Jaime Sharp knows sacrifice is the flipside of the shiny coin of adventure. The 32-year-old guide, videographer and founder of World Wild Adventures left behind a good job and a beautiful woman to follow his dream. In 2011, Sharp fled the promise of a settled life to paddle the length of New Zealand. Three years later he remains an unapologetic vagabond. These days, Sharp hangs his hat in a shed in Vancouver Island’s Nanoose Bay. Equal parts office, gear garage and bachelor pad, the shed is a strategic—if Spartan—home base for Sharp’s on-the-road lifestyle. — Virginia Marshall
-
The shed belongs to a friend. It’s on an acre and a half right on the water. The shelving, plumbing and Internet connection were already here. I can pull my 23-foot bus right inside. It’s what I call ‘tactical homely.’
-
I wanted a mobile kayaking HQ that I could paddle, live and work out of. My dream vehicle was a four-wheel-drive Sportsmobile. What I could afford was this 1990 Ford E350 Diesel medical transport bus. I use the wheelchair ramp for walking boats in and out. I bought the bus for $3,000 and drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and back to make sure it was going to hold together. It has a bed, diesel space heater, battery inverter and kitchen. My plan is to drive down to the Baja Sea Kayak Symposium in April, then work my way back up to B.C. while filming for a paddling series about exploring the West Coast.
-
This duffle contains the TRAK folding sea kayak that I paddled down the Grand Canyon in winter 2012. When I first saw an ad for these boats, I was intrigued. I wrote TRAK a proposal: I would take their kayak all over the world with me and make films about it. The TRAK Files marked my first foray into making a professional online film series.
-
On the right screen, I’m editing photos from the Grand Canyon. On the left, I’m backing up film from recent paddling trips to the Bay of Fundy and the United King- dom. Shooting video is a lot more work than shooting stills. Editing takes months, not days. Creatively, the stories you can tell with film are engrossing, but there’s a real satisfaction in capturing a moment in a single frame. It’s more like a trophy.
-
I’m a closet Star Wars geek. And, yeah, the Ewoks are my favorite.
-
I made this traditional bow and arrow with a Bushmen friend in Namibia. It’s an effective little bow, but more importantly it’s a memento of my travels and the friends I’ve made along the way.
-
I found this wild boar tusk on my New Zealand expedition. Walking away from everything and using all my money to fund this trip was a huge sacrifice. Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned. The weather in the Pacific that year was terrible: cyclones, floods, the tsunami in Japan, an earthquake in Christchurch. I got bitten by a venomous katipo spider and had to be evacuated off a remote beach at 3 a.m. in excruciating pain. Ultimately, it ended up being a trip down the North Island. But experiencing the journey just for myself created a lot of growth, strength and healing. It was one of those crossroads when you make a critical choice and your life takes a completely new direction.
This article first appeared in the Adventure Kayak, Spring 2014 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
