayak sailors aren’t paddlers. Purebred paddlers aren’t looking to learn new tricks. Balogh has even heard a few complain that sails ruin the sport, which is why you probably haven’t seen the Batwing at kayak symposiums.

Balogh Sail Designs is a small company by choice, a two-person operation in rural Virginia that doesn’t have the inventory to send out $1,700 loaners to magazine writers. So, we set sail with a couple of more common and affordable downwind rigs: a parafoil kite and classic v-shaped downwind sail from Spirit Sails.

Kayak sails head-to-head

For a long time I’ve dreamed of flying a parafoil from my kayak. But this dream often turned into a horrible nightmare in which I’d be pulled in a rising gale out into seas beyond my ability, I’d flip over and wet exit to find my kayak sailing away from me with kite still attached. So, when Premier Kites of Hyattsville, Maryland, offered to send me a 7.5 or 15-square-foot kayak parafoil, I chose the smaller.

Sea Kayaker Instructor to Student Sailor

Does Being A Sea Kayaker Make You A Natural Sailor?

There was nary a breath of wind on our crossing to Lasqueti. To fly a parafoil, six knots of wind is the minimum. Whenever I did manage to launch my parafoil in light breezes, Dave took off ahead of me on paddle power alone.

The dandy rainbow colours flying above the water did have an uplifting effect on the spirit, however. Flying a kite from your kayak is a wonderful novelty. I was so enraptured by the joy of it—combined with the growing urgency of reeling the thing in so I could catch up with Dave—that I fumbled and dropped the whole spool into the ocean. The orange spool bobbed just below the surface as I sailed away from it. I had to reel the parafoil in hand-over-hand and spend the better part of an hour retrieving several hundred feet of tangled string from the Stygian depths of the Georgia Strait. Dave the vindicated Luddite drifted impatiently in the distance.

I understood how Icarus must have felt when the wax melted.

Where the parafoil failed, the paddle pulled through, and we landed and camped on the beautiful sheep-chomped lawn of Jedediah’s Home Bay. We had it all to ourselves for the drizzly October weekend.

Return trip brings stiffer winds

With the rain, the first night brought a true October southeaster, and for the cruise back, we had a steady 15-knot blow on our stern quarter. We put up two Spirit Sails. I flew the full-size while Dave erected the smaller sail on his rudderless kayak. To get back to our launch, we had to point about 45 degrees off of downwind.

How To Choose The Right Kayak Sail

Spirit Sails are designed for downwind sailing but they can be angled to a rear quartering wind and were surprisingly useful at this angle, adding about one to two knots to our regular paddling pace.

The hardest thing about sailing for us was the siren song of the downwind run. It was tempting to follow the wind to some arbitrary destination far enough away for a daylong run riding the surf. We teased ourselves with this temptation, zigzagging toward our destination by alternating downwind thrill rides at six knots with crosswind slogs to cover distance toward shore.

Dave and I pulled into French Creek harbour ahead of schedule and broke down our sail rigs. I looked over and caught Dave smiling and eyeing his rig, really seeing it for the first time, “These sure could have come in handy on our trip down the coast.”

Cover of the Early Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine This article was first published in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Feature photo: Dave Aharonian

Quest for Caribou on the Firth River

Stories

Photo: James McCormick — Quest for Caribou on the Firth River

A splashing noise penetrates the tent wall at 5:00 a.m. I ignore it. I want to keep dreaming. With the sky above the thin nylon walls as bright as midday, I know that sleep is impossible so I unzip the fly and poke my head out.

Fifty caribou are crossing the river, heading toward our campsite. A chorus of agitated snorting begins as the lead caribou start pushing their noses further into the stronger current. After some imperceptible signal the herd turns chaotically and heads back to the far side.

Clicking their hooves like tap dancers, they clamber up the cobbled bank and vanish in a thicket of willows where branches mask their antlers and the mats of heather mute the sound of their hooves.

Most people would think this was a pretty exciting wake-up, but today is our 11th day on the Firth River and it’s going to take more than 50 caribou to satisfy me. We have already seen countless caribou milling around in groups this size, but we are after bigger game. Still, my morning mantra per- sists, “Today’s the day,” I say to myself.

Maybe these caribou are the first wave of the much-anticipated migration.

Fetching water for coffee, I’m disappointed to see that the river is still translucent green. In my morning dream thousands upon thousands of hoofed beasts had passed our tents and plunged into the river, crossing in a steady stream that lasted for days, leaving the Firth a soup of hair and dung.

That the coffee will be better without the hair and dung is anemic consolation as I fill the kettle. Time is running out and I’m becoming distressingly obsessed.

We had spent the last 10 days searching— or was it waiting?—for a herd of caribou, though it seems like an understatement to call 123,000 caribou a herd. Every July, the Porcupine herd leaves their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and crosses the Firth River on its return to its summer range in northeastern Alaska and the Yukon.

We are four kayakers and two rafters on a mission. Our agenda is to paddle right into the middle of the migration. We want waves of caribou to wash over us, choking us with their collec- tive stench and deafening us with their bleating and snorting.

This sounds like a simple plan. But there is a variable involved, or should I say 123,000 variables. Our research told us the best bet for seeing the herd cross the Firth was during the first week of July—even though there was no way to know exactly when or where this might happen. We had given ourselves 160 kilometres of river and 18 days to work with. So far, our trip has involved more waiting, watching and strategizing about our position than paddling.

The Otter’s tundra tires had touched down at the Margaret Lake put-in on June 28th. While we herded our mound of gear from the plane into raft and kayak-sized piles, a welcoming committee buzzed fiercely around us. After ten minutes the bugs had chased us to a breezy ridge above camp. As irritating as the onslaught was, we couldn’t very well begrudge the bugs their role in the nat- ural cycle. They did, after all, play a lead role in the phenomenon we had come to see.

One reason the caribou travel en masse is to lessen the threat from mosquitoes and warble flies. Warble flies lay their eggs on caribou hair, usually the legs. When the maggots hatch, they burrow under the skin and cut breathing holes. A single caribou can host up to 2,000 maggots, all eating away at the poor weakened beast. These pestilential insect hordes drive the caribou into large herds and chase them from one ridge to another in search of bug-dispelling breezes.

Below us the river, a shiny sliver thread, wove north- ward through the immense open arctic to the Firth Delta. At home in our new surroundings, the rafters, Kevin and Lynn, lounged on the ridge like Zen masters, that is, Zen masters with DEET-soaked veils of netting attached to their hats. Their years of living in Alaska made them comfortable and serene. Being arctic neophytes, Jack and Franz were less serene than excited. Though the grey beards poking through their bug nets suggested rightly that they were both seasoned kayakers, they were awestruck by the vastness of the landscape. Math professor Franz perched on a limestone crag and stared at the panorama in front of us as if he might be able to quantify its vastness.

We launched into a flood of coffee brown water. A recent blizzard had overtaxed the absorbent ability of the spongy tundra. The higher flow and now murky water made it difficult to see submerged rocks and bars so the kayakers paddled ahead of Kevin’s raft to scout.

Cold weather and heavy kayaks made us less playful than usual, but this didn’t translate into more distance covered. Our eyes were more often on the shoreline than the river. We constantly scanned the shore, frequently pulling ashore on cobbled beaches to sleuth for signs of caribou or promising migration valleys. At most we spent three to four hours on the water at a time.

Even though we were unified on our quest, our individual strategies bordered on anarchy. Each of us had his or her own theory about where and when to find the caribou. As soon as we had set up camps at likely caribou crossing points everyone followed his or her own instinct.

Kevin and Lynn would find a likely spot and park there for hours, just watching and waiting. They even spent nights peer- ing like sentries from the shelter of a limestone crag. This placid approach contrasted sharply with that of my husband Jon and myself. We roamed for hours, chased by our own invisible bugs: the need to move. Jon usually dreams up point A to B type expeditions and pursues B like a racehorse with blinders on. It’s a way of travelling that serves him well on his expeditions which have included rowing the Northwest Passage and kayaking around Cape Horn. It’s a little less suited to staying still and waiting for a maddeningly elusive group of animals to stumble upon you. Jon and I spent our days always seeking the next ridge or valley to mark off the next expanse of wild space.

By now, the smell of coffee has woken everyone up and I nestle six steaming cups onto the dryad-covered gravel. It is decision time. Our scheduled pick-up at Nunalik Spit on the delta is a week away. Once we enter the canyon section, five kilometres downstream, we’ll have missed our chance to encounter the herd, the canyon’s steep walls and recirculating rapids make it a place they somehow know to avoid.

All our professed mellowness about seeing the migration has long since vanished like the early morning’s caribou. On our daily forays we had all seen wolves, grizzlies, eagles, Dahl sheep, and moose, not to mention caribou in groups up to a few hundred—but not the surging herd we were seeking. Even though just being in this wild place should be enough, we are dissatisfied and cranky. For all we know, the herd might have crossed the Babbage drainage, hundreds of kilometres from here. During a brief and spirited group meeting, it’s clear that none of us can give up on seeing the migration yet. We agree to wait where we are up to five more days before we race downstream to make our flight.

Now with a definite plan in mind, we worry a little less, and notice a little more. Jon and I paddle across the river the next morning to explore the valley where the previous day’s indecisive caribou had disappeared. We follow a sinuous ridge that affords good views of two valleys.

While Jon snaps photos, I wander down the ridge a little and glass the valley below. Something streaks into view and I focus in on a wolf stalking a nearby cow and calf. The binoculars can’t encompass both the wolf and the caribou, so I stay glued on the wolf. I hear the caribou getting closer. My heart pounds in my ears, but I hold the glasses steady; I know that soon all three players will meet. Half of me wants to jump up and scream, “Watch Out!” But the predator in me whispers, “Keep it cool, wolf, they’re almost close enough.” When the cow and calf finally enter into view, the wolf leaps from his crouch and bolts toward the caribou.

The wolf’s burst of speed puts him within a few dozen metres of his prey, but after 30 seconds the caribou widen the gap. The wolf pulls up and slinks downhill while the caribou rush up the ridge. The wolf has played the surprise card as well as possible, but the caribou hold all the speed cards.

There was no gory finale, but every hair on the back of my neck is standing at attention. Witnessing this predator-prey encounter—one that’s incredibly intense but entirely commonplace—brings my perspective down to tundra level and I realize that experiencing the caribou migration is something that is more complex than blocking a few days off on a calendar.

Below me the tundra in either valley is dotted with small groups of caribou milling around like spiral galaxies. Now, instead of looking for a herd that isn’t there, I see individual animals acting out their individual roles in the age-old drama of survival.

Being so focused on one huge herd had blinded me. The small groups we had been watching for days were the migra- tion. The wet and cold weather that had pinned us down the first week had also kept the insect population low enough for the herd to saunter along in small groups instead of one tight wave.

But the realization that I won’t be paddling through a river choked with caribou isn’t disappointing. Instead, it’s accompanied by an appreciation for the way everything in this austere environment is interconnected.

We were wrong to just focus on the caribou; we should have been looking at the entire arctic ecosystem. The caribou were migrating, as they always do, according to a mix of internal and external forces. Caribou spend their lives eating, avoiding predators, and reproducing. After calving, they group together in response to the insects and instinctively head for areas that offer good foraging and cool, humid conditions. Once together, they have to keep moving or they’ll exhaust the food supply.

It all fits neatly into place, with or without an ultimate explanation. Biologists have theories about why caribou migrate when and where they do, but no one really knows how it is that tens of thousands of animals get together and move as one.

Our group, on the other hand, was driven not by instinct but by curiosity. Psychologists also have theories about human behaviour, but no one can really explain why Jon and I are driv- en, intent on always reaching a destination while Kevin and Lynn are content to sit, and watch, and wait.

On this day above the Firth I see that, with or without expla- nations, our group functioned more like the small groups of caribou that we encountered rather than the tight-knit one we sought—and that we too had reached our destination.

Christine Seashore divides her time between British Columbia and Montana.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Rock the Boat: Adrift

Stories

Illustration: Lorenzo Del Bianco — Rock the Boat: Adrift

Seven years into sea kayaking and I’m wondering, where do I go from here? It was my hope that I’d be able to push my skills ever forward—to move from the intermediate level to expert—along with like-minded club members. But halfway up the learning curve, I find myself alone on the hill.

Last year I attended the West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium in Washington for the third time. If you’re new to the sport the symposium is a wonderful event. There are lots of boats to demo, products to peruse and buy and, of course, fascinating seminars to attend.

During the three-day event I mined through the field of seminars. I found some I hadn’t attended before but, in the end, I left wondering if perhaps I had outgrown the symposium.

Granted, the speakers are world class and intermediate paddlers still have plenty to learn, but how many times can I listen to Reed Waite selling the virtues of the Washington Water Trails Association or Heather Nakamura telling me what I should eat for maximum performance? If I haven’t gotten it by now I never will.

It isn’t surprising that after three visits there would be a sameness to the seminars. What is surprising is how quickly I have begun to feel like I don’t fit an acceptable sea kayaking archetype. It feels like there isn’t a place, in symposiums or clubs, for paddlers of my credentials, or as some might say, lack of.

I didn’t come to this conclusion on my own. Over a beer on the first evening of the symposium an official from my club informed me that there was no support from the club for paddles I had been leading. It was strongly hinted that I should desist until I was “properly trained.”

During the past three years I’ve been organizing paddles for intermediate and advanced club members as well as a few non-members. Once or twice a week we spend the day paddling up to 25 kilometres, often in rough seas, along exposed shores, with few landing places. These paddles have a theme—harder, faster, further.

If we’re not being pushed by the elements, we try to push ourselves. I try to get wet at least once during every paddle. We’ve practiced everything from wrestling with flooded hatches in tidal channels to taking part in rescue operations with the local coast guard auxiliaries.

These paddles weren’t officially sanctioned by the club. I had never thought to ask for them to be included in the club program and now I see that if I had asked, the answer would have been no.

The club official explained that members were not being advised to join me paddling because I have no accredita- tion—and therefore no credibility. You see, I’m a level zero— a zero star—I’m a scout with no badges on my PFD.

This is not to say that I take learning lightly. After all, I had just dropped $400 on the symposium. I’ve also attended lots of seminars, rescue clinics, stroke improvement lessons, towing clinics and so on. I’ve been taught by one of the top instructors on the West Coast. My mentors are some of the most respected members of my club.

I’m going to stop leading the paddles. It had always been my intention and practice to pass on the knowledge and skills I had absorbed from my fellow club members to the next generation of kayakers, but I don’t want to cause any stress for the volunteers who run the club. Perhaps someone in the club with the proper resume will step forward. I’ve asked some to do so, but they seem more concerned with fulfilling the club’s mandate of introducing new paddlers to the sport.

If there is nothing in the club for intermediates, why be a member? Where do those paddlers go? I’m anxious to know because I seem destined to join them. I suspect this malaise affects other clubs. How do they handle the hol- lowing out of intermediates? Maybe that’s just the natural order of things.

That evening at the symposium I was encouraged by club members to take a national certification program, levels I through IV. Presumably these letters and numbers would make me a safer leader.

Seven years into the sport and I’m being prodded toward certification. Going down this channel will set me back about $1,300, more than the price of a breatheable dry suit. Will I take the courses? Maybe. Many of my friends tell me I’ll have no trouble passing them—all I’ll have to do is demonstrate my proficiency. Is the point of education to show off what you know or to learn things you don’t know? Even as an undecorated intermediate, I think I know the answer to that one.

Gordin Warner is also a zero-star golfer.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Skills: Rough Water Sea Kayak Paddling

Skills

Photo: Jock Bradley — A sea kayaker look on as big waves crash against a rocky shore.

Rough conditions call for advanced sea kayaking paddling techniques such as bracing, surfing and rolling, right? Not so fast. Long before those skills are needed, you need to concentrate on flexing from the waist.

When paddling over an oncoming wave, the bow climbs the wave face, crests it and continues down the far side. Adjusting to the change in your boat’s angle as the bow tilts upward and then downward is very natural. You simply lean forward and backward from the waist, keeping the upper body in a neutral position while the kayak rides over the wave. Your head stays over the centreline of the kayak and stability is maintained.

Leaning forward or backward in a kayak this way comes naturally, but flexing edge to edge is far more counterintuitive—and important. If you stay rigid at the waist when waves hit broadside and the boat tilts on edge, your upper body and head will lean over the centreline, throwing you off balance.

To keep the boat stable, your waist needs to stay supple and operate like a universal joint, allowing the kayak to tilt freely in all directions, keeping the upper body and head centred over the boat. By flexing at the waist, you let the kayak and lower body move as one unit, independent from the upper body. The ability to maintain this co-operative division between upper and lower body is what separates upright paddlers from those with well-practiced self-rescue techniques.

Remaining relaxed in choppy conditions is the key to staying flexible and supple. Breathe deeply and drop those shoul- ders, relieving any built up tension. Focus on a nice comfort- able breathing rhythm and match it to the pace of your strokes.

Paddling in calm water while rolling your hips (and the kayak) from side to side is a good way to warm up and be sure you’ll remember your waist’s full range of motion when you need to call on it for stability.

Think of relaxing your hips and waist as a skill in the same category as bracing, surfing and rolling; they all take time to develop. Whether it takes buying a hula-hoop, taking up belly dancing or simply stretching more often, get those hips loosened up, and remember to use them.

Alex Matthews keeps his hips doing their thing while guiding kayaking trips in B.C. and Baja.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

True Dirtbags Don’t Burn Out Or Fade Away

Ben Shillington is the mastermind of what he calls skid trips—short, dirtbag adventures that he does at least once a year between real expeditions. Skid trips have rules, Ben tells me over a basket of half-price (of course) wings and a few beers.

[ Further reading: The ABCs of Dirtbags ]

“The most limiting or freeing factor is that they must be to a faraway place on the cheapest of budgets—a minimum drive of 65 hours and at a maximum cost of $250.” Ben’s gear must fit in or strap to a 35-liter daypack and skid trip research can only be by word of mouth. Skid trips apparently often involve Greyhound buses, a healthy dose of hitchhiking, sleeping in snow caves on the edge of resort towns and finishing plates of food left on the bar.

Person on moped with kayak strapped to the back. — “Lookin’ for adventure, and whatever comes our way.” –Steppenwolf | Photo: Daniel Stewart

The skid tripper is 22 years old and is living his dreams one crazy expedition at a time. I watched him teach mountain bike maintenance to a group of weekend warriors at a recent trade show. His shaggy hair and hooped earring hung below his wool beanie toque. On one wrist he wore a chunky Suunto mountaineer’s wrist computer and on the other a hemp bracelet he bought from a street vendor in Nepal when he was climbing Mount Everest for a Discovery Channel documentary.

He was on fire when he got to his chat on low cost tire repairs, “Try tying your tube in a knot and putting it back on your rim. It will be a bumpy ride, but you’ll get into town.” Ben knows. When he finished his outdoor adventure diploma at college he hopped on his bike and crossed Canada in 31 days, the hard way, east to west, into the wind and uphill.

I sat and listened to Ben’s plans, smiling, remembering when the passion for dirtbag adventure ran freely (free being the root word) through my own veins.

I told Ben about leaving the university bar one night 10 years ago, packing our aid climbing gear and heading, by headlamp, to the base of a nearby rock wall. The plan was to make the first pitch in the dark, sleep the night and complete the last two pitches at first light so we’d be back on campus for a philosophy exam by noon. No one could afford a proper portaledge to sleep on, so we made do with a borrowed hammock and a bathroom door we hauled up the rock face. Ben thought the door idea was brilliant. I told him he could use it anytime; it was still hanging there.

[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: Even dirtbags need the basics. Find your gear here. ]

His next real expedition will come this summer when he climbs Mount McKinley, North America’s tallest peak. After that he’s back down to sea level where he’s making plans to be the first to circumnavigate by sea kayak the world’s largest islands—Borneo, Papua New Guinea, and Greenland.

I like the idea of paddling around Borneo, but I know I won’t bother trying it, not for a while anyway. If it were my highest priority, I’d find a way to do it. But, for Ben, paddling the world and eating Mr. Noodle for a week is his highest priority.

Live life large Ben Shillington, you’re on a path traveled by so many adventurers before you, some by foot, bike, canoe, horseback, thumb; others by hot air balloon, ski, camel and kayak. And Ben, don’t worry about growing out of your skid trips; true dirtbags don’t burn out or fade away, we just start to carry credit cards with membership benefits.

Recirc is a column celebrating our favorite stories from 20 years of Adventure Kayak, Rapid and Canoeroots. This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. Since this story was first published, Ben Shillington has fat biked to the South Pole and skied across Greenland.

Boat Review: Esquif’s Spark

Photo: Ian Merringer — Boat Review: Esquif’s Spark

In its debut on the slalom scene, the new Esquif Spark swept the 2004 US National Open Canoeing Championships on Montana’s Blackfoot River. It nabbed first, second, third and fourth places in the men’s solo rec class. With its duck-hunter camouflage Royalite shell, ash gunwales and radical cab-forward shape, the Spark is the fastest oxymoron in whitewater.

With Esquif Canoes sponsoring the last two US Nationals, it’s no surprise Esquif designer Jacques Chasse met John Kazimierczyk. Kazimierczyk is the designer, builder and coffee maker at Mill Brook Boats, specializing in compostite slalom canoes. The Spark is based on Kazimierczyk’s most successful design, the Ignitor. Chasse explains the minor differences: “The rec open canoe slalom class [for ABS canoes] doesn’t have a minimum length requirement, so we made the Spark 18 inches shorter. To keep the speed up we modified the transition and the rocker to accommodate the shorter length, without affecting the waterline.”

According to Kazimierczyk, the Spark is made for speed: “Paddling a canoe that allows you to move faster than the river, any time you want, is such a thrill.” He admits there are paddlers who say that the Spark is too long. “Too long for what?” Kazimierczyk asks. “It’s a perfect length for what it is meant to do.”

What makes the Spark so different (from a Rival, for example) is what Kazimierczyk calls his cab-forward design. He explains: “The Ignitor, like the Spark, has its widest waterline forward of the centre of the boat. The bow of the Ignitor sort of squashes the water as it moves through it. The narrower stern then follows in relatively undisturbed water. The paddler also sits slightly forward of the centreline, in the widest part of the boat. This makes entering a slalom gate slightly easier. The problem is you now have more stern behind you. It’s a trade off.”

Sitting forward of centre changes how you paddle the Spark. Forget a along forward stroke and stern pry combination; the Spark needs to be driven from the bow. Esquif team paddler Andrew Westwood explains: “The Spark responds so well to forward and cross-forward strokes that you don’t need to waste time with stern pries or even J strokes. It’s like paddling a C1.”

Besides changing stroke combinations, you need to learn how to use Spark’s edges. The hull is narrow with edges that aren’t as sharp as the Ococee and not as soft as the Rival. Engaging the outside edge of the Spark initiates both a change in direction and a transition to its other edge, in about the same amount of time it takes to cross the bow with your paddle – perfect. Using your edges to initiate a change in direction might be a new concept to many intermediate paddlers, but that’s only because they’ve been in boats that do it so poorly.

Is the Spark a winner? Three-time North American open canoe slalom champion Andrew Walker jumped in the Spark at last year’s US Nationals: “It accelerates quickly and carves gracefully through the eddies. It’s time to forget the speed-killing bob and eddying line spinout of my short boat.”

No doubt the Spark will be a popular choice for the fast and furious, but Esquif needs to be careful not to pigeonhole it in the slalom category. It could be just as popular for the bored intermediates in the eddies.

Solo open canoeing has been smoldering away for 10 years. While other manufacturers have tossed their wood in the fire pit, we know for an explosion you need a Spark.

Specs

Construction: Royalite
Length: 11’8”
Width: 25”
Depth: 15”
Shape: Asymmetrical
Rocker: bow 6”, stern 5”
Gunwale: ash
Colours: camo
Weight: 35 lbs
Price: $1325 CAD, $946 USD

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Sea Kayak Review: Atlantis Titan VI

Photo: Tim Shuff — Boat Review: The Titan VI by Atlantis Kayaks

If you visit the Atlantis Kayaks workshop, you’re apt to be under-whelmed when you see that it amounts to a small barn in a field near Nanaimo, B.C. Inside, however, the electricity meter is whirling like a dervish, driving heaters and floodlights and other apparatus of industrial boat production. The two-storey shed hums with the mounting intensity of pre-season orders, and you realize that this is what it looks like when big kayak companies get their start.

Atlantis Kayaks is Robin Thacker, a moulding expert who came to kayak building by happenstance. He once moulded parts for jet engines and has another business building scale models of multi-million dollar flight simulators. In his spare time he races bathtubs, but that story will have to wait for another review.

[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all sea and touring kayaks ]

Thacker discovered kayaking when he moved to B.C. in the 1990s. As a builder, he wasn’t about to buy a boat from somebody else. He went ahead and designed his own, selling the Aurora design to Seaward five years later when he was through. But Thacker had caught the bug and in 2003 he started Atlantis Kayaks.

Atlantis Titan VI Specs

Length: 18′ 3″

Width: 24″

Depth: 13″

Weight: 58 lbs glass

Total volume: 392 L

Total storage: 192 L

Cockpit: 31″ x 17″

MSRP: $3,495 CAD glass

atlantiskayaks.com

So, a novice kayaker designs his own kayak. At first this story sounds like the episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets to design a car for the common man. His tacky La Cucaracha air horn and shag carpeting didn’t catch on.

But Thacker is one outsider who knows the right way to bring fresh perspective to an industry. Why not add an integrated GPS system? Why not find a way to attach foot braces to a boat without drilling holes in the hull? And why not ask the outfitters what they want in a kayak and then build it for them?

On The Simpsons, Homer’s car cost $82,000 and bankrupted a company. In real life, the Thacker kayak is competitively priced and appears to be propelling Atlantis toward mainstream success.

The Titan VI is a low-volume version of Atlantis’ flagship Titan. It’s the Titan hull with a lower deck for a tighter fit and sportier feel. Our test confirmed what Atlantis’ outfitter customers already know: Titans are super-stable, beginner-friendly, roomy, durable and attractive.

Fully loaded, our Titan VI took a lot of work to flip over. It tracked easily and heavier paddlers could tilt it and shorten the waterline for tighter turns. We had a comfortable ride in 5-meter seas and 20-knot winds and felt relaxed enough while drifting to take photographs in conditions that would have made for white-knuckle paddling in many other boats.

The Titan VI is 24 inches wide but cruised for us at speeds similar to narrower kayaks of its length. “It’s not the width that determines speed,” the designer explains. “It’s the footprint.” Maybe that’s a bathtub-racing secret.

Medium to large paddlers seeking an expedition-capacity kayak should take a close look at the Titan VI. This is a classic North American-style design that excels in comfort, capacity and stability, with innovative construction and clever features that set it apart from the competition.

[ Also read: Everything You Need To Know To Buy A Used Kayak ]

Soundproof bubble-dome for the kids? (top)

Unlike Homer Simpson’s bells and whistles, Robin Thacker’s extra features are intelligent and practical. Consider the unprecedented option of an integrated GPS cradle for $295 CAD (GPS not included).

Parts of a red sea kayak — Photos: Tim Shuff

The stiff fiberglass seat back provides great support, although it may get in the way during rescues.

Everything but the Super Big Gulp holder (middle)

Comfortable, padded thigh hooks and a low deck provide a sporty fit for a large-volume boat. The Werner foot rails operating the Feathercraft rudder screw into a moulded insert in the hull and connect to a strap offering a second foot adjustment that’s always within reach. We’d like to see a deeper, grooved cradle for the rudder on the rear deck to prevent the foot pedals from moving when the rudder isn’t in use.

Excellent detail work includes fiberglass-taped inner and outer seams and bulkheads; Kevlar-reinforced bow and stern; standard cockpit cover and optional underdeck mesh bags in the cockpit and rear hatch ($109.90 CAD).

Cucaracha proof and then some (bottom)

The 72-liter bow hatch and the 120-liter stern hatch (shown here) are sealed by a two-piece system of airtight neoprene with a flush fiberglass cover. D-rings allow paranoid paddlers to attach padlocks to their hatch buckles—a deterrent to anyone coveting the reserve gummy bear stash. A fishing rod, paddle or tripod could be stowed under the hatch bungees.

This article was first published in Adventure Kayak‘s Early Summer 2005 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here , or browse the archives here.

Specialty Touring Kayak Review: Impex Outer Island

Some boat manufacturers try to please everyone. Impex has taken a different tack with the Outer Island. This new boat will be to Impex what so-called halo cars are to automakers—an outstanding specialty design that draws attention to an entire brand, whether or not it’s a big seller by itself.

The Outer Island already has a loyal following. Connecticut-based Greenland kayaker Jay Babina perfected the Outer Island over four years starting in 1995, and handmade wooden versions have since earned a reputation for being fast, stable and easy to scull, brace and roll. Impex sparked a buzz in the Greenland scene by announcing it would reproduce Babina’s design with only minor modifications.

[ Further reading: Modern Greenland Kayaking: How Traditional Became Trendy ]

The Outer Island’s West Greenland pedigree includes exceptionally low windage, low volume, a long waterline, minimal rocker and a slick pancake of a rear deck (only seven inches deep) to facilitate traditional techniques like layback rolls and balance braces. Impex has already signed Cheri Perry onto their team, a Greenland Kayaking Championships paddler who enthuses that this is the first composite kayak in which she can perform the majority of competition rolls.

Impex Outer Island Specs

Length: 18′

Width: 21.5″

Depth: 10″ (mid-ship), 7″ (rear deck)

Weight: 55 lbs glass

Total volume: 220 L

Total storage: 114 L

Cockpit: 30″ x 16″

MSRP: $2,695 USD glass

It remains a surprisingly dry ride while knifing blithely through steep and deep seas. Initial stability is unexpectedly good for such a narrow boat, surely due to the shallow-V cross section.

Unlike many Greenland designs that echo skin-on-frame lines, the Outer Island has a soft chine, which rolls very smoothly in a tilt from primary to secondary stability.

Even novices will be able to make the Outer Island track straight and win races. It’s very fast and has the unwavering temperament of a good sled dog, but it takes real skill to make it turn.

Where a hard-chine boat tilted on edge tends to carve all the way through an outside arc with little help from the paddler, the Outer Island veers ever so slightly, following its forward inertia unless you throw in a few sweeps to coax it around. It’s clear why Babina’s original design didn’t have a skeg. We only dropped ours once, during a difficult 15-knot rear quartering wind and large ocean swell.

Impex slots the Outer Island into their specialty touring category alongside its alter ego, the playfully rockered Susquehanna.

So what’s the specialty? The Outer Island is one of the best production boats for small to mid-sized paddlers for real Greenland paddling, racing and short-duration touring—at very competitive Impex prices. Add $200 CDN for an expedition layup, $600 for Kevlar and $1,000 for carbon Kevlar.

Bow to the king of logos (top)

Different parts of yellow kayak The Impex name is said to derive from “import-export,” adopted when Mid-Canada Fiberglass was looking for a U.S. tag for

its Formula Kayaks line. Now, the moniker with the monarchical ring has conquered all and every new MCF kayak bears the Impex crown—three wave crests bejewelled by little kayaks and water droplets.

An eight-inch round cover allows access to the 48-litre front hatch. All deck fittings are recessed and the heavy-duty bungees are well laid out for paddle stowage on the front deck. Bow and stern toggles attach to a simple loop threaded through the end pours.

In the throne room (middle)

In the cockpit you’ll note the beefy construction: taped seams, reinforced keel, rigid fibreglass mat deck and funky semi-transparent fibreglass bulkheads curved to flex and absorb forces through the hull. High marks for outfitting too: Werner foot braces, padded thigh hooks and a comfortable, low-profile whitewater-style ratcheting backband with matching seat pad from Immersion Research.

The short, contoured seat felt a bit high to some testers, rising slightly in the middle where seats are typically bucket-shaped. A slider on the right controls the cable skeg. The low deck and thigh braces and short keyhole cockpit suit smaller paddlers, yet there’s still plenty of legroom for beanpoles well over six feet tall.

[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all touring kayaks ]

Rear wing of the castle (bottom)

The Outer Island is quite suitable for tripping. Volume is larger than it looks, thanks to its 18-foot length, and performance is equally good with or without a load. Imagine endurance trips where you want to travel light and cover long distances in a few days or a week. We easily packed for four days, putting larger items through the oval rear hatch. All hatches are recessed with drains around the rims.

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak’s Early Summer 2005 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the archives here.

Jasper, British Columbia: The Second Coming Of A Paddling Town

Stories

Spencer Cox and Sean Allen stand on a moist ledge above a big drop in the steep Beauty Creek Canyon in Jasper National Park. It’s not the drop they’re concerned about so much as how the water below belches from the undercut.

Brock Wilson was thinking about the same thing in 1986 when he and, then Jasper local, Stuart Smith ran the drop. “I watched Stuart pencil in and get stuffed under the overhang,” Wilson remembers. “I wanted to land flatter, but I landed too flat and wrecked my back.” The waterfall became known around Jasper as Lumbarsis.

Person paddling on river with mist rising up

50 Of The Best Whitewater Towns To Visit Before You Die

Eighteen years later, Spencer and Sean are weighing the pros and cons of boofing and compacted spines. Reflecting on the fortunes—and misfortunes—of the past is happening a lot around here these days.

Locals like Sean and Spencer, along with a handful of other paddlers born in, raised in, and forever tied to Jasper, are rediscovering its formerly-prized creeks and rivers and picking up where early kayaking pioneers left off.

Jasper, British Columbia: The second coming of a paddling town

As a birthplace of extreme kayaking in Canada, Jasper was as much an international whitewater destination in the 1980s as Squamish and Whistler are today. Paddlers can access at least 12 high-quality class III–V rivers within an hour of the national park’s tourist centre. Jasper offers everything from steep bouldery creeks to ledgy waterfall runs and big volume rivers.

In the 1990s, while playboating fervour engulfed North America, Jasper’s kayaking scene was caught in a whirlpool. The downward spiral began when Parks Canada closed a popular local river and accelerated with the death of a local paddler. Many paddlers had also reached a zenith in their paddling careers and shifted toward city life, chasing well-paying careers rather than first descents.

First descents were exactly what a group of Germans were looking for when they came to the Rockies with their boats in the late 1970s. In search of challenging Canadian rivers, members of the German Alpine Kayak Club had no clear idea of what they could run. The locals weren’t much help. Although skilled, the Jasper paddling scene was stuck mostly in fibreglass slalom boats.

The Germans were more interested in paddling class IV and V rivers than running gates. A vanguard film called Challenge the Canadian Rockies, produced in the early 1980s, featured these bearded kayakers, wearing wool sweaters and baby blue neoprene dropping 30-foot Overlander Falls accompanied by a symphonic score.

The falls look small compared to the steady stream of 60-footers on today’s techno-driven, small-boat paddle porn, but the Germans’ sense of adventure shook the locals out of their slalom slumber. Many started scouting the landscape with a magnifying glass, combing the mountains that surround Jasper and paddling everything they could. In 1982, a mixed-nationality team of Krauts and Canucks calling themselves the Suicide Six claimed the first descent of the cascading Bighorn River. The German blitzkrieg had succeeded. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s Jasper ranked high among world-class whitewater destinations.

a group of cars parked in a paddling town with kayaks on top

Making History In Paddling Towns

Established as the National Park’s town in 1907, Jasper has long been a mixture of terra cotta souvenir-hocking buildings, 100 per cent genuine Alberta beef steakhouses and depression-era Parks Canada structures with faded cedar shake awnings. It hasn’t changed much since the Germans were here, except that now a McDonald’s restaurant stands brazenly in the middle of town. Tourists, it seems, are hungry for cheeseburgers after long days of discovery in the undisturbed scenery just outside town limits.

I’m leaning against the faux-log façade of McDonald’s when Sean Allen rolls up in his dented grey truck. With his pale complexion, fiery eyes and dark goatee, he looks like he belongs on the seat of a Harley. He traded in his motorcycle after hitting a bus. Now he throws himself off bus-sized pourovers instead.

On a motorcycle or in a kayak, Sean is a hard-living guy. He’s taken some big hits since he started paddling in 1999. During a one-week stretch, he took two of his most severe beatings. One of them happened on a high-water mission to the Bighorn when he landed slightly crooked under a waterfall. The river squashed him to the bottom as if being pressed to the pavement by the boot of a Hells Angel. That slowed him down for a while. His skill has since come to match his nearly fearless demeanour.

[ Browse the widest selection of boats and gear in the Paddling Buyer’s Guide ]

We leave the processed putridity of McNuggets behind to meet Spencer and take advantage of the long central Albertan day. Just five minutes outside town, the Maligne Canyon is the after-work creek run of choice. When I first came here a few days ago, the place was like an attraction at Disneyland. Swarms of tourists dangled themselves over the safety railings to capture a digital image of our show.

“Are these extreme kayakers?” inquired a voice from the mob. The eddy I paddled into certainly felt extreme. What should normally be a calm backwater was actually a boiling, spitting current. “There’s an underground cave system that drains Medicine Lake,” explained Sean as he watched me flail away. Cracks in the limestone walls fill the canyon about every 100 metres. The one-kilometre creek run starts out 10 feet wide, but by the end it’s a legitimate river.

We started running the canyon one drop at a time,” explains Spencer, the other prime mover behind Jasper’s himself. He tumbled around in the hole until he resurgence. “We ran the bottom drop one night then went home. Eventually we worked up to the class V Sickle. Now we run the canyon every night. I’ve probably run it a thousand times.” I assume he’s exaggerating, but his detailed knowledge of every rock and eddy tells me he’s not.

Kayaker Chased By Grizzly Bear (Video)

I think back to two days earlier when Spencer led us to a put-in that was crawling with signs of grizzlies, banging his boat with his paddle and brushing sun-bleached hair out of his eyes. Though he doesn’t let grizzlies keep him from paddling, Parks Canada has been a little more troublesome.

Just upstream of the canyon is one reason why Jasper’s kayaking scene went south. A steep and technical run flows between Maligne and Medicine Lake. It’s a two-kilometre tour de force of class V whitewater within a half-hour of downtown Jasper. In 1993, new park regulations prohibited boats on this stretch during May and June to protect harlequin duck nesting. By 1999, a restricted activity order completely shut down paddling between the lakes. Parks Canada cited a drastic increase in rafting traffic as a major disturbance of duck activities. While it is true that the number of rafts floating the river in a year had risen from 10 in 1986 to 1,600 in 1991, the ban included the lower behind-the-mountain run even though it wasn’t commercially rafted.

“We never did see any harlequins on the lower stretch,” commented Al Colwell, junior representative for the nearby Hinton Strokers Kayak Club, adding that the closure pulled their most important intermediate and advanced river right out from underneath them.

While the river is occasionally poached on stealth missions, the Strokers are adhering to the regulation and teaching in less ideal places.

With the closure, paddling in Jasper began its march to the basement, a trip sped up by a 1999 run down the McKale River that ended in tragedy. Jasper’s Mark Oddy was no stranger to high water or steep descents when he entered a sticky hole to knock his paddling partner loose. Though successful at bumping out his friend, Oddy was caught in the mess himself. He tumbled around in the hole until he disappeared. Despite extensive multi-agency searches, his body has never been recovered.

“The death of Mark Oddy had a big effect on the kayaking scene in Jasper,” explains Sean soberly as we wring ourselves out from the evening Maligne Canyon run. “Anybody that was halfway into paddling around here just pulled right back. There was hardly anybody left.” The Jasper River Runners, a club that once filled an entire CN Rail hangar, faced financial troubles and closed its doors soon after.

While many others lost their passion or moved away, Sean and Spencer, spurred on by the paddling pantheon that is Jasper, picked up a video camera and teamed up with locals Logan Rutherford and Mark Basso to film their favourite runs. After a summer of marathon paddling weekends all over B.C. and Alberta, they had enough footage to release the video Entropy. Circulated mainly in Calgary it quickly sold 200 copies and is now in its second printing. A fringe benefit of the video was its showcasing of the filmmakers—virtually unknown until then—as stellar paddlers from a forgotten corner of Alberta.

Entropy also spawned kayakwest.com, a website full of useful information about the runs around Jasper and the West. “Guidebooks only cover a tiny chunk of Western Canada,” says Spencer who runs the site that averages 1,500 hits a month. “Kayakwest encourages people to get out and explore or look at some pictures and river descriptions to see if any given run is something they want to try. There is life in Alberta and B.C. outside of the Kananaskis.”

[ Plan your next British Columbia paddling trip with the Paddling Trip Guide ]

One of the rivers featured on the website is the Fraser. One hour west of Jasper, carving sharply through the rotten rock below Mt. Robson, the Fraser is still 1,000 kilometres from its deltaic mouth in Vancouver but it’s already big and wide. the Fraser’s raft run put-in is the site of Fraser River Fest, a relaxed and fun event organized by Spencer to showcase his favourite backyard runs: a technical class IV series of boulder gardens with trashy surf waves, a terrifying canyon and a big volume play run. Attendance ballooned from just 12 paddlers in 2003 to more than 50 in 2004.

Energized with the same drive to explore whitewater as the Germans, Sean and Spencer are prodding Jasper’s paddlers toward a rebirth. They have outlasted a boom and bust kayaking scene, where ducks ruled rivers and paddling partners were scarce.

If you show up at Beauty Creek this year when the water is just right there’s a good chance you’ll see Jasper’s local boys standing above Lumbarsis, thinking about that undercut.

Raymont Schmidt is a writer living in Canmore, Alberta.

Cover of the Spring 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine This article was first published in the Spring 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Feature photo: Ryan Creary

Mystery Solved: The Ideal Eddy Angle

Skills

Photo by Mark Scriver / Fish illustration by Paul Mason — Mystery Solved: The Ideal Eddy Angle

As long as humans have held whitewater paddles in their hands, they’ve asked the question, “At what angle should I cross an eddy line?” Some have said 45 degrees is the best angle, others argue an approach of 90 degrees is the only way to carve smoothly into an eddy pool. The controversy has spanned several generations of paddlers, yet remains unresolved. Until now.

The solution to this mystery lies in looking closely at the eddy line itself. When you do, you’ll see that the eddy line is not really a line at all. It is actually more like a wedge pointing upstream.

In the photograph, the widening area between line A and B is what we commonly refer to as the eddy line. This eddy line, or wedge, is an area of chaotic water made up of boils and vortices. The upstream end of this wedge, often immediately downstream of a rock, marks the origin of lines A and B. Line A is the current side of the increasingly wide eddy line and line B is the eddy side.

So, how do you decide on an angle to cross the eddy line when it is actually made up of two diverging lines? To answer this, it’s best to work backwards from the eddy pool. At the end of an eddy turn, your canoe should be in the pool pointing upstream. Prior to this, the last point where the canoe was in contact with the eddy line was somewhere along line B. The most efficient entry into the eddy pool is a 90-degree turn off of line B. Any angle larger than 90 degrees results in an unnecessarily wide turn, and any angle less than 90 degrees means front ferrying over the eddy line, which is entirely too much work. The 90-degree crowd is nodding and saying, “I told you so!”

So what about line A? Is it really so important what angle you use to approach this initial eddy line? Anyone who has ever spun out on an eddy line knows it can be very important because of the influence the boils can have on the path of a canoe. As soon as the bow of your canoe touches these boils it will want to turn and face upstream. The risk is that the canoe will face upstream before it makes it to the eddy pool.

The solution is to approach line A with an angle sharp enough to cut a path across the boils so that you can still cross line B at the magic 90 degrees. Since lines A and B diverge, your approach angle will depend on how far you are from the top of the eddy. If you are very close to the top of the eddy (where the lines are close together) you can approach line A at close to 90 degrees. If you are at the bottom of the eddy (where the two lines making up the wedge are further apart) then you should approach the eddy at an angle of 45 degrees. The 45-degree folks are smiling in satisfaction.

So, the whole angle debate boils down to how high or low you hit the eddy. Choosing an approach angle depends on which part of the eddy line you are aiming for. Look carefully at the eddy line and identify both the current side and eddy side of the wedge, break out a protractor and carve a perfect arc into the pool. Mystery solved.

Andrew Westwood is a frequent contributor to Rapid. He’s an open canoe instructor at the Madawaska Kanu Centre and member of Team Esquif.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

An Experiment In Kayak Sailing

An experiment in kayak sailing

Throwing caution to the wind

Kayak sails head-to-head

Return trip brings stiffer winds

Quest for Caribou on the Firth River

Rock the Boat: Adrift

Skills: Rough Water Sea Kayak Paddling

True Dirtbags Don’t Burn Out Or Fade Away

Boat Review: Esquif’s Spark

Sea Kayak Review: Atlantis Titan VI

Atlantis Titan VI Specs

Length: 18′ 3″

Width: 24″

Depth: 13″

Weight: 58 lbs glass

Total volume: 392 L

Total storage: 192 L

Cockpit: 31″ x 17″

MSRP: $3,495 CAD glass

Soundproof bubble-dome for the kids? (top)

Everything but the Super Big Gulp holder (middle)

Cucaracha proof and then some (bottom)

Specialty Touring Kayak Review: Impex Outer Island

Impex Outer Island Specs

Length: 18′

Width: 21.5″

Depth: 10″ (mid-ship), 7″ (rear deck)

Weight: 55 lbs glass

Total volume: 220 L

Total storage: 114 L

Cockpit: 30″ x 16″

MSRP: $2,695 USD glass

Bow to the king of logos (top)

In the throne room (middle)

Rear wing of the castle (bottom)

Jasper, British Columbia: The Second Coming Of A Paddling Town

Jasper, British Columbia: The second coming of a paddling town

Mystery Solved: The Ideal Eddy Angle