Though we may often take the vastness of our country for granted, I expect that deep down most of us are proud of our great landscape and the role it has played in shaping the history of our country. This pride shows itself as a fierce love for free flowing rivers, nearendless mountain ranges, and the vast boreal wilderness. And while it may be true that we are better positioned than others to gain a meaningful knowledge of the shape of the earth, it is a knowledge that still has to be actively sought. In Canada, a vague and passive appreciation of the land is easy, too easy.
From the seats of our little boats, we have reduced our rivers to a short section between put-in and take- out, a linked series of playspots and ledges. For us, a river becomes a familiar, sometimes memorized sequence of moves that hints at adventure. It is a snapshot, like a photo of a person that in no way indicates health, happiness or history. This limited knowledge weakens us as paddlers and members of a community. Who are we to speak for a river if we only know eight kilometres of it?
Sliding into the water at a put-in I can’t help but wonder what lies upstream, or where the river goes when it flows around a bend and out of sight at the take- out. Do Ottawa River paddlers know anything of the roaring Culbute Rapids, or the many drops at the Swisha? What about the mountainous waves of Clarke’s Folly in spring flood?
To really understand rivers requires commitment, time and even intimacy. To understand a river is to understand something about all rivers, and to understand rivers is to understand geography.
At one time I pursued an encyclopedic knowledge of rivers — wavelengths, gravel bar formation, erosion, particle capacity. This was an exercise in frustration. I came to see that, without connection to whole rivers, these facts are meaningless.
It was not until I explored my own river — not my local whitewater run, but the stream that runs through the culvert down my road — that I began to understand rivers, and therefore geography, in the broadest sense.
My stream is unremarkable in every way except that it is my own. It shapes the landscape I look onto every morning when I wake up and defines the place where I live. If we don’t really know where we live, then it doesn’t matter where we live.
Understanding local streams matters. We need to know our rivers to care for our rivers. News of dams on the Magpie or the Churchill, or a hundred other rivers, means more than the loss of whitewater runs, mere places to play. Dams portend a drastic alteration of geography, and with it an erosion of the knowledge that is our birthright. In backing up the water, dams dry up our sense of place.
Our predecessors travelled without maps and knew their rivers top to bottom. They understood flow through the seasons, the length, breadth and character of a river. Compare this to playboaters who have a bottomless depth of knowledge for a handful of features on a river, yet are oblivious to what lies 100 metres upstream or down.
It’s an oblivion that has to be recognized. Paddlers are the chosen ones. In a world of bulldozed suburbia we view the world with wet hands and water in our eyes. We feel the connection to the Earth through the grip of the current. We must not ignore the geography that created that current and the geography that the current creates.
Paddle past the take-out.
Jeff Jackson is a professor of the outdoor program at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ont.
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.
Everyone knew someone would run it someday. Twisting, steep and ugly, Ragged Falls had festered in the psyche of southern Ontario paddlers. Dropping 85 feet in less than half a kilometre, the falls had repelled any attempt at a complete run, until last November when Billy Harris notched the first full descent.
Just a kilometre off busy Highway 60 as it runs into the southwest corner of Algonquin Provincial Park, Ragged Falls was the most prominent drop in southern Ontario that had yet to feel the caress of plastic.
It is a complex, gnarly, multi-stage drop with plenty to make a sane boater walk away.
“There is lumber, pin spots, rooster tails. When she is crankin’, sphincters are all puckered,” says Harris. “It is a white monster with teeth, scales and attitude.”
Harris had a clean run, only getting into trouble at the bottom when he was drawn toward a lumber yard after starting the celebration too early.
Dale Monkman and Rapid columnist Ben Aylsworth followed shortly after, getting into a few tight spots but escaping unscathed.
In the spring of 2003, Rapid reported on an exploratory attempt by Brent Cooper and Paul Muegge. The pair started at the bottom and progressively ran from higher and higher up the falls before halting their progression still 40 feet below the top.
Gord Baker, a manager at Algonquin Outfitters just down the road from the falls, was watching that day. “If it is in fact runnable top-to-bottom, it would be a dangerous undertaking, one with great risk of injury or death,” said Baker.
While that may well be true, it’s time to take the conditional clause off that quote.
The exploits appear in Ben Aylsworth’s new film H2-HO.
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.
If I were a rat, my paddling gear would be neatly folded and stacked in a plastic bin labeled, Scott’s Paddling Gear. The bin would be in the basement among other gear bins—bike apparel, camping equipment, ski wear—all labeled clearly and arranged according to season. I would probably even have a bar of apple-scented soap inside to keep my paddling gear smelling sweet over the winter.
I’ve tried a couple of times to be all Martha Stewart-like in my basement. It’s just no use. I like to stretch my paddling season as close to winter freeze-up as possible. Just when I think it’s time to put my gear away we get a warm December day and it all gets dug out again. Even after the mercury falls, and paddling seems to be out of the question, I can’t bring myself to admit the season is over. The bag of soggy gear just gets tossed in the garage until spring.
This is where I get back to my point about not being a rat.
If I were a rat, I would have learned my lesson by now. I know this because researchers study rodents in laboratories, testing their capacity to recognize and avoid unpleasant smells. In one study, rats quickly learned to associate a poisonous drink with its particular odour and soon knew enough to leave it alone. (Paddlers haven’t figured this out yet, but this is another story altogether.) In another laboratory test, rodents demonstrated a near-perfect memory when it came to avoiding odours.
Scientists, and the rats, tell us there is a direct connection between our sense of smell and memory, and I believe it. The smell of fresh-cut cedar reminds me of the cottage, pipe smoke evokes my grandfather and black felt-tip markers bring back memories of my grade-two art class with old Mrs. Greener. And every spring, when the sun shines, eaves start to drip and creeks overflow their banks, I load my boat and go in search of my gear. Knowing not to look in the basement, I head for the garage, where I fumble around, looking here and there. Then I smell it.
When I unzip my paddling bag to check that everything is inside, my first memory isn’t of walking through an orchard of green apple blossoms.
Like a hurricane through a Stilton cheese factory, the smell of my gear blows up my nasal passage to the odour receptor cells that pass on the sig- nal to the limbic system in my brain that catalogues my memories. A few neu- rons fire and then I smile. “That was a great day,” I say to myself as I remember that last paddle in December.
Rats learn to avoid putrid odours after one or two exposures. They would learn after their first paddling season. They would wash their gear in little rat washing machines and fold it into little rat plastic gear bins labeled, Rodney and Roxanna Rat’s Paddling Gear.
Rats, I guess, are smarter than me. But rats don’t get to paddle late into the fall.
I’m glad I’m not a rat.
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.
I had never thought of the ice as a noisy thing. Then again, I had never paddled at the foot of an actively calving glacier. A set of unfamiliar sounds—icy groans, pops, rumbles and cracks—emanated from Greenland’s Knud Rasmussen Glacier as it fell, piece by piece, into the fjord. As my head spun back and forth following each new percussive effect, my arms were on auto-pilot, bracing against the mish-mash of waves pushing out from wherever the enormous chunks of ice crashed into the water.
Our group of seven had already spent more than a week paddling the Tunu district of eastern Greenland, a barely-populated maze of fjords straddling the Arctic Circle. The east side of Greenland has always been less populated than the west coast due to the huge amounts of drifting polar ice which congest the shoreline, making transportation routes unreliable.
Paddling about 20 kilometers a day in our folding kayaks, we had travelled 180 kilometers through a maze of fjords, working our way north from Kulusuk to Sermiligaq.
Feature photo: Wendy Killoran
Along the way we had passed a handful of picturesque villages of colourful wood houses, barely clinging to the steep shoreline between the mountains and the water’s edge. It is only the coastal mountains that are habitable; the other 85 per cent of the island is blanketed by the Greenlandic Ice Sheet. At a maximum thickness of three kilometers, it depresses the land beneath and squishes out the mountains that fringe the country. Valley glaciers flow to the sea through these mountains, scouring jagged peaks and creating long, u-shaped valleys and fjords.
This icy kingdom revealed itself as I paddled beneath snow-capped mountains, beside sculpted icebergs and drift ice, to the base of immense glaciers. Despite the frozen backdrop, we were warmed by sunny, calm conditions for most of these last two weeks of July. Even mosquitoes wilted from the heat, and stayed tucked beneath cool leaves.
I wasn’t about to dismiss the mosquitoes as wimps. I’ll tip my bug hat to any insect that can survive in the midst of so much ice. Erik the Red was displaying a firm understanding of irony when he gave the misnomer Greenland to the newly-colonized island in AD 985. Perhaps the exiled Viking was trying to entice others to settle on the inhospitable island with him.
Houses in Greenland are squeezed between mountains and ocean. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
Ice from the Knud Rasmussen chokes Sermiligaq Fjord. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
At home in Greenland, a culture in transition
Inhospitable may be a word used only by visitors. Various Inuit cultures have populated eastern Greenland’s shores on and off for 2,000 years. The Thule people arrived in the 14th or 15th century and developed the skills and customs that made survival possible, inventing the kayak, harpoon and dogsled. One of the first things I saw upon arriving in Kulusuk was an Inuit couple stretching a polar bear skin across a driftwood frame. According to Inuit custom, the hunter who first sees the bear has rights to the skin and half the meat.
While watching the enormous white coat stretch out in the sun, it was easy to grasp that the villagers of Kulusuk have only emerged from what we’d call a stone-age existence since 1958 when the United States established an international airport and radar station (truly, a cold-war outpost).
Even today infrastructure is minimal with the majority lacking running water and most using a bucket for a toilet. Chained sledge dogs, fur matted and unkempt, easily outnumber the 350 villagers. I watched my step. The dogs should not be handled, unless one is willing to forfeit a hand.
Drum dancing is an increasingly lost art in Greenland. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
Demonstrating the more utilitarian origins of kayaking in a handmade traditional kayak. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
The hunter who first sees the polar bear has rights to the skin. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
Before we set out on our trip our outfitter arranged for a demonstration of the more utilitarian origins of kayaking. Pili Maratse carried his handmade traditional kayak—sealskin stretched over a driftwood frame—to the rocky shoreline where he removed his shoes and wiggled into his custom-fitting boat.
His boat darted through a puzzle of drift ice as he showed us how to chase and harpoon narwhals and seals. Maratse’s kayak moved nimbly compared to our modern kayaks, heavily laden with highly engineered camping gear that suddenly seemed excessive.
Life here is about more than just survival. Kulusk is fortunate to have Anna Kuitse, who has been teaching village youngsters the ancient Inuit tradition of drum dancing. Dressed in a sealskin anorak and shorts with sealskin kamiks she joined Tinka Mikaelsen, a young adolescent girl with glossy, raven-black hair, clad in a white cotton anorak and an intricately beaded fringe necklace and head piece.
His boat darted through a puzzle of drift ice as he showed us how to chase and harpoon narwhals and seals.
As they danced they provided a glimpse of this art form that has died out in most other regions of Greenland. Though a particular island way of life is still somewhat intact, the ancient culture has undergone incredible changes in the last half-century. With technological and material advance comes a severing of cultural identity. Modern conveniences ease some of the hardships that come with living here, but they have the potential to break the Inuit’s traditional connections with the natural environment, detaching them from their cultural uniqueness. With global trade and communications shrinking the planet, Nike shoes and NBA t-shirts are starting to replace sealskin and polar bear garments. And with global warming making the traditional hunting and fishing lifestyle more difficult, the central pillar of Inuit culture may be facing the same fate a glacier faces when it reaches the sea.
Paddling into the funnel-shaped fjord
As soon as we left the cove in Kulusuk, we entered a fantasyland of ice. We wove our way through corridors barely wide enough for our kayaks. Bergy bits moved about at the whim of the currents, tide and breeze.
Through the process of calving and melting, each iceberg or bergy bit becomes unique. The forces of sun, wind and water combine to sculpt unique creations. Mushrooms, castles, spires, arches, triangulated slabs, ribbed platforms and circular holes bobbed in every direction. Some were clear, others white, fewer were toothpaste blue, and even fewer were translucent sapphire blue. These sapphire bergs are often younger than the white variety and appear blue because of a lack of trapped air bubbles reflecting white light.
Apart from being beautiful, the floating obstacles made travel difficult. Pathways closed in around us, causing us to retrace our path and find new routes through this icy maze. It seemed that the Tunu Fjord was simply too congested to navigate, but while we lunched on a small knoll of rock we watched the ice slowly spread apart as the tide rose. Because the fjords are funnel-shaped, the tides can be significant, often ranging between three and four meters. The increased surface area of the fjord allowed us to make progress through the sprawling gallery of ice sculptures.
I peered inside a burial chamber where a weathered human skull lay encrusted with lichen.
With the tidal currents making the fjords resemble ever-changing rivers, the trip was dictated by tidal cycles. My mindset followed along and I got used to thinking according to these short time frames. But compared to just about anywhere else on earth, Greenland is frozen in time.
We came across the ancient ruins of homes and burial sites on a promontory overlooking the Angmagsallik Fjord. Stopping to investigate, I peered inside a burial chamber where a weathered human skull, believed to be at least six centuries old, lay encrusted by lichen.
As old as this skull seemed to my New World mentality, my temporal perspective received another shock after huffing and puffing my way up a mountain overlooking the y-shaped Sermiligaq Fjord. The fjord is y-shaped with a glacier spilling into each branch, the Karale Glacier from the west and the Knud Rasmussen Glacier from the east.
Midnight in the Sermiligaq Fjord. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
Arctic foxes make curious interlopers. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
Creeping glaciers return to the sea
As a curious Arctic fox hovered nearby, I looked down on the supposedly moving glacier and tried to contemplate the process by which falling snow becomes part of a glacier and gradually returns to the sea. Snow that falls on the ice sheet is compressed into ice when the weight of more snow presses down from above. As the thickness of the ice increases, the compressed snow becomes viscous, flowing through valleys as glaciers, eventually reaching the coast deep in a fjord. The process may take up to 10,000 years.
As eye-opening as the glacial panorama was, it wasn’t until we were paddling at the glacier’s terminus that I truly appreciated that glaciers are moving, active things.
After shoving off from our beach campsite in Sermiligaq Fjord, the four-kilometer-wide, 100-meter-tall face of Knud Rasmussen was an easy target. But first we had to wend our way through a glacial soup of bergy bits, drift ice and cathedral-like icebergs. Diffused sunshine glistened on these sculptures causing meltwater to trickle into the icy, inky water below.
Tendrils of fog obscure the peaks of Ikateq Fjord. | Photo: Wendy Killoran
Nearing the wall we saw ivory gulls feeding at the rambunctious base. Did the glacier’s calving stun the fish and create easy fishing? I wasn’t sure, but it was a good reminder to stay back at least three times the height of the calving wall.
We travelled as a group and listened to growls and rumbles followed by clouds of white spray, captivated by the cacophony of roars and the curiosities of deep crevasses. Huge sections of the glacier wall were a vitreous blue with deep chasms split into this wall, resembling palatial chambers.
The rumbles, growls and roars increased in frequency. Clouds of icy spray burst from the fjord below. Rolling waves spread out as larger chunks of ice spilled into the water. And then a massive, thundering bang released a sapphire chunk of ice the size of a multi-story apartment building that toppled over in slow motion. A three-meter wave spread from the foot of the glacier and rolled towards us. The fjord was alive with sounds and motion. Slurps, sloshes, crackles and slaps drowned out the sound of our rushed paddle strokes as razor sharp shards of ice engorged the fjord. Bergy bits danced all around.
We retreated, grinning foolishly, feeling reverent. The thrill of sitting at the base of a frozen wall, calving enormous chunks of millennium-old ice was pure exhilaration. Greenland was actively sharing its timeless grandeur with us, in both beauty and power.
Wendy Killoran wrote about paddling Iceland’s coast in Adventure Kayak’s Early Summer 2003 issue.
This article was first published in the Spring 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.
Beach Combing: Discovering What the Currents Bring
I’m not an ideal kayaking partner. It’s not as though I lack good judgment or conversational skills, but when it comes to helping set up camp, you can forget about it. I’ll be long gone, scanning the beach.
I comb beaches in hopes of finding intriguing items like crab traps, a message in a bottle, a really thick chunk of rope or even (I’m crossing my fingers here) a can of Lucky Lager.
Most of the time I find nothing but junk, like that knotted piece of driftwood that resembled Jean Chrétien.
Above all, I’m obsessed with glass fishing floats that have escaped from fish nets in Asia, hopped aboard an ocean current, caught just the right wind and wave combination and washed up on a beach instead of a rock. They’re hardly worth a cent, but after surviving that ride they’re priceless to me.
Despite the complexity of ocean currents, they’re driven mainly by nothing more than wind. When weather patterns are such that strong winds regularly prevail in one direction, these winds push water along with them and create currents that swirl around the oceans in regular patterns.
The journeys of my glass floats begin off the coast of Asia when, one way or another, they escape from fish nets. They enter the Kuroshio Current which carries them northeast across the Pacific before arcing south along the west coast of North America—all at less than 16 kilometres per day, the maximum speed of an ocean current. A few years later, they skirt the coast of Vancouver Island. If the wind and waves cooperate, they are blown out of the current and wash ashore. If not, it may be years before the right conditions conspire to wash them out of the current and into someone else’s campsite.
I’ve found all my glass floats along a 20-kilometre section of coastline. That’s not surprising, according to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle-based oceanographer.
“Beaches are like restaurants. Some serve Thai food, some Indian or Chinese food,” he says. “Each beach interacts with the currents, winds and waves in a unique way.”
The interplay of these forces and the buoyancy of the objects explain how some beaches are well known for their glass or driftwood artifacts, while others trade in more pedestrian goods: running shoes, for instance.
In 1992, the Hansa Carrier freighter encountered a storm in the middle of its run from Korea to the United States. Several containers were washed overboard by massive waves and an estimated 60,000 Nike shoes spilled into the Pacific. The next winter errant sneakers, still in good condition, began washing up on beaches in British Columbia, California and Hawaii. Studying their distribution, Ebbesmeyer was able to further map the Pacific’s currents.
While glass floats and running shoes often wash ashore on B.C. or Washington beaches, other currents might carry cargo to another ocean all together.
A load of bath toys washed off a container ship bound for Seattle in 1992. Ebbesmeyer followed their progress through reports from beachcombers and lighthouse keepers. Instead of a leisurely tour around the Pacific, the rubber duckies ended up bobbing through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia where they were likely frozen in pack ice. The Arctic Ocean’s pack ice drifts eastward and Ebbesmeyer expects the first rubber duckies to thaw, navigate the currents of the Atlantic and wash onto beaches on the east coast of Canada any day now, more than a decade after they first swam free.
Unlike most beach booty, the rubber toys are actually worth something. The first person to find a duck on the east coast will win a $100 reward.
Whether it’s a $100 ducky, some glass artifact, a solo salty sneaker or a driftwood gargoyle, value is truly in the eye of the beachcomber. I’m thrilled with a worthless glass float, and, as Ebbesmeyer says, “Poor people around the world know, if you need a pair of shoes, you go to the beach.”
Ryan Stuart lives on Vancouver Island and still hopes to find a rubber ducky.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
Editorial: If I See One More Reality Show, I’m Going Paddling
I’ve been thinking lately about the word adventure. Five years ago we gathered around a kitchen table brainstorming titles for the launch of our new magazine. The obvious kayaking magazine titles were taken. We had to be more creative—we had to think outside the box, as they say.
Adventure to me is something I like to add to things others would have enjoyed. For example, imagine a wintry afternoon walk down a well-used trail at a local conserva- tion area. Fresh air and exercise sure, but rather predictable wouldn’t you say? I’d suggest trudging through the valley because there looks to be a goat path on the far side below the cliffs. And that goat path, I bet, leads to the bottom of the frozen waterfalls; wouldn’t it be cool to climb around on them?
My wife Tanya considers herself wiser now. She’s rappelled off icy bluffs, walked out from the bottom of the wrong mountain bowl, forded streams with her mountain bike over her head and paddled into camp late, cold and hungry, one too may times. All this because I said, “Ah come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
We still climb, ski, bike and paddle together, but my little adventures, as she calls them, are now something I do alone or in the company of other like-minded bush-whackers.
Wendy Killoran is a bushwhacker on a global scale. Being a schoolteacher by day leaves her plenty of time to be a die-hard paddler. I’ve heard her boast at symposiums that she paddles over a hundred days a year and gets in her boat at least one day every month; no small feat on the Great Lakes in February.
Wendy was the first woman to race in Iceland’s Hvammsvik marathon. This past summer Wendy found adventure on the east coast of Greenland floating among thousands of “bergy bits.” In her story “Frozen Assets” it’s clear that for her adventure is about landing on a gravel strip outside Kulusuk on the backside of Greenland, a place where the locals still paddle in skin boats.
Not everyone needs to be lost in the fog or feel the thunder of calving glaciers. Adventure, according to reality television shows, requires just two things: young, good- looking people and a beach. In that respect Ken Whiting fits the bill, except instead of battling conniving contestants for a million bucks, Whiting is making a modest living publishing books, producing paddling videos and playing in the surf. Whiting isn’t a circumnavigator of remote islands, he’s a whitewater playboater turned sea kayaker, finding his adventure in the surf zone, tidal rapids and currents.
Ken told us he thinks sea kayaking is poised to see a huge growth in people paddling for fun—paddling, maybe, in the same spot all day, surfing the same break, going nowhere exotic, never being lost. If you think this sounds boring and devoid of adventure, like the walk in the park I was trying to avoid above, you need only watch Justine Curgenven’s new video This is the Sea. If you don’t think playing in surf is an adventure, try standing an 18-foot sea kayak on its nose.
Hours before our premier issue rolled off the printing press we settled on the name Adventure Kayak. Five years later, I still think it’s a good choice. Kayaking adventures aren’t always on the sea, nor are we always touring in our kayaks. It’s a great name because adventure, just like kayaking, can be so many things. We design the magazine to be like those books we read as kids, so that in each issue you can choose your own adventure.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
Little people, read on. The low-volume, high-performance kayak may be a neglected category here in the land of ever-widening girth, but when you’re building boats for the Japanese market, designing small is a big idea. Steve Schleicher of Rainforest Designs created the Kap Farvel for Japanese buyers who wanted a smaller person’s day-touring kayak with a Greenlandic look (i.e., sharp, upturned bow and stern).
Schleicher gave the Kap knife-like ends and pronounced sheer (the upward sweep of the deck toward the ends). The Kap is not as difficult to paddle as it looks, however. The dramatic rocker places the paddler low in the water, resulting in surprisingly good initial stability and comfort in rough seas. The Kap tracks easily and requires only a slight tilt to carve a turn.
Surprisingly, our Kap gave us a dry ride in steep, one-metre whitecaps. Waves fold neatly around the razor-sharp ends and dissipate instead of breaking on the paddler.
It’s only above the waterline that the Kap ranks as a Greenland boat. Down below, it has a soft chine, which Schleicher says is more efficient than a typical Greenland hard chine, reducing hull surface area and turbulence. The Kap accelerates quickly and cruises comfortably at four knots, even against strong winds. Top speed is restrained by a short waterline, though I did hit eight knots on a following sea.
The Kap is guaranteed to make you a faster paddler. How? Its best-kept secret is that your partners end up carrying half your gear.
Other advantages: The Kap’s low windage made it easy to handle in 25-knot gusts; minimal weathercocking; fun wave play; ease of turning and control without the added complexity of a rudder or skeg.
At 6’2″, 180 lbs, I actually didn’t have any problem fitting in the Kap (shoes off) for a four-hour crossing on the Strait of Georgia, and felt like I could paddle circles around my partner in his much larger boat (see “best-kept secret,” above).
Somebody remind me: Why do we normally paddle enormous boats? It can only be because we want to carry enormous loads. But how much space do we really need? I know long-distance backpackers who wouldn’t dream of packing 100 litres.
The Nimbus Kap Farvel is a lightweight, nimble and attractive little boat that’s fun for small to mid-sized paddlers who have the skills to control a narrow, rudderless kayak. It offers many advantages of a recreational kayak (small size, light weight and easy handling) in a higher-performance composite package. Think of the fun we could have in these smaller boats if we gave up Krispy Kreme and ate more sushi.
If the boat fits, paddle it.
1. Small is beautiful
The sharp ends give a beautiful look, arcing clear of the water while the paddler sits low. Heavy- duty bungees on the rear deck provide a way to deal with gear overflow. The recessed metal deck fittings and paddle float rescue straps appear very sturdy. The carrying handles are large and comfortable. There is no skeg or rudder, but this boat is too short to need either, especially for the
shorter paddling distances to which it is suited. A skeg would save a bit of energy in a crosswind and make the Kap more beginner friendly, but you wouldn’t want to sacrifice the space needed for a skeg box.
2. Big in Japan
The foam cushion seat is quite comfortable and has a high back support. Taller paddlers (6’2″) can fit inside the snug cockpit, but will have to enter and exit bum-first, ocean cockpit style. The standard neoprene storage shelf is handy, although a paddler who is 5’10″ found it got in the way of his toes—ironically, tall paddlers whose feet extend beyond the shelf have the advantage here. There is a great deal of space behind the seat which can be used for storage, but it would be nice to see the rear bulkhead moved forward so this space could be incorporat- ed into the dry rear hatch.
3. Less is more
The multi-piece hatch system is a combination of a neoprene seal and a loose-fitting fibreglass cover that straps in place, all tethered together by bungee cord. Very dry, very secure, but a bit finicky compared to some one-piece designs. The capacity is quite small, limiting you to day trips and overnights unless you’re a true wilderness ascetic, a backpacker, or have friends with large boats. Think mothership paddling or else follow Thoreau and, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”
This article first appeared in the Winter 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. For more boat reviews, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
First impressions: The Nigel Foster Legend isn’t the hottest looking Greenland-inspired kayak on the market. It doesn’t have the graceful sharp sheer lines and chines of some of the more ostentatious British designs. But closer inspections reveal a practical advantage behind every missing aesthetic flourish.
Consider those impressive-looking upswept ends we’re so used to seeing on Greenland-style boats: What do they do? They’re like the bombastic tail fins on a ’59 Eldorado. Take them away and you’ve got a little bit less windage and a lot less attitude.
Foster has inflated a skin boat’s sunken cheeks and the result is greater carrying capacity, flotation that keeps the ends from pearl-diving in surf, and an extraordinarily dry ride. It all adds up to practical rough-water performance.
The subtly-arched decks offer similar advantages over the flatter decks of the Legend’s slimmer cousins from across the pond, which suddenly appear a tad anorexic by comparison. The Legend conceals one of the largest carrying capacities in its class—31 litres more than the similarly dimensioned Romany Explorer, that renowned expedition classic by another Nigel.
But don’t think the Legend is in any way bloated or sluggish. Would paring the silly shark fins off that ’59 Caddy rein in the V8? To the contrary, it would probably save gas. The Legend is quick enough. It doesn’t offer lightening- fast acceleration but we found it cruised easily at three to four knots fully loaded and topped out at seven knots in a sprint. On a weekend trip, it held its own alongside other narrow, fast expe- dition touring boats, the CD Expedition and NDK Greenlander Pro, and really took off in following seas. The Legend likes to surf.
Perhaps due to a unique shallow-arch cross-section below its hard chines, the Legend doesn’t flop quickly from edge to edge, but sits comfortably in the water and transitions smoothly and easily into various degrees of tilt for sculling and turning. A low seat position adds to the initial stability.
The arched hull is also likely to hold onto its gel coat through a hard life of coastal touring longer than a V-bottom keel would.
The Legend is the mid-sized version of three Nigel Foster designs hand-built by Seaward Kayaks on Vancouver Island. It’s the size that fits most people best, and is Foster’s personal choice for his expeditions today, replacing his earlier Vyneck, which he paddled on the first circumnavigation of Iceland in 1977.
Conclusion: The Legend impressed us as a renaissance kayak that impeccably balances playful handling with expedition capabilities. A top pick for mid-sized, experienced paddlers who want both capacity and performance.
1. Volvo on the outside
Note the Legend’s softer lines, reduced sheer and more capacious ends than the slender Greenlander Pro, also pictured here. Bow and stern are symmetrical with identically-sized hatches. An optional Brunton Nexus 70P compass ($215 Cdn, $140 US) is nicely recessed into the foredeck. Perimeter lines stop at the front hatch—some would say a safety drawback— Foster says the location of his deck lines is “a more easily identified and secure place to have someone hold your deck line, and because the line doesn’t run all the way through to the bow there is little stretch.” The recessed front and rear oval Kajak Sport hatches have large, easy-to-pack openings, yet are reliably waterproof in rough seas. Seaward’s thorough hand layup includes three fibreglass bulkheads, a Kevlar-reinforced bow and a seam that’s fibreglassed inside and out. Add $590 ($450 US) to get the whole boat in Kevlar or carbon fibre.
2. Caddy on the inside
Padded thigh supports and bucket seat provide a great fit. Excellent support under the thighs. Our 6’2” paddler had ample toe room but maxed out the aluminum foot braces—taller paddlers would have to customize. Reactions to the padded plastic backrest varied—some liked it, others would replace it with a back band. A slider on a cable to the paddler’s left drops the skeg, saving energy in a crosswind by eliminating the Legend’s slight tendency to weathercock.
3. Big backseat
The sloping rear bulkhead maximizes storage capacity in the generously-sized day hatch and makes it easy to empty the cockpit by lifting the bow. Located aft of the seat on the left, leaving the right hand free to brace with the paddle, the day hatch is easy to open and close while on the go and holds an impressive 36 litres. Paddle float rescue rigging is noticeably absent (Brits with bombproof rolls don’t believe in it). However, Seaward kindly offers an optional quick-release self-rescue strap system ($59 Cdn, $45 US) and will also install a Guzzler foot pump for $430 Cdn ($335 US).
This article first appeared in the Winter 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. For more boat reviews, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
Get In, or Stay Out?: Knowing When to Abandon the Trip
Kyra’s left knee swelled up like a blowfish. She couldn’t put any weight on it; it was tender to the touch; the pain increased with any movement, and there was no way she could move around, let alone sit in a kayak.
We had landed on a surf-swept white sand beach at the end of day six, halfway through a trip on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Carrying the loaded kayaks up to the high tide line, Kyra slipped on slimy seaweed and wrenched her left knee.
We started all the basic first aid things we are trained to do—elevating the knee, icing it and pressure wrapping it in a crepe bandage. That part was easy.
The sun was starting to set and we were on a remote part of the coast: we had to decide whether or not to evacuate Kyra from the trip, and how we’d make it happen.
Evacuation is serious!
Evacuation is serious! There are many variables to consider with implications for all group members including frustration, financial costs, lost time and potential risks.
When deciding to evacuate, it is most important to clearly identify the level of urgency of the situation. There are three levels of urgency to consider.
Urgent evacuations are required in situations where there is an immediate and imminent threat to life or limb. Obvious examples include any ongoing problems with a person’s airway, breathing, circulation; or deadly bleeding. Also, ongoing deterioration in the person’s level of consciousness, high fever for more than 24 hours, recovery from a near drowning, or any traumatic event that involves large mechanism of injury, are situations you’d consider an urgent evacuation.
Situations where an injured person clearly needs medical or other services but whose situation is not deteriorating would be considered semi-urgent. Examples include: broken bones; dislocations; an episode of a chronic but stable medical condition such as epilepsy or angina; severe pain; worsening infections; and vomiting and diarrhea lasting more than 24 hours.
Finally, non-urgent evacuations are required in situations where there is no imminent threat to life or limb, but the participant cannot meet the objectives of the trip because of physical, emotional, or psychological limitations. Examples include acute and chronic tendonitis, debilitating blisters, anxiety or social behaviours that seriously undermine the safety and performance of the group.
How urgent is Kyra’s situation? Kyra is in a great deal of pain and experiencing stress and anxiety. She needs to get to a hospital for treatment, but her condition is stable. So we classified her evacuation as semi-urgent and set about planning the most suitable way to get her out.
Your options for evacuation will depend in large part on your methods of communication. All groups should have at least two types of external communication equipment including both one-way and two-way devices.
In many ways, urgent evacuations are the simplest in that they require immediate action, justifying the launch of a one-way distress signal such as flares, EPIRPs or PLBs or signaling mirrors. Or, using a two-way device, make a mayday call to the Coast Guard on a marine VHF radio, or a 911 call to the police or ambulance via a cell or satellite phone. In these cases, the authorities will decide for you what resources are available for the evacuation.
Our evacuation was not urgent; we felt we had the ethical responsibility and ability to resolve this situation ourselves. So we considered our non-emergency options.
For semi-urgent or non-urgent evacuations, water taxis and other boaters are a great resource. They can be contacted through a handheld marine VHF radio. VHF radios connect you to an entire network of boaters who can help you directly or pass on messages.
Planes are another option, weather and landing-site permitting. Most helicopters and planes use land-based VHF radio frequencies, which do not normally pick up marine radio VHF signals. In some coastal areas, planes and helicopters will also carry a marine VHF radio. Normally, however, you will have to contact the company office to arrange for a plane or helicopter.
Your final option is to paddle the person out. Typically this method is used in non-urgent evacuations, but may be your only option in urgent and semi-urgent evacuations if you are unable to make other arrangements. You are limited by weather, sea state and visibility, as well as the injured person’s ability to travel; if they are unable to wear a PFD or swim, be very judicious in your use of this method.
With Kyra, we managed to contact a fishing boat with our handheld VHF. The fisherman used his more powerful radio to reach the nearest marina. The marina staff arranged for a water taxi to come out in the morning. Kyra had an uncomfortable night and a bumpy ride out in the morning.
Our backup plan was to try to paddle Kyra out: if this was too painful, we would have arranged for two paddlers to head out and arrange for a water taxi. We had lots of food and water for several days.
It should be obvious from this example that preparation goes a long way toward planning a successful evacuation. Preparation includes getting first aid training to help you diagnose a situation and developing a multi-level evacuation plan that suits your destination. You will be much better off if you research before you leave. The more emergency information you gather before you face an evacuation decision, the better the odds of an appropriate decision and a positive outcome.
Michael Pardy is co-author of the Handbook of Safety and Rescue and a founding director of SKILS, Sea Kayak Instruction and Leadership Systems.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
A sea kayaker practices the extreme scull technique for sea kayaking.
Sculling is a good way to maintain your balance in a kayak. A scull generates ongoing support over a far longer period of time than a brace will and therefore allows a greater sense of security when edging a kayak or navigating confused waters.
Sculling is usually practiced with the boat on a modest tilt. An “extreme” scull is a stroke where the paddler literally lies out on the water. While this is seldom used for any practical purpose other than showing off, extreme sculling is fun and a great drill. And, it looks cool!
Sculling Basics (photos 1 & 2)
Start off practicing the scull with the kayak on a slight lean. Reaching out over the water in a high brace position, practice the sculling motion. Think of spreading butter on toast. Spreading the butter back and forth keeping the leading edge of the knife raised above the toast prevents it from diving and cutting into your breakfast. Similarly, setting this “climbing” angle on your blade ensures that the leading edge of the blade is always raised and on the surface of the water. The sweep is a long comfortable arc. Strive for minimal splash and a smooth rhythm.
The Extreme Scull
Mastering the extreme scull will greatly improve your ability to feather a blade in the water and lead to smoother transitions from one stroke to another. You will also gain a good feeling for leading edge lift and blade angle. An extreme scull is a natural springboard to kayak rolling or bomb-proofing your existing roll; it reinforces the correct posture and body mechanics used to finish a roll.
There are several tricks that will make the extreme scull a snap to master.
Photo 3
Lying way back onto the stern deck and committing fully to the extreme scull allows the buoyancy of your torso and PFD to help keep you floating at the surface. This is far easier than trying to scull with your body just above the water. When floating, only a light scull will be necessary to maintain the position.
Point your chest at the sky and stretch and rotate your torso in order to keep the kayak as upright as possible. Think about keeping your inside knee pointing upward to prevent the kayak from overturning.
Photo 4
Keep your outer hand low, while the inner “control hand” does the sweeping motion and sets the all important blade angle. The power face is open, leading edge up, as you sweep the blade forward toward the bow.
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Photo 5
As the blade reaches the end of its arc at the bow, stopping the motion will mean a momentary loss of support. No problem, quickly switch the leading edge and begin sweeping toward the stern. A smooth fluid scull is seamless support.
Photo 6
As the blade is swept back again toward the stern, the power face is closed and the leading edge angled up. This sculling action of opening and closing the power face, sweeping the blade back and forth can be maintained indefinitely.
When finishing the extreme scull and righting the kayak; it’s your body that will do most of the work. As you sweep from the bow toward the stern, drive your inside knee up— completely righting the boat—and draw your ribcage in laterally over the kayak. Leaning well back over your stern deck seems to be the easiest. Be sure it is your head that comes up and over the boat last.
Alex Matthews is an active and committed surf kayaker, whitewater paddler and sea kayaker based on Vancouver Island. He is a regular contributor to Adventure Kayak.
Photos on this page taken by Rochelle Relyea.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
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. 
This article was first published in the Spring 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. 
This article first appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions 
Start off practicing the scull with the kayak on a slight lean. Reaching out over the water in a high brace position, practice the sculling motion. Think of spreading butter on toast. Spreading the butter back and forth keeping the leading edge of the knife raised above the toast prevents it from diving and cutting into your breakfast. Similarly, setting this “climbing” angle on your blade ensures that the leading edge of the blade is always raised and on the surface of the water. The sweep is a long comfortable arc. Strive for minimal splash and a smooth rhythm. 
