How did you get into Sea Kayaking?

[lhunt]

I started kayaking deliberately for exercise. I was looking for that nice deep-down stretchy-achy bone tired feeling you get after a good hike or backpacking trip, preferably without the associated knee pain. I saw a boat on top of a car in a parking lot - "hmmm.... that's an idea!".

After 2 months of renting little plastic rec boats from the South Bridge Boat House (Concord River) once a week for 2 hours I was still looking forward to it each week, so I bought a little 12-footer of my own. I was so worried my new exercise regime would "fizzle out" I bought a lightweight one so I wouldn't have the "it's too heavy to cartop" excuse. Fat chance!

Then I met Leon in the river, and he started needling me to get a sea kayak. He wanted me to enter races, and I was ready for a new challenge. So, ironically, I only got a year out of my lightweight rec boat, because it got passed over for a sea kayak which I bought sight-unseen over the internet in the middle of the winter (add to cart, click!).

I took a cold water lesson with CRCK, and put my brand-new boat into the chlorine at a pool session, but I have to admit that I mostly wanted the new boat for speed, not salt. Hah! Leon wasn't having any. Right after my first river race in April I started finding myself lured to various paddling venues to see the sights. Seals! A beach that sings! A lighthouse! A river that runs in both directions at once! I got to meet all the weekday paddlers - Gene, Sid, Tom, Ern, and eventually Shari, and some others. I even got my first roll.

The fact that each venue presented slightly rougher water and/or a longer run than the last was almost unnoticed. I realized that Leon was missing out on some of his training to break me in, so I wanted to be "polite" and not slow him down too much. For this reason I ended up pushing harder and farther than I ever would have otherwise.

In the end my new boat put in 1100 miles the first summer, half of those in the river and half in the ocean. It seems like many of those miles were spent paddling in front of Leon (for safety), with him shouting out at random intervals "you're not rotating enough". I had a blast. I dropped 14 pounds without even trying, and started to understand what the exercise buffs mean when they talk about a "strong core". And I took a LOT of pictures.

So thank, you, Leon! Can't wait for Spring!

Lisa

[billvoss]

Most of my childhood boating involved canoe's rather than kayaks. My first kayak euro-paddle experience was as a kid (probably 2nd or 3rd grade) after my dad bought an inflatable kayak. It was sort of a cross between a rubber raft and a sit-on-top kayak. We only used it on local Minnesota ponds for a few years, and I can recall sometimes really struggling to overcome the wind light breeze when paddling alone (dad standing on shore). I frankly thought "real" aluminum canoes were much better than that inflatable thing.

I was around 14 when I caught the rolling bug. A summer camp week culminated in a white-water day trip. We campers were all in four person rubber rafts. The guides were all in white-water kayaks. It was hot, and sometimes big bugs came by to bother us. The guides seemed to deal with both problems by simply rolling their kayaks. I was so envious. I've wanted to be able to roll a kayak ever since.

I continued to paddle canoes not kayaks through graduate school. One summer during graduate school I signed up for a month long white-water Outward Bound trip out west in the four corners region. We started with rubber rafts which I enjoyed. However, later we were switching to kayaks and I was really looking forward to finally learning how to roll a kayak. When we were issued our kayaks, they were sit-on-top models, we only used them for a few days of flat water paddling, and there was no rolling instruction. I and some of the other students were very disappointed.

In 2009 I read an article about The Wooden Boat School in Maine. I got all excited about spending a week of vacation to build my very own stitch-and-glue kayak. I called the school that Friday and left a message on their answering machine asking to signup for the class. They left a message on my work phone that Saturday saying sorry we missed you, please call back. Over the weekend I had gotten slightly cold feet and wondered if I should build my kayak first, or get kayak instruction first. When I heard the message and called the school back on Monday I was told sorry, but the kayak building class is full. So I asked if they had any space left in their week long Elements of Coastal Kayaking course. It was last minute, but they could fit one more person in. Before going I spent hours finding and watching You-Tube videos on kayak rolling. Finally, I was going to learn how to roll a kayak!

So my first time in a sit-inside kayak was September 7th, 2009 at The Wooden Boat School's Elements of Coastal Kayaking 1 course taught by Mike O'Brien on the Maine coast. Before getting on the water the first day Mike asked the students what they wanted to get out of the course. I said I wanted to learn to roll! He said that was not usually part of the course, and my disappointment must have been very obvious. He followed up saying he might be able to work with me a little bit on learning to roll later in the week.

Two day's later on September 9th, the class went to a fresh water lake where all the students got to experience a wet-exit. After that was done, and the class had done some paddling, we stopped at a beach to rest and Mike stood in the water teaching me to roll. He used the paddle float on the end of the paddle technique, and by the end of perhaps an hour I was reliably getting up with the float's assistance. He said it was time to stop, and I insisted on trying once without the float before we stopped. I came up!

At that point he did make me stop, and for the next 48 hours I really thought I could roll, having after all successfully completed all my roll attempts. When he next let me roll, I discovered it wasn't quite that easy. However, I did succeed a few more times that week and I was truly hooked.

People involved with The Wooden Boat School tend to prefer wooden boats to mass production boats. I definitely picked up a bit of that prejudice against mass produced kayaks. I also learned that skin-on-frame kayaks could be even lighter weight than stitch-and-glue or strip-built kayaks.

That fall and winter I dove in head first. I purchased my Chesapeake 18 and my Fuse 64 off Craig's List. I signed up for pool rolling sessions and the NH AMC Paddlers white-water school. I registered for a the fall workshop where I would build my first F1. By spring Rick Stoehrer was torturing instructing me at NSPN's Moving on the Water parts 1 and 2.

In the fall I attended Delmarva to build my skin-on-frame F1. I drove down disliking Greenland paddles based on briefly using one incorrectly, and came home hooked on Greenland style rolling.

I still love rolling, and paddling is not bad either.

[glad]

What a great question. I have been enjoying reading everyone's stories.

I was 35 years old and had just had my second knee arthroscopy and figured that running was not going to be in the picture for long. I grew up on the Connecticut shore and loved the water.

So, for my birthday, I gave myself a 7 day paddling trip on the Sea of Cortez. It was beautiful; camping near uplifted cliffs, swimming with seals, the desert surrounded by the pristine sea.

It was very cushy. If you wanted some M and M's or cerveza you just put your paddle up and the shag boat came by to provide snacks.

A few years later, I took the intro CRCK class to understand the basics and bought my first boat (an enormous plastic Aquaterra Sea Lion- which came with a 240 cm paddle) through the then "Want Advertiser."

Then I bought a Romany to learn how to roll, then a Force 3 to go faster and now I have a Pilgrim Expedition which pretty much combines the attributes of both.

My paddling friends are very special to me; very fun and adventurous people enjoying the athleticism, the beauty, navigational challenges, welcome gear-headed conversations, wilderness skills, the ways we can connect with nature and a shared wonder of water moving.

I am grateful for all those inspiring days on the water; the fish, the sky, the colors, the fun after the paddle and everything I hope to keep on learning.

[JohnHuth]

Good topic.

I always loved canoeing - Boundary Waters, Algonquin, Maine, Northern Quebec. I dropped off that somewhat when I moved to Boston - mainly children and time commitments.

My wife found a house to rent at the Cape - we now own it. I'm kind of an introvert, and with a lot of guests, I had to get away, so I started fishing off a jetty. Then I learned to fly-fish - even tied my own wet flies. I did pretty well, until one year, I got skunked - nothing. Then, I saw some late teens pull up a kayak - point to a feeding frenzy and paddle out in a rec kayak. The came back with a bunch of fish that they caught just outside of my range of casting. I said to myself "I have to get one of those…"

I got a rec kayak and learned how to fly fish out of it - mainly trolling. That was fun and productive. I rented rec kayaks off of Little Cranberry and got caught in the fog once - not a big deal, but then I saw some people wearing wetsuits, and realized that the water up there was pretty damn cold, so I got a wetsuit.

Then, I was paddling on Columbus Day weekend 2003. I went out without a wetsuit, but quickly got chilled, so I went back and put it on. Then I went out in the sun - fog eventually rolled in. I used the wind as a natural compass. The next day I found that two women were lost in the fog bank that I was in - eventually the body of one was found.

That incident kicked me into high gear in many ways. One of them was getting a decent kayak and start to learn the important stuff. I took a class in rolling early on, figuring it would be helpful if I was pushing the limits of my abilities. I spent the next summer working almost exclusively on my rolls and paddling distance.

At that point, I did the thing of taking a bunch of classes, got jazzed up about BCU ratings and all that. I kind of fell off that and began looking more for the camping experience and just getting out. So, that's where I am now. From time-to-time, I think about going back to the courses and doing X* things - probably would be a good thing, force me to get my CPR going again, WFA, that sort of thing, but I confess to being lazy and my time is mostly just going out paddling and camping.

There's something about seeing a sunset on a craggy island off the coast of Maine, with your tent up, and sipping wine, talking about the day with friends - magic!

[Inverseyourself]

I took a 5 day WW-"Intensive Course" at Zoar in 2001. Zoar is an excellent school with high-class instructors (at least back then) in western Mass on the Deerfield River and got me rolling (C-to-C) in Class II WW in one morning. I was briefly hooked but was only able to run WW on 3 more days with instructors on the Deerfield in 2003.

During my last run of the Zoar Gap, class (II-III), I suffered a concussion while drifting through the gap upside down after an early capsize, hitting my helmeted head twice in short succession on two submerged rocks that back then were called "hammer and anvil". I had been warned about those but, once inverted, seemed to be magnetically drawn to them. Since I had just become a father, I put further adventures on hold, except for one beautiful day paddle on the Na Pali Coast in Kauaii, although that was in a tandem.

In spring 2013, I started researching sea kayaking, which up to then I had deemed a sport for geezers in dorky hats. Somehow, I had discovered the sporty side of it. I bought some instructional DVDs and eventually rented a sea kayak on a hot summer day in Gloucester. The folks there apparently thought that I looked like I knew what I was doing...I didn't really, at least not in practice.

I launched at Lane's Cove and made my way to the southern tip of Crane's. On my way there I made sure I still had my roll. On the way back, I became a little cocky and chose the direct line from Crane's southern tip to Lane's Cove, further out to sea. I was thinking of testing my roll that far out but instinct prevailed and I didn't. Once I was closer to the beach, I capsized on purpose and...fell out of the boat (nylon spray skirt). I knew the theory of Cowboy rescue and made it to (not into) the cockpit several times. With waves picking up, I capsized again and again. Being the stupid, ignorant and self-conscious beginner that I was, I declined offers from a passing jet-skier to assist me back into my boat. After several more unsuccessful attempts, I started feeling tired and began swimming the boat towards the rocky shore. At some point, someone from a million-dollar mansion took pity and paddled out in his kayak to assist me. Since I was loaded with theory, I was able to talk him through an assisted rescue and eventually made it back to Lane's Cove, humiliated but much the wiser for it. Shortly thereafter, I read Deep Trouble, realizing that my story would have had the potential for an additional chapter. On Columbus day '13, I bought my first boat from Tom and hooked up with NSPN. And now I can't wait for spring to go out on the ocean with you guys again.

[scamlin]

July 4 weekend in 1993, I borrowed my sister's old Lincoln canoe, and decided to take my new girl friend camping on an island in Maine. Had done some canoeing in the big lakes in eastern Maine, but never on the ocean. I really had no plan: someone in Portland suggested launching at the Cousins Island bridge, and someone at the put in suggested camping at a nearby island in Casco Bay. So we launched and when i could no longer turn the boat into the wind, we landed on the nearest downwind island, pulled the boat and our gear up a 12' cliff and--true confessions--pirate camped for three days under a spreading oak tree with wild roses all around until the wind died down. That last day, July 4, we circumnavigated Cheabague on the way to the take out and as we rounded the eastern end, a young woman in a red kayak glided across the shallows and past us. Pure magic to my eyes and I said to myself, I gotta do that.

Still in graduate school at that point, no money, so the dream was deferred but Beth gave me John Dowd's Sea Kayaking: A Manual for Long Distance Touring for Christmas that year, thinking it might be fun to take a half day trip someday. A dozen books, one obsession and about three years later in March 1997, I bought a copy of Tasmin's Atlantic Coastal Kayak, and following John Dowd's west coast advice found a used Necky Arluk III listed in CT. After raiding four or five ATM machines, I drove down with the cash to pick up my new boat. The next day, I just had to try it out in blue jeans on a local pond where the ice had recently gone out and somehow did not capsize.

Beth and I took our first lesson from Ann Carroll who ran Far Horizons, a kayak outfitter and B&B on the Harraseeket River in South Freeport. She put me in Derek Hutchinson's personal boat, a Gulfstream in British Racing Green with his name painted in yellow just below the cockpit rim. Derek stored his US boats with the Carrolls who had trained with him. I think I capsized it about 200 yards off the dock and thus began my first lesson in rescues. After that, I was shopping for a paddle jacket at REI in Reading, and got talking to the salesperson (Bob ??? who used to guide or operate a kayak business on the north shore). When he heard of my eagerness to learn, said there was only one place to go: Peaks Island. A week or two later, June 1997, we were two out of four on Peaks Island for one of Tom Bergh's early season Fast Track classes. It was one of the years he did not have use of the big boathouse after another spat with the owner, so we did the class at his kitchen table and off of a trailer. Four day later, my life had pretty much changed. Took countless classes there over the years and eventually ended up buying a couple of NDK boats off him to round out the fleet.

One of them was a new yellow Romany that I had on my roofrack as I waited to pick up Beth from work in Harvard Square in summer 1998. A friendly woman approached to ask the make of the boat as i stood on the sidewalk. After the conversation with Erica Bernstein, she told me about this email group on the North Shore and suggested i go paddling with them. I honestly don't remember the first paddle with them, unless it was the one out of Riverhead Beach. The sea was running a bit in outer Marblehead Harbour and I remember being light-headed and a bit terrorized by the 4 or 5 foot swell. Big enough that when it broke over Chris Perkin's head on the Marblehead side and he capsized, then I first witnessed a combat roll.

I also remember Bob Burnett's first trip leader training in 1999. The on water session was scheduled for Pavilion Beach on Great Neck but the forecast for that April day was gusts to 40 kts, so Bob wisely relocated the class to the Ipswich River on Topsfield Road. Jed, John Leonard, and other early members were in the class. We paddled up against the spring current, out of the winds, and perhaps into the history of the club.

[leong]

A friendly woman approached to ask the make of the boat as i stood on the sidewalk. After the conversation with Erica Bernstein, she told me about this email group on the North Shore and suggested i go paddling with them. .

Scott,

Speaking of Erica, here’s a picture of her (blue top), Geri and myself on one of the Boston Harbor Islands back in the early days of NSPN (about 1997). Erica is a mathematics professor at the U of Hawaii. I taught Erica how to fish from her Nordkapp.

-Leon