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Waterproof Digital Photography

2001 was a pivotal year for on-the-water digital cameras (digicams). Little cameras were cautiously popping out of dry bags, and paddlers rafted up to view the results on tiny liquid crystal display (LCD) screens on the backs of the cameras. Digital images produced by these hi-tech wonders could be e-mailed to friends and family or even sent from expeditions via satellite phone to be loaded daily onto Web sites. Digital does away with film and developing expenses-just transfer the files to your computer, and you’re ready to go again. With in-camera editing, movie modes, “stitched” panoramas, reasonable prices, and new compact waterproof cases-digital has come to kayaking.

For 2002, prices are dropping, and the number of features are rising. The cost of memory, a big bugaboo just last year, has dropped through the floor. 128-MB memory cards sell for under $60 and have the capacity to store a dozen to hundreds of images, depending on image dimensions.

Waterproof cases for select digital cameras from Canon, Sony and Olympus first hit the market in 2000. Underwater housings for digicams have been available before, but they’ve been much bulkier and more expensive than the new compact cases. They hold the cameras securely, are lightweight, and take up only a little more space than a 35mm point-and-shoot. This year’s models are depth-rated to 100 ft or more, great for snorkeling, diving-or kayaking. External, O-ring sealed buttons control most or all of the camera functions.

Digital Primer

When you are shopping for digital cameras you need to understand how they work in order to choose the one that best suits your needs. The following is a list of features that you need to consider.

• Megapixels and resolution: The light-sensitive sensors that make up the CCD (charge-coupled device) in the camera are referred to as pixels. More pixels means higher resolution for bigger and sharper images. Digicams usually list the dimensions of the images they record in pixels: the Canon S30’s 2048×1536 image has 3,145,728 or roughly 3.2 Megapixels. If all you want is to send e-mail pictures, 640×480 is fine. Good 8×10 prints, require a 3 or 4 Megapixel digicam.

• Focal lengths of digital cameras differ from film. The CCD area is smaller than 35mm film, so a 7-21mm zoom may be equivalent to 35205mm in 35mm. Digicams usually list 35mm equivalents.

• Optical zooms use moving lens elements. 2x or 3x optical zooms are typical. I like 3x, in the 35205 range, for nice wide-angle to short-telephoto coverage.

• Digital zoom extends the range of optical zoom only by cropping and consequently reduces resolution. It’s useful only if you want low-resolution images for things like e-mail. Optical Zoom is the real deal.

• LCD and viewfinders: LCD screens consume valuable battery power and are tough to see in bright light. You’ll use the optical viewfinder to save power and frame pictures in bright light. That said, try to get a bright LCD. You’ll use it on the water to check framing and exposure. A waterproof case may partially block the viewfinder especially at the wide angle end of the zoom.

• Batteries: Many digicams require proprietary lithium-ion batteries. They are compact and have excellent storage capacity-twice that of NiCd’s- but with the LCD screen on and some in-camera editing, a few hours is all you’ll get before the battery runs down. This is fine for day trips, and possibly overnights, but for extended paddles you’ll want a few spares (at about $50 apiece). Recharge from an AC outlet takes 1 to 2 hours. Some digicams take AA batteries.

Digicams eat power too quickly for regular use of alkaline AAs, so it’s best to use rechargeables. NIMH (Nickel-Metal Halide) have 40% more capacity than NiCad’s (Nickel-Cadmium) and can be recharged without being fully discharged. And you’ll be charging a lot. A NIMH charger and a dozen batteries will handle weekend-long excursions. For expeditions, solar chargers available commercially for NIMH batteries would tip the scales toward AA’s.

• Image storage format: JPEG, a compressed format designed for photographic images, is the most common. Compressed images take less storage space, but at the expense of image quality. If you want top-quality images, digicams with TIFF compression will retain the highest image quality.

• Memory: The removable memory cards differ: Canon uses CompactFlash; Olympus uses SmartMedia; Sony has a proprietary Memory Stick. You can process your images with your computer and printer or take your memory card to a digital mini-lab or kiosk to make low-cost prints.

• Variable ISO: The light sensitivity of the CCD is listed in equivalencies of ISO ratings for film and can be changed to suit the image. You’ll have the flexibility to capture action in low light at ISO 400, and, moments later, a tripod-mounted, color-saturated sunset at ISO 50.

• USB (Universal Serial Bus) port: Most new digicams come with a cable to connect to the computer USB port for downloading images. If your computer was manufactured in 1998 or later, it almost surely has USB.

• Video port: Some cameras have a video port so you can view the pictures on your TV or transfer images to a video tape.

• Web publication: If you want images for e-mail or Web use, any low-end digicam will surpass your need. E-mail and Web images are best kept small. A 480×640 pixel, low-quality JPEG is usually as big as you’ll need and will download quickly.

• Print publication: Most magazines, including Sea Kayaker, print photographs at 300 dpi (dots per inch). This means the top-quality 2048×1536 image from the 3.2 Megapixel Canon S30 (reviewed below) will print no larger than 5″ x 7″, or half a page. Newspapers print at 150 dpi, so a 3.2 pixel image will work for 10″ x 14″. For home printing, 200 dpi generally makes very satisfactory prints.

• White balance: Many digicams allow you to adjust color balance, a great feature when indoors. For kayakers, it’s a plus in the pool, or while snorkeling, or while ashore in shade.

• Waterproof case: Finally, the reason to consider on-the-water digital in the first place: the availability of compact waterproof housings that allow camera operation by way of external buttons. This years cases are rated for submersion to 100 feet or more, and made from ABS plastic that should take some abuse. The cases aren’t pocket-sized, as the cameras are, but the extra bulk makes the camera easier to handle. The extension of the case around the zoom lens is likely to partly block the viewfinder. In addition, some of the camera functions may not be accessible via the buttons.

CANON POWERSHOT S30

Canon’s 3.2 Megapixel Powershot S30 and WP-DC300 waterproof case represent the best of what waterproof digital photography has to offer. (The 4.0 Megapixel S40 fits the same case.) The S30 has a range of automatic and manual controls that surpasses most film SLR’s. Canon’s A1, A2, S110 and S300 also have housings available, and are more like point-and-shoots in capabilities.

The S30’s brushed aluminum casing feels solid. The lens is protected by a cover that slides to reveal the lens and turn the camera on. The LCD is large (1.8″ diagonal) for the size of the camera.

The camera comes with a 16 MB CompactFlash memory card, Lithium-ion battery and charger, USB cable, Video cable, wrist strap, and Canon and ArcSoft software for the Mac or PC. It’s Windows XP compatible, and allows direct printing to the Canon CP20 Card Photo and S8210 Bubble Jet printers. The manual is easy to understand, with a good index. Other features are three-point autofocus, and an array of 13 exposure modes for automatic to complete manual control. Exposure sensitivity can be varied from 50 ISO to an amazing 800. The flash has all the right control options: auto, on, off, and auto or on red-eye reduction.

The camera’s shooting mode dial has icons that are intuitive, like a portrait icon for portrait mode or a mountain for scenic mode. Some you’ll need the manual to explain, like the palette-shaped icon that allows you to change your color intensity or black-and-white or sepia. There is also a movie mode and panorama stitch-assist mode. In replay mode you can view histograms (light profiles) and add voice messages for each image.

The shutter speed covers a wide range from 1/1500 to 15 seconds, and you can shoot in manual aperture- or shutter-priority modes. Apertures go from f/2.8 to f/8.0, a small range compared to a 35mm SLR, but in digital, f/8 gives excellent depth of field at the wide angle end of the zoom.

If you frame the image and completely press the shutter button, there will be a delay of about 1/2 second before the camera records the image. As with most digicams you can eliminate the lag by pushing the button halfway to prefocus. Then when you fully press the button, image capture is instantaneous.

The high-speed mode snaps 3 frames per second until the buffer fills up. You can hold down the shutter and reel off frame after frame of medium-sized JPEG’s, or 5 large-size, fine-quality JPEG’s. In low-light conditions the shutter rate may be slower.

Images are saved in three sizes of JPEG-2048×1536, 1024×768 or 640×480- or as a RAW file. The JPEGs can be saved at three levels of compression, giving you lots of storage options. Canon claims the RAW compression is “lossless,” that is, no information from the CCD is lost, yet file size is 1/2 the size of TIFF files. The RAW files I shot averaged 2.4 MB, and the 16 MB card has room for five. When converted to TIFF on my computer for use with photo manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop or the Canon’s ArcSoft Camera suite, they ballooned to 9 MB.

You can switch from picture-taking to replay with a flip of a switch. Images can be reviewed in the LCD singly or nine smaller images at a time. The 6x magnifier and scrolling functions allow you to check the image sharpness.

The movie feature got me hooked. The camera allows recordings of up to 30 seconds (320×240) or 2 minutes (160×120), complete with sound from the built-in microphone. The movies are saved as AVI files. You can play back the movies on the LCD and erase and reshoot if you don’t like what you got. A speaker in the camera allows you to hear playback sound as well. Even in the small file size the movies provide enough detail to critique paddle strokes. You can edit these down to show highlights for a practical-sized e-mail, or string them together for longer movie viewing on your computer. At 15 frame per second, the movies aren’t jerky. Even in the poor lighting of an indoor pool, they can readily capture an underwater roll sequence. Played back and blown-up on the computer the movies may not be video quality, but they are useful and fun.

With Stitch-Assist you can make panoramas. The LCD screen a shows half of the previous picture, so you can line up the next one. The stitching performed pretty well when I put the images together in the software program. RAW format is unavailable in this mode.

The Software

The camera has a street price of $599 and comes with a USB port and cable, and two CD’s with image organizing/editing software The software loaded into a Macintosh iBook and a PC with Windows 2000 without a hitch. In 10 minutes we were viewing pictures and, with the supplied Quicktime Player 5.0, watching movies. We loaded the software into a PC with Windows 98 but were unable to retrieve any images or video after 30 minutes of trying. With the Canon software you can organize files, crop images for e-mail, and merge photos in Photostitch. The ArcSoft software includes PhotoImpressions and VideoImpressions for image and movie editing.

The 8″x10″ picture I printed from a 2048×1536 image fine-quality, JPEG file, was very good, matching what I could do on my printer with film and a good-quality film scanner.

THE WP-DC300 WATERPROOF CASE

The WP-DC300 case is clear ABS plastic with bright yellow and green buttons and a blue latch.

The buttons allow control of all the camera functions except on off. Before you put the camera in the housing, you need to slide the clamshell cover from over the lens, which turns on the camera. The camera then fits snugly into the case, and the clasp closure puts a reassuring bit of pressure on the seal. Unfortunately, there is no way to turn the camera on and off once the camera is inside the case. To save power, I turned off the LCD display with one of the case buttons, and used the viewfinder for picture taking on-the-water. Canon recommends opening the case only in a place “of low humidity well away from salty sea air.” It might be a good idea to tape a (very) small desiccant packet inside the case. With the LCD on only intermittently, a fully-charged battery lasted for a day trip. By evening the low-battery warning flashed when I turned on the LCD. It’s too bad this top-of-the-line, waterproof-case-compatible digital has this limitation. Canon’s other cameras and Sony’s DSC P1, P3 and P5can be powered on and off by a button in their waterproof cases.

The case is about the size of a 35mm SLR film camera with a small lens and has enough buoyancy to float the camera. Its thickness makes it awkward to wedge inside your PFD and it’s too big for a PFD pocket, so a deck bag or day hatch would be good stowage options.

On a sunny day, I found the LCD hard to see, even with the display brightened. It’s easy enough to frame a picture, but not to see details. In overcast light this isn’t too much of a problem. I found I didn’t like relying on the optical viewfinder exclusively, though, even though it saves energy. The view is small and about a third of the wide angle view is blocked by the lens extension. Whether I used the LCD or the viewfinder, I found I wanted to check the replay to be sure I got the shot.

The housing really shined at the pool. The LCD screen was easy to see underwater. Recording little movies of roll practice was a snap. Toggle to replay-and hey-there’s my paddle digging too deep on an offside roll.

The case, with a $179 to $199 street price, comes with anti-fog liquid for the front glass and silicone grease for the door seal. The manual is full of warnings about handling that “may cause leaks.” Don’t expect Canon to warranty the camera if you screw up and trash the camera.

The waterproof case, aside from the camera’s lack of an on off button, is superb. The combination of the new compact submersible housings and new versatile digicams offer lots of possibilities especially for day trips, or weekends where battery life is not an issue. If you’re a point-and-shoot photographer, you’ll find the Canon S30 easy to use, but probably more camera than you’ll need. If you’re a dedicated SLR shooter looking for picture-taking control in a small package, the Canon S30 camera is probably the smallest camera in its class that gives you so many features. You won’t find any complications, and will be thrilled at the possibilities.

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The Straddle-X Rescue

As your paddling strokes are learned and your bracing skills are improved, the rescues you practice should include scenarios that take into account sea conditions that might cause an incident and the difficulties that could follow. Rescues often involve demanding conditions such as steep waves, fast current, strong wind, or cold water.

The capsized paddler, now a swimmer, is likely suffering stress, fatigue, cold, panic or injury. Problem solving and decision making are necessary during a rescue, and some prior diligent and thoughtful practice will increase the likelihood of an efficient and successful outcome.

The classic T-rescue attends to the kayak first and the swimmer second. We could characterize this rescue as two techniques: draining the cockpit by means of a bow tip-out, and returning the swimmer to the kayak with an assisted reentry.

This is a satisfactory sequence in good sea conditions but not always preferred in a dramatic rescue or in cold water. A paddler is psychologically and physically stressed by the adverse sea conditions leading up to a forced capsize, and when required to wet-exit his kayak, these stresses are amplified to a point that can greatly reduce his ability to quickly and reliably perform the necessary rescue. Sudden immersion in cold water adds an additional layer of stressors that will minimize the swimmer’s available strength and the time to complete the rescue.

In the common execution of a T-rescue, the swimmer is expected to remain immersed in the water and assist his rescuer in orienting the capsized kayak and tipping out the flooded cockpit. In rough wind waves or tidal current there is often quite a bit of noise, and communication can be difficult.

Effective communication is particularly difficult if the persons involved have not practiced together to a point where they understand the expectations and limitations of each other. During the beginning portions of this rescue, the swimmer remains in the water, continues to chill rapidly and experiences the accumulating psychological stress of being in need of help. The rescuer is also under a great deal of stress as his concern grows for the well-being of the swimmer. An effective rescue needs to consider the physical and psychological well-being of both the rescuer and the casualty.

If you are coming to the aid of a paddler swimming beside his kayak, one effective sequence is to get the paddler out of the water first, and then drain the flooded kayak second. If the swimmer is rescued first, before the kayak is tipped or pumped out, the debilitating effects of cold-water immersion are limited, and the mounting psychological stresses on both swimmer and rescuer are reduced or even reversed.

Consider a situation where the paddler has capsized, exited his kayak and remains in contact with his vacated kayak. Fortunately the swimmer’s paddling partner is close at hand. The rescue kayak approaches the swimmer and kayak and presents the bow of the rescue kayak to the swimmer. At the moment of contact, the swimmer has hold of both kayaks and within a few seconds the two kayaks are parallel.

The swimmer relinquishes control of the vacated kayak to the rescuer and keeps hold of the bow of the rescue kayak. As with any technique, some practice and mutual familiarity will go a very long way to making a smooth rescue. The rescuer must approach the swimmer with care and the swimmer must transfer his grip from the capsized kayak to the rescue kayak only when the rescuer has control of the capsized kayak. In practice it typically unfolds that the rescuer arrives on scene, grabs the capsized kayak and calls out to the swimmer to, “grab my bow and hop on!”

The first step is for the swimmer to get out of the water. Usually starting from a position opposite the capsized kayak, the swimmer pushes down on the rescuer’s bow and climbs onto it. In this technique the rescue bow goes down under the swimmer’s torso rather than a more common approach where the swimmer needs to move up onto the back deck of his own vacated kayak. With the swimmer pushing down on the rescuer’s bow, it is easily pushed closer to the surface of the water.

It is then less difficult for the weak or distressed swimmer to get up on the bow of the rescue kayak than the common alternative of getting up onto the back deck of the vacated kayak. If an elbow or shoulder is injured, the technique of mounting the rescue bow will also work with only one good arm. When the swimmer is on the bow of the kayak he can swing a leg over to come to a sitting position, straddling the foredeck and facing the rescuer, usually in a location just forward of the front hatch.

Securing the paddles from drifting away during a rescue is always a consideration. Each paddler can hold onto his own paddle but this can be cumbersome and can generally interfere with the rescue. Slipping one or both paddles under the rescuer’s deck bungees is only marginally more helpful because the paddles are likely to get in the way of pulling the flooded kayak onto the rescue deck.

My preference is to wear a PFD that includes a rescue belt with a pigtail and carabiner. The rescuer wraps the pigtail around both paddle shafts, closing the loop by clipping the carabiner back onto the pig-tail. Secured in this way the paddles can be dropped into the water to float safely and securely out of the way. Alternately, there are a variety of paddle tethers and leashes that can serve to secure the paddles from drifting away. Securing both paddles with a small paddle leash that is permanently attached to one of the paddle shafts is one option.

At this point in the rescue the swimmer’s head and torso are out of the water, greatly reducing their loss of body heat. Concurrently, the upright sitting posture suggests an improvement in the situation. The casualty is no longer a swimmer, and is now in close proximity to the rescuer; communication is vastly improved. With the rescuee’s legs hanging down into the water and with a hand on the capsized kayak, the two kayaks now form a stable raft.

Sitting up and straddling the rescuer’s bow, the rescuee can maneuver up the front deck to a position about three feet from the rescuer. All this time the rescuer has been leaning slightly with at least one hand on the vacated kayak and the stability is excellent.

In practice sessions, rescuees with the intent to be as awkward as possible have been unable to capsize the rescuer. At this point, the pair can secure paddles, pumps, launch flares, use a radio, or fetch spare paddles. The swimmer and rescuer could even remain in this position and wait for additional assistance. Emptying the flooded cockpit and returning the swimmer to his cockpit remains to be done.

The rescuer slides the vacant kayak along to take hold of its bow, where the shape and easier access to deck lines make righting the kayak easy. No effort is made to lift the kayak at this point, the rescuer is still leaning on it for support.

With the vacated kayak upright, its stern is swung away and out to 90 degrees and the bow hauled up onto the deck of the rescue kayak between the two paddlers; at this point the two kayaks form an X. I find hauling a kayak up this way is easier than the traditional cockpit-down method, even with a loaded kayak full of water. It is easier to grasp the bow, and easier to slide the smooth keel over the rescue kayak’s deck.

With four hands put to work, any additional weight of water in the cockpit is easily managed, and all the while stability is rock solid. All the hauling and emptying can be done by the rescuer without the help of the other paddler, but more hands make lighter work. The vacated kayak is rolled sideways to drain the water and then returned to a normal floating position beside the rescue kayak.

As the kayak is returned to a normal floating position parallel to the rescue kayak, the rescuer must resume a position leaning slightly with at least one hand on the vacated kayak—very easy and very important. The kayak should be returned to the water with a bow-to-stern orientation as this provides the easiest reentry access for the swimmer.

The swimmer can now reenter his kayak. It is imperative that while reentering the cockpit, the swimmer always keeps his weight on the rescue kayak. It’s just like entering a kayak from a dock, or the edge of a pool; keep your weight on the pooldeck until you are fully seated.

The rescue kayak is at the same level as the vacated kayak and is certainly not as immobile as a pool deck, but use the same “hands on the deck” approach to reentering the cockpit. Starting from a seated straddle position on the deck of the rescue kayak, the swimmer lifts his feet and rotates to a generally face-down posture with his hands on the rescue-deck and feet in their own cockpit. The hips are then turned to a sitting position, all the while at least one hand maintains weight and balance on the rescue deck. Practicing this the first time may be clumsy, but by the third repetition the technique is quick, reliable and very stable.

In a real-life capsize two paddlers are rarely so close together that the swimmer is advised to float about and passively wait for outside assistance. The swimmer should at least try to haul himself up onto the aft deck or overturned hull of his kayak and wait there as if sitting on a surfboard, torso out of the water, hand waving, whistling or radioing for help.

Once alerted to the incident, the paddling partner will approach the scene, often a few minutes later. With two kayaks rafted together, the swimmer can remain on top of the raft, swing one leg and then the other over the rescue kayak. Now sitting on the rescue kayak the rescuer can proceed to drain the capsized kayak and return the swimmer to his cockpit. The remainder of the rescue can be completed without the swimmer having to reenter the water.

Once the swimmer is recovered and is straddling the rescue deck, and after the cockpit has been emptied of water, the kayak is returned to the water in a bow-to-stern orientation. This orientation will give the swimmer the best access to reenter his cockpit.

Well-practiced paddlers can easily organize the best orientation for the kayaks and complete the rescue in a very short time. However, a rescue unfolding on a lee shore near waves breaking on rocks or other imminent hazard might require speed over convenience. Straddling the rear deck and reentering a flooded cockpit could be an alternative. Especially if the kayak is fitted with an electric bilge pump.

A different situation might have a third party tow the rafted swimmer and rescuer away from a hazard before the swimmer reenters his cockpit. These sorts of adaptations during an urgent rescue require skill and knowledge shared between the paddling partners.

The first step in an incident is usually something unexpected and unfamiliar. I have participated in assisted rescues involving loaded sea kayaks flipping end over end, paddlers with dislocated shoulders, lacerated hands, broken fingers, disabling leg cramps, overwhelming asthma, out-of-control panic attacks and steep waves that rolled both kayaks one over the other.

I have used the straddle-X rescue as my preferred technique in moderate sea conditions when rescuing swimmers that are tired or weak and have difficulty with a reentry that requires them to swim and climb up onto the back deck of their own kayak. If there is a rule for sea kayak rescues, it is that any technique that seems easy on a calm day will be very demanding during a desperate rescue, and good communication and previous practice are critically important to an efficient and successful outcome.

Rescue techniques that are expected to work in cold and rough water need to be practiced in a safe location that offers water cold enough and rough enough to challenge your skills. Practice with familiar paddling partners. On the day that an unanticipated rescue is needed, their familiar faces and well-practiced skills will be there to give you a hand.

The straddle-X rescue works effectively in a wide variety of circumstances and is probably my third choice. In sea conditions rough enough to cause me to capsize, my first choice is to roll.

Rolling is the simplest, easiest, fastest and most reliable way to recover from a capsize. If several attempts at rolling fail, I would exit the cockpit and start a solo-self rescue. My paddling partner may also be having difficulty and not be available to help me right away.

At the very least I would crawl up on my kayak to get out of the water. Try practicing rescue scenarios with one arm only, with eyes closed, or with one hand injured, and work to complete the rescue within a time limit.

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Halfway

Freya Hoffmeister has been working her way west across the top of Australia. Broome, in Western Australia, was also roughly the halfway mark of her 9,400 mile (15,000 kilometer) circumnavigation of Australia. There Freya took delivery of a new kayak. The original plan she had made with her kayak sponsor was to get a boat custom-built to her specifications, most notably a heavier, well-reinforced layup. The manufacturer had a dispute with a factory in China and their molds were “held hostage,” leaving them unable to build Freya’s kayak. The kayak with which she had done the first half of the circumnavigation was a stock model with some minor reinforce-ments added.

The longest of Freya’s crossings, the Gulf of Carpentaria, is behind her but she has continued her practice of open-water crossings between major points of land to avoid the bays and the saltwater crocodiles that inhabit them. Joseph Bonaparte Gulf was a 65-mile (105 kilometer) crossing that required her to paddle through the night and on into a second day.

On the 170th day of her expedition, near Cape Boileau, Freya was fighting wind and tide and came ashore for a break. She was within cell-phone coverage and we had a chance to catch up with her.

How was your crossing of Joseph Bonaparte Gulf?

It was very slow going and tides going in and out and headwinds. Nothing was helping. Not much fun.

Were you able to get some sleep?

I got my sleep. I was not in a hurry. I just wanted to reach the next island, Pelican Island, in daylight. I was napping quite frequently. Not with a proper sleep set up. I was just crunching forward. At one point I pulled out the outrigger for a half an hour but I got so much water in my face and got sick of that so I kept on paddling. Leaning forward and power napping was enough.

During one of our previous conversations you said one stretch of the coast made you feel like you were in a prison. What was that like?

Yes, it was just boredom. Since I’ve decided to travel fast it means I just paddle or sit in my tent. Nothing else. No exploring, no walking the beach. I’m not seeing much. There is a lot of interesting landscape and lots of beaches, but there’s no chance of walking around a bit with the schedule I’ve made for myself. Ten or twelve hours of paddling each day and then camping at night leaves no time for walking around, even just a bit up and down the beach. That went on for most of the Kimberley Islands. I’d paddle all day, from dawn to dusk. I rarely even took a half day off. I took a half day off at a pearl farm, and one other half day, but I never took a full day off. Even coming ashore an hour early before dusk was a treasured thing. I felt this not only on this stretch of coast but all along. I may be taking it slower now from Broome to Perth.

Was it lonely?

No. What’s lonely about it? I had lots of phone calls to lots of people. It’s a job. It’s a simple job. It’s not a pleasure expedition. Exploring is different. You want to explore the coastline and hug the shore, look at the beaches and see what’s behind the next rock. I took very little time for that. I’ve got a task to do and that’s to get around this island [Australia] as fast as possible. For sure I could do it slow. No problem, but that’s not what this is. Even at night when you might be hiking there are a lot of bugs and you don’t want to be out in the last light. Even when I’m cooking I’m hiding in the tent because the bugs are biting. It’s not much fun.

I wanted to get through the Kimberleys as fast as possible to get to Broome. I had a new kayak there and nice company as well. [In Broome, Freya’s partner, Greg Bethune, a fishing charter captain she met at Cape York, would meet her to make the switch to the new kayak.]

You’ve been moving into higher latitudes and cooler climates. Have you reached the end of crocodile and sea snake country?

Well, the crocodiles are gone now. There may be some deep in indented bays, but basically I’m done with them. I’m not going into the bays and there are not many mangroves any more. I’m very happy, I can now go for a swim at night. There are some lovely beaches and the water is crystal clear. It’s beautiful.

The crocs were only scary when I was afloat and they were afloat. On the land I wasn’t that scared by them. They don’t chase you. They’re too lazy. They can run very fast, but why should they? They’re just lazy. They’d rather hide and go into the water and swim away.

There was one fat one, but he was walking on land on the other side of a river. It was the biggest I’d ever seen. I don’t think there could be a croc any bigger. He was definitely giving me goose bumps. I really thought I should leave soon, but that one was not stalking me. He was just there. It was amazing to see such a huge one in the wilderness.

Are the sea snakes gone too?

The sea snakes were always there but I hadn’t seen any in the last days in the Kimberleys. I’m not worried about sea snakes. They’re nice to look at and they don’t jump in your boat. The water is getting cooler and the nights are pretty chilly already. It was freezing this morning at around four o’clock. It’s hot again now and I’ll be sleeping in the dunes.

It’s windy and I’ve had to hug the coast. It calms down when the tide turns. I had to turn into a bay today to hide a bit from the wind. I can’t paddle against wind and tide. I make progress but it’s quite tiring and a bit boring. The tides are running about one and a half kilometers per hour. It’s enough to annoy you. Today I was paddling around a headland. So far there have been steep beaches with dumping waves. It wouldn’t have been much fun to land on the point. But I got around the corner and the beaches are flat so the landing was easy and the dumpers are gone.

In Broome the beach is flat as well. The more south I go the flatter the beaches get. That means I’ll have to wheel the boat. I’m not sure I can wheel the boat over the tidal ground. Everyone has said I’d have to paddle with the tides., landing and launching with the high tide, whenever that is, day or night. We’ll see. I have my trolley with me now. I won’t know if’ I’ll be able to us it until I know what the ground is like. IF it’s muddy I can’t use it. If it’s sandy I can. I’d rather go from dawn to dusk rather than from tide to tide. That’s what my body tells me. So I may wheel the boat a bit. We’ll see. Eighty Mile Beach farther south it may be necessary to travel with the tide because I’ve heard you can’t wheel across the beach.

I had my trolley sent to Darwin but then sent it ahead again to Broome.

I got the latest issue of Sea Kayaker with the write-up of the [Gulf of Carpentaria] crossing. There was that letter to the editor with the question about my wearing a PFD. I noticed you wrote a long response. I don’t paddle with a PFD unless it gets rough. Then I put it on. With the heat and the chafing there’s no way I can always keep a PFD on.

And what for? It’s flat water. Th

e chances of capsizing are less than one percent and even if there is a capsize, it’s warm water and you go for a swim and get in [the kayak] again. I sometimes put the PFD on when I was landing and launching just in case I encountered a crocodile which might just jump on my back deck and might just bite my backside or something. It would be nice to have some padding on then. You never know. This was where the crocodiles had attacked some people so I thought I’d put the PFD on, even if it was easy water. Otherwise I slide it onto my back deck so it’s there when the water gets big. But when was the last time? I don’t remember. Only one section of the Kimberleys was big water.

I’m still making the same speed as Paul [Caffyn] with my full loaded boat at 80 to 100 kilos [176 to 220 pounds]. I estimate he took a maximum of 50 kilos [110 pounds] when he was self supported. He didn’t have any electronics and he was getting water in the creeks [at a time when the croc population was much smaller because of hunting] and he had all the food dumps in the Kimberleys. He’s a minimalist anyway, not taking any cosmetics I assume.

I’m carrying up to 100 kilos when my kayak is fully loaded. And I’m a tiny, small little 45-year-old lady and he was a strong, young 36-year-old man. And I’m paddling just as fast.

There was an incident when the Australian rescue service was looking for you on this leg of the trip.

No, they weren’t looking for me! This is what happened: There was a charter skipper in Darwin who was looking over the charts of the Kimberleys and telling me lots of interesting things and pointing out where I could pick up fresh water, including a fishing lodge.

He marked the lodge with a cross on my map but he made the cross on the wrong bay, the bay beyond the lodge. The night I was looking for the fishing lodge it was not there. Eventually it started to get dark and I gave him a call. I got him on the phone and asked him, “Where’s that fishing lodge?” It turned out that he’d made the mark on the wrong bay. He called the fishing lodge and asked if they could come out with a little motor boat the next morning to a point near the bay where I was camping out to give me water. It would be easy for them, but he couldn’t reach them.

He just got their answering machine. So put off the water delivery until the next morning when he could talk to someone at the lodge. So I was just waiting for him to make the call the following morning. I could have gone for other options. I still had four liters [one gallon] of water left. I could go two more days, even four more days if I had to. There was the option of meeting other boats. I knew of a pearl farm ship that would be anchoring ahead of me in two days time. I had lots of chances to refill water.

The skipper felt guilty that he’d marked the wrong bay. He got the idea on his own to call the AMSA [Australian Maritime Safety Authority] and get a call out, nothing serious, but if someone was around they might be able to help. But it seems the operator at AMSA took the call as a serious thing and put it out as a distress call. That wasn’t the skipper’s idea and certainly not mine to put out a distress call.

The guy who came eventually didn’t have any problems [coming to help me]. My contact in Melbourne also got involved, but it was never my idea, nor the skipper’s to make a distress call. The commercial boat that found me didn’t have a problem and thought it was funny. They were happy to help. I didn’t know what was going on at the time. There was just this boat pulling up at night. I didn’t know until late how it had all worked out.

When I press the button on my EPIRB, that’s when I want a rescue. That’s the only thing to do. Twice during the first weeks of the circumnavigation my support team was on the verge of calling for a rescue because of a lack of communication.

But some of my satellite messages come in quite delayed. Sometimes delayed by a day. I keep my EPIRB handy on my PFD or on my spray deck. When it’s on my spray deck I’m always wearing it. I’m very happy just with that. I don’t want anyone looking for me when I don’t need help. I feel very safe and it is very easy to press a button when I need a rescue. If I’m not able to press the button any more, I’m dead.

Your skin has healed up, how’s your weight? Have you lost all of the weight that you put on for the trip? 

Yeah, I was pretty fat at the beginning I must admit, but right now I’m at 73 kilos [160 pounds] or something. It’s nothing special but I feel I could have more in the front. The back is fine. That’s just how it is, that’s where women lose weight first. But I’ve definitely gained some muscles.

You’re not concerned about getting worn out? Your body can hold up for the second half?

Oh yeah, the body is no problem. My mind needs to hold up as well, but that’s not a problem either, because I want to do this. It’s quite tough right now because I had to leave Greg behind. On the one hand it’s really great that I met him, but on the other hand it’s harder.

If I hadn’t met him I would be by myself, supported only by the whole kayaking community on the internet. You can imagine how it feels since I met him at Cape York and want to be with him. It’s tough. We spent nine days together on his boat when I was having my break in Darwin, and another nine days in Broome where he helped me to get my new kayak ready. But we are in phone contact every day, sometimes three or four times. My sat-phone and cell-phone bill is quite high, but there’s a good chance he may be supporting me toward the end of the trip. Chances are good he may be supporting me toward the end of the trip.

You’re past the halfway point. Does that have any special significance to you?

No. Just keep on going until it’s done. I would love to be done I must admit, and doing something different. I will definitely finish.

OK, it was a long break on the beach. It was nice, but now I’ll keep on paddling.

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Lake Champlain: Troubled Water

Head down, into the wind, paddling north towards Missisquoi Bay in Lake Champlain, I yelled across the water to the woman in the gray kayak ahead and to my right.

“Hey, Martha! What was that you said about wanting to kayak on a big freshwater lake because you don’t like the way tidal areas smell? I’m not so sure freshwater lakes smell any better. We’ve been downwind of some big dairy for ages now!”

Martha laughed and yelled back, “I don’t know. The chart says that’s Hog Island Point. Maybe we’re downwind of a pig farm. Can you smell the difference between cows and pigs?”

Jim joked with us about honing our “odor identification” skills, learning to distinguish aromas wafting over the water, whether they were a combination of silage and cow manure or just plain cow manure.

This trip wasn’t turning out quite the way we had planned it. Martha had convinced me to try something new for us, an extended kayak trip on freshwater instead of our usual trips to the coast of Maine. I thought I’d miss the dynamics of tides and ocean currents, but Martha had reassured me that there would be no hauling of gear and boats across intertidal areas, and that the lake would be warmer than Maine’s frigid waters, perfect for swimming without ending up with a salty coating on our skin. It sounded good to me.

We’d heard that the Missisquoi Delta area was a lovely place with lots of migratory birds and the Paddlers’ Trail Guidebook made it sound like one of the wilder parts of the lake. We hoped to see lots of ducks and geese as well as herons.

What I hadn’t expected was to find Lake Champlain looking like the tide had gone out. The lake doesn’t have daily tides but its level fluctuates between 6 and 9 feet over the course of the year. It is highest in the spring after the snow melts and lowest in the fall as the waters slowly drain out the Richelieu River to the north. This year was one of the driest on record for Vermont, so the lake level in September was near record lows.

When we paddled up around the Delta headed to Highgate Cliffs on the eastern side of Missisquoi Bay we found out just how low the lake was. What looked from a distance like navigable water was only a thin layer of water over mudflats choked with weeds and algae. Frustrated by the heavy clumps of weeds that clung to my paddle blades as I pulled them out of the water, I eventually developed what we called the Missisquoi stroke. Instead of pulling the blade straight up and out of the water at the end of a stroke, I slid the blade towards me before lifting it. It was slow going, but it kept the weeds off the blade.

At some point, even a special stroke didn’t make up for lack of water under the boat so Martha and I got out and pulled our boats with the bowlines slung over our shoulders. Jim had swung wide and away from the Delta and managed to keep paddling. Looking down at the slime streaked on my legs, I hoped we could find a place to swim when we got to the cliffs.

The slime didn’t end with the Delta. When Martha and I resumed paddling, we stopped to talk with several fisherman sitting in a big power boat. Jim commented on all of the algae and one of them said, “Well, that’s what you get when you have 9,000 cottages dumping their gray water directly into the lake.”

Warm temperatures, shallow water, and far too many nutrients from the lakeside dairies and farms, as well as all the lakeshore cottages, meant that all of Missisquoi Bay for as far as the eye could see was coated with a half-inch layer of bright green algae.

Highgate Cliffs, when we reached them, were as lovely as we’d hoped they would be. The water was warm and still, but knowing what I did about the water, I wasn’t about to go swimming. Stepping out of the kayak and wading into a rocky beach near the base of the limestone cliffs, my lower legs looked like the rocks along the water’s edge-coated with a layer of green algae. I wiped down my legs with my bailing sponge, and decided to look for a shady place to lounge in my camp chair.

Amid the rocks on the beach, I saw a big frog that was the same color as the lake algae. It stood still long enough for me to get a good look at its bright green spots and a chance to count its legs. I don’t normally count legs when I see a frog, but I’d read in the Paddlers’ Trail Guidebook and some other places about how the shores of Lake Champlain had an unusually high percentage of deformities in frogs and other amphibians. Scientists haven’t figured out why, but pollution in the lake is one possibility. After we stared at each other for a while, the frog hopped into the shade of the shoreline shrubs. It had the appropriate number of legs.

Algae blooms, thick weed growth, frogs with extra legs-even though I’d read about these things, I’d rarely come face to face with such strong evidence of serious environmental problems on a paddling trip. I was disturbed to see such a lovely place showing signs of ecological distress.

Concern about water quality issues and invasive plants and animals in Lake Champlain may be new to me, but it has been a concern for New York and Vermont for most of the last century. Both states have built facilities to treat the wastewater and runoff that flows into the lake water. Lake Champlain has three major types of water pollution-excessive levels of phosphorus, localized bacteria, and heavy metals and other toxic chemicals.

PHOSPHORUS

Phosphorus is a naturally occurring nutrient that is necessary for plant growth. It’s a major ingredient in many lawn and garden fertilizers. Phosphorus becomes a problem when excessive amounts of it end up in a body of water. High levels lead to increased plant growth and algae blooms like what we paddled through in Missisquoi Bay.

Besides being unsightly and hard to paddle through, algae blooms deplete the oxygen in the water, which hurts native fish species. Algae blooms in Lake Champlain can become toxic. In 1999, three dogs died after drinking an excess of lake water and ingesting toxic blue-green algae. On August 3, 2001, a temporary health advisory was issued in Vermont, warning people to keep children and pets out of the lake.

The three main sources of phosphorus are agricultural runoff, stormwater runoff, and wastewater and sewage discharges. Stormwater runoff occurs when rain or melting snow flowing over roads, parking lots, lawns, and rooftops flows into streams and rivers that feed into the lake. With increased urban and suburban growth around the lake, stormwater runoff is becoming a greater problem for the lake.

Although agricultural runoff is still the major source of phosphorus pollution in the lake, acre for acre, developed land contributes three to six times as much phosphorus as farmland does. Wastewater flowing through inadequate or overburdened sewage treatment facilities in the Lake Champlain watershed also contributes to the pollution of the lake, both as a source of phosphorus and bacteria, but recent improvements in wastewater treatment have improved the situation.

And then there are the cows. Vermont is famous for its dairy products and a lot of them come from the Champlain valley. All those cows produce a lot of phosphorus-rich manure. When it rains or the snow melts, nutrients leached from the manure run downstream to the lake. One source of phosphorus pollution-the spreading of cow manure on frozen fields in the winter-has been banned in Vermont, but still continues on the New York side of the lake.

BACTERIA

Increased levels of bacteria in the lake, such as E. Coli, have caused sporadic closures of some swimming beaches. Two beaches, Blanchard Beach in Burlington, Vermont and Essex Beach, New York, have been closed for swimming indefinitely due to elevated bacteria levels. A cleanup operation is in the works at Blanchard Beach. Sources of the bacteria include what are called “point sources”-specific places such as sewage treatment plants-as well as “non-point sources”-such as dog waste.

HEAVY METALS AND TOXIC CHEMICALS

Heavy metals, such as mercury, and toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are a major factor in the water quality of the lake. High levels of mercury and PCBs have concentrated in the lake’s fish, especially the larger fish such as walleye and lake trout.

Both Vermont and New York have issued health advisories cautioning people to limit their consumption of fish caught in Lake Champlain. The New York State Board of Health advises that women of childbearing age and children under 15 should not eat any fish from Lake Champlain. One area of Lake Champlain, Cumberland Bay near Plattsburgh, New York, was the most significant known toxic waste site in the lake, and thought to be the primary source of PCB contamination in the lake’s fish.

Years of wastewater discharge and dumping of sludge by wood products industries near Plattsburgh were the source of Cumberland Bay’s PCB contamination. In 1999 and 2000, an extensive dredging project, costing over $30 million, removed approximately 140,000 tons of dewatered PCB-contaminated paper sludge from Cumberland Bay and took the sludge to approved disposal facilities. The concentration of PCBs was reduced to below hazardous levels and local residents are looking forward to enjoying their beach for the first time in half a century.

INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES

Invasive plant and animal species, including zebra mussels, Eurasian watermilfoil, and water chestnuts, pose another threat to the health of Lake Champlain. Most of the weeds I was trying to keep off of my paddle with a special stroke in Missisquoi Bay were Eurasian watermilfoil. A feathery, fern-like plant that grows on the bottom in shallow areas, its dense mats are more than just a nuisance for kayakers.

It also displaces native plants and provides little food value to wildlife. Eurasian watermilfoil first appeared in Lake Champlain in 1962 and has since spread to many of the shallow areas and bays of the lake, as well as other bodies of water in the Lake Champlain watershed. Because it can grow from stem fragments, it is easily spread between bodies of water by plant parts stuck on boats and boat trailers. (See “Marine Invaders,” SK Dec. ’01.)

On an island in the main body of the lake, I saw rocks covered with clumps of small, striped mussels. Zebra mussels came to Lake Champlain in 1993, likely spread as free-floating larvae in boat ballast and bait water or as adults stuck to boats. In less than ten years, they have become one of the lake’s most problematic invasive species, spreading through the lake and causing many economic and environmental problems.

Zebra mussels are the only type of freshwater mollusk that attaches itself to solid objects. Because they can live in a wide range of habitats, eat everything, and reproduce rapidly and prolifically, they are quickly outcompeting native mollusks. It’s not just other mollusks that feel the impact of zebra mussels. Water facilities, fish hatcheries, and industrial plants have spent over $5 million to keep zebra mussels from clogging intake pipes. By feeding from the water column, zebra mussels move phosphorus from the water to the sediment in the form of their waste product.

During my trips on the more northern areas of the lake, I didn’t see any water chestnuts. Currently, this non-native plant is found only in the southern parts of the lake where in some places it is so dense as to make boat traffic almost impossible.

Now there is concern that it may spread to the Missisquoi Bay area. Water chestnuts have been found in Quebec’s South River, just two miles from Missisquoi Bay. Water chestnuts are spread by a barbed seed casing that can stick to the undersides of animals as well as boat parts. Purple loosestrife (a wetland plant) and sea lamprey (a parasitic fish) are also problems in the lake.

So, What’s a Kayaker to Do?

Given the algae blooms, weed-clogged bays, and toxic chemicals found in parts of the lake, should kayakers avoid Lake Champlain? Will I? Each paddler makes his or her own decisions about what conditions they want to encounter on a kayak trip.

I know that I’ll go back. There are many lovely parts of the lake I look forward to exploring. I have a better understanding of the condition of the lake and the threats to it. I also feel a greater sense of responsibility to do my part to try to help Lake Champlain recover from its environmental woes.
Here’s what kayakers can do, not only for Lake Champlain, but for waterways everywhere.

Help reduce nonpoint source pollution.

1. Become an active member of a local or regional watershed group.

2. Use conservation practices on agricultural lands.

3. Plant trees and vegetation to help hold soil in place and reduce erosion, particularly in areas next to surface water.

4. Properly maintain your septic system; pump every few years.

5. Wash your car with non-phosphorus and biodegradable soap on your lawn rather than on your driveway so that excess water and detergents can soak into the grass.

6. Do not use unnecessary fertilizers; first, have your soil tested.

7. Do not disturb ground cover unless absolutely necessary.

8. Do not rake your yard waste into nearby streams, lakes or stormwater gutters.

9. Do not pour chemicals or motor oil down storm drains or into septic systems.

10. Do not use soaps or detergents that contain phosphorus.

11. Properly dispose of dog waste, preferably in a toilet.

Don’t contribute to the spread of invasive plants and animals.

1. Learn what invasive species are in the waters in which you paddle, how to identify them, and how to keep them from spreading between bodies of water. Each time a kayak or other item is used in water bodies infested by zebra mussels or other nuisance aquatic species, the kayak and equipment should be carefully inspected for evidence of these species. Remove any mussels or vegetation and dispose of them in the trash.

2. Drain all water from your kayak at the water’s edge before you load it on your car and head home.

3. Dry the kayak (and paddling gear such as wetsuits and PFDs) in the sun for at least five days after paddling in waters containing zebra mussels and before paddling in waters uncontaminated by zebra mussels. If you want to use your boat sooner or avoid excessive UV exposure to your gear, rinse off your kayak and gear with hot water or at a car wash.

4. Leave live aquatic bait and bait used in infested waters behind-either give it to someone using the same water body, or discard it in the trash.

5. When paddling in areas infested with Eurasian watermilfoil, be careful not to break apart the plant because milfoil spreads by plant fragments.

Leave No Trace

1. Practice impeccable Leave No Trace camping and outdoor travel skills.

2. Learn about the particular skills appropriate for Lake Champlain by reading information in the Lake Champlain Paddlers’ Trail Guidebook, or for general Leave No Trace information, visit the Leave No Trace Web site at www.lnt.org

Support the efforts of groups working on behalf of Lake Champlain.

1. Join the Lake Champlain Committee (sponsors of the Lake Champlain Paddlers’ Trail). Kayakers’ membership in the Lake Champlain Committee supports the continuing development of the Paddlers’ Trail as well as supports their advocacy, education and research work to protect Lake Champlain. Along with many other advocacy projects, the Lake Champlain Committee was instrumental in advocating for and monitoring the clean-up of PCBs from Cumberland Bay. An annual membership fee of $40 includes the annually published Lake Champlain Paddlers’ Trail Guidebook and Stewardship Manual.

2. Learn more about “Opportunities for Action: An Evolving Plan for the Lake Champlain Basin.” This plan is a pollution prevention, control, and restoration plan. The plan was endorsed in October, 1996 by the governors of New York and Vermont and the regional administrators of the US Environmental Protection Agency. The 1996 plan called for periodic updates, and 2001 marks the first revision of the plan. In October 2001, the Lake Champlain Basin Program released a draft of the update to the plan for public comment and review. Although the official public comment period is over, the program welcomes comments at any time. Visit the program’s Web site at www.lcbp.org to get more information about the Opportunities for Action plan.

3. Get Involved in programs to monitor and combat pollution and invasive species. Kayakers are an important source of information about the condition of Lake Champlain. The Lake Champlain Paddlers’ Trail Guidebook contains a Lake Health Observation Form that kayakers can use to record information about the sections of the lake in which they are traveling. The form contains sections related to Water Quality Conditions, Algae Blooms, Infestations of Aquatic Plants, and Stormwater and Wastewater Outfalls and Discharges. Complete the form and send it in to the Lake Champlain Committee anytime you paddle on the lake.

4. Become familiar with storm drain stenciling. Storm drain stenciling is an effective method to educate people about where water goes when it flows down their street and into the drains. Check out the Earthwater Stencils Web site (below) for information about how to get involved in storm drain stenciling.

5. Contribute to public awareness. Along with talking with other paddlers and friends, consider posting some of the humorous Urban Runoff Posters in places such as workplaces, schools, marinas, and outdoor stores. They are funny and effective educational tools. The Lake Champlain Basin Program has created a set of posters specific to the Lake Champlain Basin which are available on their Web site. The poster series was adapted from ones that were developed by the Washington State Department of Ecology and others. For information on how to get posters for use in other areas, check out the Earthwater Stencils’ Web site.

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Saddling Up – New Accessories for Kayak Racks

When we all ascend to the Valhalla of sea kayakers, we will find ourselves in a land of endless fjords, with seafront homes on protected coves scattered about for the choosing. There will be no cars (well, perhaps a few Porsche Carerras, for those who so wish), and no need ever to expose our boats to the brutalities of a road system.

I have a few lucky friends who live this way right here in their mortal lives, except for the Porsches. But for the rest of us, particularly those, like me, who reside in states where “tide” refers only to laundry detergent, launching a sea kayak invariably involves an intermediary trip in a car or truck.

Road time is the most dangerous time in the life of a kayak. I personally know of more boats damaged or destroyed while being transported than were harmed by surf landings or collisions with various forms of marine substrate.

Despite such statistics, I’m sometimes astonished at those who will blithely drop the better part of three grand on a Kevlar kayak, then quibble over less than ten percent of that to transport it safely. Your kayak deserves the best rack and saddles you can afford.

If you really blew your entire budget on the boat and those 20-ounce paddles, it’s possible, with a bit of work, to make your own racks and saddles—but that’s another story. For now, we’re concerned with the latest developments in commercial saddle systems.

For several years, while leading sea kayak trips to remote areas in Mexico, I regularly carried six to eight boats at a time for hundreds of miles on interstates, rough pavement, dirt roads and tortuous four-wheel-drive tracks. I learned a lot about what it takes to transport a kayak not only safely, but with little danger of even cosmetic damage.

First, you don’t need a lot of padding. It’s tempting to try to provide the cushiest ride possible for your boat, but overly soft foam creates more problems than it solves, because it will continue to compress after you snug everything down and hit the road. The result is loose straps and chafing as the boat moves around. A boat that is locked down on a well-fitting cradle needs only a bare minimum of padding to absorb vibrations and shock.

Second, plastic is great stuff. I was highly suspicious of the first composite rack systems; aluminum and oak were my preferred materials. But countless horrifying incidents involving boats secured on commercial racks and encounters with gale-force crosswinds, Land Cruiser-sized potholes and world-class washboard roads have convinced me of the astounding safety factor built into fiber-reinforced nylon and similar materials.

Durability doesn’t seem to suffer either—some of my first plastic saddles have years and years of use on them, with little sign of fatigue. The one thing I’m still cautious of is UV exposure. As far as I know, the plastic hasn’t yet been developed that is immune to degradation from sunlight. So eschew the poseur thing and take off your racks between trips.

Other than that, I’ve pretty much stopped sighing when a maker substitutes plastic for a previously metal part, and look forward to seeing what can be done in the future. Here’s a sampling of what’s being done right now.

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The Great Gulf: Freya’s Australian Odyssey

From the beginning of her circumnavigation of Australia in January of this year, Freya Hoffmeister has been contemplating the 350-mile (575 kilometer) crossing of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Paul Caffyn, in his circumnavigation of Australia, took the alongshore route, an option that not only adds to the distance, but also increases the risk of encounters with salties, saltwater crocodiles. At the time of Caffyn’s circumnavigation in 1981, salties had just recently been protected from hunting and the population was at relatively low levels. In the intervening years the salty population has grown such that the risk of padding the Carpentaria coast could be deemed a greater than the risk of the direct crossing.

Eric Stiller and Tony Brown had crossed the gulf in 1992 in a sail-rigged folding double kayak, spending five nights asea. In 2002 the late Andrew McAuley made the crossing solo in six and a half days.

Freya prepared for nights aboard her kayak by carrying four paddle floats and a pair of inflatable sponsons meant to be secured by Velcro either side of the cockpit.

Freya began the crossing at the mouth of the Jackson River on the west coast of the York Peninsula on Friday, April 24th and landed in Nuhlunbuy on the evening of May 1st. During the crossing she kept in touch with satellite phone calls and messages and satellite messenger service positions. I spoke to her via Skype the day after she completed her crossing.

Did the crossing of the Gulf of Carpentaria go as you expected?

Nobody could really tell me about the conditions for the crossing. A guy I met the day before I started got the most recognized weatherman for the Gulf area on the phone. I asked him about the conditions in the middle of the Gulf and even he couldn’t tell me. He said “no breaking waves,” so I was definitely underestimating the conditions. The conditions weren’t so bad that I couldn’t paddle them. I’d done similar paddling lots of times in the past, but on that long distance sleep was an additional challenge. I was thinking it might be quite calm at night, and I wasn’t expecting big water even during the days. It was definitely big, as big as it was on the east coast of Australia. I could handle it easily but I had to listen carefully to my body to know if I was getting enough sleep or not. I didn’t push hard at night because I definitely didn’t want to take any risks with getting dizzy from sleep deprivation. There are issues…not hallucinating, but you hear the sounds very loud. It’s not the first time I’ve had too little sleep while kayaking, so I could trust my intuition about when I needed to rest, when not. If it had been calm at night I might have paddled a bit longer and then a bit earlier in the morning, but after the first two nights it was not calm at all. So I didn’t paddle at night. There was no way to push for more distance than I did.

That last night I was falling asleep early, just as it was getting dark. I woke at midnight knowing I had 90 kilometers to go, too far to go for one day. That’s why I estimated I would arrive on Saturday. Then I noticed I got a nice drift. At midnight I had gained five kilometers already. I thought, “Maybe you can paddle a bit.” I put everything away and paddled five kilometers in the darkness. I didn’t feel comfortable enough so I put everything up again for sleeping. I fell into a good deep sleep up until five o’clock. I checked the GPS and saw I had another good five kilometers of drift. With the drift and the night paddling I had made 15 K, leaving 75 K to go. I could just make 70 K in daylight hours so I thought if I start paddling right now and do another hour in the dark, I’d just make it to my landing at the last light. That’s ultimately what happened.

The drift with the tide goes both ways; you have to take what you get. For a few hours you gain a lot of distance and then for a few hours you’re not going forward much. So it was between a ridiculous four kilometers per hour, about two knots, the slowest pace I had paddling against the tide, and the maximum, a good average was seven or eight kilometers per hour.

There was quite a bit of tidal action going and the wind waves were growing into a huge swell, two to three meters, at some point breaking. It was not always that much. I knew it would come down when the tide changed. For example, the last paddling day I was really happy about paddling in this bloody good condition: Imagine a heavy downpour of rain, three meter swell with breaking stuff, out there by yourself. It was just an amazing feeling, still paddling in those conditions. I didn’t feel scared at all.

I almost capsized once when I was brushing my teeth while I had my paddle lying across the front deck. That would have been embarrassing, capsizing while bushing my teeth. It was a nasty breaker falling on the deck. I literally had to brace into the wave with just my hands. That worked eventually but it scared me a bit.
Everything else was just bloody good paddling. The last day I was still in good condition after getting that good sleep. It’s all about sleep. If you can put in enough sleep you can keep on going. It’s just another paddling day on the water.

How well did your skin survive the crossing?

I’ve got some tiny sores on the backs of my hands and on my elbows. The worst thing was the hands. I couldn’t reach into any bags on the boat without saying “Ow!” Any time I wanted to get something, it hurt like hell. I kept my neoprene socks on all day and night and this seemed like the best thing, but I developed an open wound on the right foot and another on the left. They’re not that bad actually, but they’ll take a few days to heal. I’m so glad I didn’t have any sores on my bottom or back. That was due to the gel seat pads. I had one folded over the backrest.

I saw a picture of you after you landed and I could see the spots on your hands.

There was a guy taking pictures of me in my worst shape. I was actually avoiding cameras when I came ashore.

Charles Rue [of Nhulunbuy] paddled out on a surf ski to meet me. I couldn’t believe it—crocodile infested waters with a surf ski. He was a strong, tough guy obviously and his wife was lovely and nice and drove me to the hotel and brought me some food. I didn’t really want to sit at a table with other people that night.

You had some heavy rain on the crossing.

It was beautiful actually. I’ve never had such a huge rainstorm while I was on the water. The last two days it was raining all day. It didn’t do my hands much good. Sweetwater [fresh water] soaks the hands even more than salt water. Yesterday, the last day, I don’t remember even seeing the sun. Half of the day it was raining like hell. It didn’t bother me at all. It was not that cold. I just put on a second layer of fleece.

The second-to-last night there was a bit of rain. I put on my overcag [a large jacket that attaches to the cockpit coaming] and lay down on my back on the aft deck. I pulled the hood down as much as I could, down to my nose, but I was getting a painful impact of rain on my cracked lips (I got a sunburn at Cape York).

The sleeping arrangements were perfect. I loved them. I put one paddle across the aft deck with paddlefloats on the end. That was all I needed for stabilization. It was easy to set up with the paddle strapped tightly over a little bit of foam. The only problem I had was that the floats were underneath the paddle blades and the paddle shaft would turn so that the floats were up off the water. I’d have to turn the floats down again. If I had an outrigger that was flat rather than round I wouldn’t have this problem. It was a bit annoying, but eventually I got to turning the floats even while I was half asleep, maybe even fully asleep. Resting my arms on the floats was convenient at night and kind of comfortable as well. It gave me good contact so I could feel the flex of the paddle and the movement of the water. Lying on the deck like that spreading my arms out over the floats, I was feeling a bit like Jesus on the cross.

Only one night, the last night, when it was really really blowing like hell, I put out a sea anchor. I was actually using one of my large gear bags as a sea anchor. The original sea anchor I had was too small. I was definitely scared wondering if the paddle was going to break or the sea anchor was going to rip the handle off the bow. With the lightweight layup of the kayak, for sure you are scared by this kind of thing. I didn’t use a sea anchor at all the other nights because I was drifting in the right direction, but that one night I really needed it because I was drifting 90degrees off my course.

The flex of the paddle that night was pretty big. I had my hands on the floats all the time just so I could feel what was going on. It was probably not the best choice to use my main paddle as the outrigger but it held up nicely. I just had to trust it. Having it set up on the back deck was definitely the best spot for it, rather than on the rounded front deck. I was kind of scared and didn’t get any sleep at all, but from four in the morning to seven I fell into a deep sleep.

I was paddling every day in Lycra shorts and a long-sleeved fleece shirt. I had a short-sleeve as well, and I would pull that on over the long-sleeve at night. I would have been happy to have a hooded fleece shirt, but it was good enough to put on the overcag. It was almost perfect for lying on the back deck. It prevented the wind and the waves from getting to me or into the cockpit. I put on long neoprene pants and neoprene socks. I would have appreciated a pair of neoprene gloves because the windchill was really cooling my hands. I had to stuff my hands in the kangaroo pocket of the overcag or put my hands in my armpits or inside of the overcag by pulling my arms through the sleeves.

Eventually my elbows developed sore spots from lying in the cockpit all the time. I turned from side to side sometimes, but I needed to keep my legs inside the cockpit for warmth. It was nice and cozy in there.

When the floats were not lying flat on the water, which happened quite frequently, the rocking back and forth was really moving my body. So eventually I was hooking my legs in the cockpit very tight and I didn’t move my body inside the cockpit too much. I had my PFD on the back deck. On top of that I folded my Thermarest. This was very nice padding and very comfortable. I had a gear bag as a pillow and that was it.

Were you getting gear out from the hatches?

Just the day hatch. I stuffed everything I needed there. On the second night I opened the front hatch to get a lightweight windbreaker. It was stable enough with the outriggers set up to crawl up on the bow, but I needed quiet water for that. There was no chance of opening the back hatch because if I were sitting on the aft deck it would have submerged. But I had thought about that before and knew I might only be able to get to the front hatch without getting water in it. The day hatch was no problem. I would open it very carefully and get whatever I needed. Sliding my hand into it though hurt like hell. I couldn’t reach in anything without crying. Ten tiny, tiny spots on the back of the hand. Well, what’s that worth? It doesn’t matter. 

Did you eat well?

I ate what I was eating all of the other days that I’d gone without cooking. Everything fit in the cockpit and day hatch including food and water. I had a big bag behind my seat and, I had my drinking bag and two small bags up front of the footrests. The rest was in the day hatch. I ate precooked Uncle Ben’s rice in bags. I mixed them with some tuna and marinade. But at the end I was so sick of everything. Some things got soaked when packages ripped open, and the zip sealed bags were not 100 percent dry. I should have taken more different, more yummy food. I bought a big bag of apples in Seisa but they were inedible, completely tasteless. I threw them away on the first night that I was paddling down along the coast of the Gulf. I was lucky to get some apples later from a boat just before I started the crossing. I should have had more fresh stuff and more candies for nibbling, something to make me feel good, but I didn’t suffer. The last day I didn’t eat very much at all because I just wasn’t interested in the food I had left.

I had enough food and plenty of water. I had six liters of water left at the end. I needed about two and a half liters every day. I could have stayed out another two days, maybe three if I had to, whatever. Water wasn’t an issue at all.

It seems that you made quite a number of calls on your satellite phone.

Yes, I used up quite a few minutes on my prepaid SIM card. It was definitely well worth it. It was nice to have a bit of communication on the water. I was calling you and David Winkworth and my mom and my son. It was nice having the satellite phone working and handy, no doubt about that.

Did you see any sea snakes or sharks?

There were plenty of sea snakes. Every day I saw three to five snakes floating around. There were no sharks, just sea snakes and lots of flying fish and other fish jumping en masse. Nothing else. I was a bit afraid of sea snakes at night. While I was paddling I wondered what would happen if I flipped one up? Three nights I paddled a bit, mostly on the last night. The sea snakes were there, big ones, small ones but they’re not scary and they won’t jump up on your boat. You just don’t want to touch them and don’t want them to come up to your boat at night when your hands are resting on the paddle-float outriggers. You can come up to them and take a picture. There was one big fat snake that had obviously just swallowed a big fish. It looked quite funny, all swelled up and deformed.

No jellyfish?

There were huge, fat and massive jellyfish at the river mouth at Jackson River. I’d never seen so many football-sized jellyfish. Many were even bigger, 40 to 50 centimeters in diameter. They were really ugly. I was told that they sting. But they were just a river thing.

How long will you stay in Nhulunbuy?

I have to give my sores time to heal. Three days minimum, probably five days. I also have to get a lot of things done, all my writing, all my preparations for the next leg of the trip. That next leg will be tough because of the crocs. I might not see any. I was kind of disappointed [at Cape York]. I had envisioned lots of crocs on the beaches, but nothing! When I was paddling in Florida there were alligators lining the riverbanks, one every 100 meters or so. This is what I had expected in Australia, but nothing, simply nothing! All around the Cape and all the way down to Seisa not a single bloody croc. Not even tracks. A guy on the beach said they come up on the sand three times a day, but when I was there, not a one. Even here in Nhulunbuy they have a surf club and surf ski paddlers, but the risk of hitting a crocodile is so low that they can go paddling. It eases my mind, but ironically the reason for crossing the Gulf was to avoid the crocs, but there are just not that many. Maybe I’m just a lucky girl. I definitely am, and I know that. If I had known that there were so few crocs I think I still would have done the crossing, just to do something different and to make it just a bit harder.

One of the gel seat pads had another use. Do you want to hear about that? When I was doing the number two in the morning, I did that on that pad and then just lifted it up and overboard and washed it off. It was an easy job, just get your legs out of the cockpit, pull your pants down and straddle the whole cockpit. It was not an issue at all. I was balancing pretty well and could do that even without the outrigger. People are probably interested in how I was doing that and I don’t mind talking freely about it. It’s just human.

Peeing into the boat all day was not a problem issue. You don’t want to interrupt your paddling and open the spray deck to pee. Just let it go and eventually use a sponge and rinse the cockpit out. It’s not really an attractive smell and the hygiene is not really nice, but my skin wasn’t affected at all. It might have even been good for my skin.

When I was a gymnast and we got blisters it was said that we should pee on them to heal them. It can’t be that bad. You have all this water in the cockpit anyway so it’s not too concentrated. In the morning I would pull my pants off and wash them in the salt water.

We’ll see what you have to type down from my continuous chatter. I’ve been thinking about that guy who’s living alone on Restoration Island. He doesn’t have that many people to talk to and he just would chat and chat and chat. Now I know why.

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An Interview with Freya’s Sister

Edda Stentiford, Freya’s sister, left Germany at 17 and now lives with her husband and two children in Caversham, a town 35 miles west of London. I spoke to her prior to Freya’s Carpentaria crossing.

How many years are there between you and Freya?

Two and a bit. Two and three quarters, so call it three. We grew up in Kiel, and that’s on the Baltic coast in northern Germany.

How did you and Freya get along as kids?

Oh, it was always as all sisters do. Sometimes we got on very well and other times we’d bash the living daylights out of each other. Quite frankly I was the one who got the shorter end of the stick. She might have been three years younger but she was always three years stronger. She could easily flatten me without trying too hard. 

How old was Freya when she started getting that physical strength?

When she was six she was strong enough to knock me over, but I threw jellyfish at her on the beach, which set her running away. Mind you, they were just jelly, no stings attached.

She has always been very physical right from the start when my mother, Anne-Marie, took us to mother-and-toddler gymnastics, then into sports clubs. At one time Freya was the North Germany champion in gymnastics. I think she was only about ten. Our parents always tried to facilitate whatever it was we were trying to do unless it was total mischief.

She was born a big baby. I think she was over ten pounds when she was born and she stayed a big baby ever since. Yes, she certainly brought tears to my mother’s face. Joking aside, she was always strong, you know, not big as in fat. She was very quickly the same height as me. From all the gymnastics she did from an early age, she was physically very strong very early. I was never a weakling, but she always gave me the bigger thrashing than I gave her. On the other hand there were times when we were best of friends, like when I’d eat her egg yolk and she’d eat my egg white. As long as we did it quietly and our parents’ eyes were turned.

Was she also strong-willed?

I think “stubborn” is the word she’d been invented for or the other way around, I’m not quite sure which way you want to turn it. Once she’d set her mind on something she was going to go for it and she would go for it, all out, with no holds barred. It was just the whole attitude, you know. If hard work needed to get done, she would just knuckle down and get it done. She always got the rubbish out of the way and then had fun afterwards. I tried to do it the other way round most of the time.

Did that attitude make her a good student in school?

Oh, yes. She actually jumped a grade. She was always very curious. Our mother was a primary school teacher. She was prepping me a bit to get ready for school and Freya was already listening in and then watching me do my homework, to such an extent that when she got into school she could already read and write. When they saw that they said she might as well go straight up a year. It’s not that she was deliberately setting out to achieve things, it was more or less a byproduct of being naturally curious. She absorbed the reading, writing and arithmetic in passing, just by watching. 

What role did your parents play in shaping her character?

Our father was a keen hunter and outdoorsman. A true forestman who made sure the animals had feed in the winter and actually watched the animals to make sure they were healthy. Green ecology as we now would call it, but then it was just straightforward common sense. It was very important to him for us to like the forest. We could run wild, nobody knew where we were for hours on end and it was perfectly safe. He would have liked to have a boy he could pass all these things on to. Things didn’t work out that way and Freya was the one who was more interested in this sort of thing. And she really wanted to please our father, so things really came together there. 

Were you parents involved when Freya was doing bodybuilding and beauty pageants?

Not really. That pretty much came off her own bat. I think my parents looked at that with tolerance rather than anything else: “If that’s what you want to do, my dear, then go ahead. We’re not stopping you.” It was something she wanted to do, basically for a lark. She thought it might be a hoot. Then bless her cotton socks she goes and wins it.

She does like to be the best, and who doesn’t. But it’s not for the sake of image, if you can see what I mean. It’s to satisfy her own self. She always climbed the highest mountain or the highest tree depending what age we were. She’s got the focus and the determination to do as well as she can do.

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Messing About in Boats: Blade Finesse

Whether you’re looking to improve your precision maneuvering in rock gardens and tide rips, trying to achieve more finesse in your roll, or simply hoping to feel more relaxed, graceful and efficient in your kayak, the following exercises, modified from whitewater slalom racers’ warm up routines, will help.

These stroke-blending and blade-finesse drills help build the skills for you to make your kayak dance on the water, either purely for the fun of dancing, or, more practically, to dance your kayak quickly on over to a paddling partner in need of assistance. They also loosen up muscles and minds for learning and having fun.

You should have some proficiency with basic paddle strokes. I’ll include a few fine-tuning tips for newer paddlers but also throw in some twists in each technique to challenge more advanced kayakers.Later, we’ll put it all together in a series of easy to challenging stroke-blending exercises designed to commit the new skills to muscle memory.

Focus on Form

To get the most out of your paddle, it’s important to refine the precision with which you use it. The idea is that if you focus on good form, effective function will follow. Do the drills in slow motion at first as a warm-up, concentrating more on loosening up your muscles and building good “muscle memory” than on how much your boat actually turns.

Rushing through these techniques can lead to poor blade placement; sloppy strokes will be less effective when you put them to use at speed. By concentrating on precision they’ll soon become second nature.

Spin Turns: A great warm-up drill for loosening up the all-important torso muscles is to spin your kayak in place by alternating forward and backward sweeps. Sweeps are the basic turning strokes. They’re used to initiate most of the maneuvers and fancy stroke blends described later.

Many paddlers rush their sweeps, merely pulling harder on one side, too close to the boat, in just a slightly modified forward stroke. Turning your boat effectively requires leverage.

Extend your paddle and sweep it in a wide arc from your front hatch, out as far to the side as you can, and then reach it all the way back toward your stern as far as possible, following the blade with your eyes until it actually clunks into your kayak by the rear hatch.

Practice this “clunk-clunk” drill, tapping your kayak fore and aft with each sweep to assure a full range of motion.  For a backward sweep, reverse the process.

Alternating forward sweeps on one side and backward sweeps on the other, spin 360 degrees in one direction, then back in the other direction. Start in slow motion, less than one-quarter speed, and focus on wide, bow-to-stern arcs with your blade fully submerged.

Then repeat these spins in each direction at half speed, making sure to anchor the blade firmly and pull gently. If you pull too hard on either sweep, you’ll create a splash instead of a turn. This splash is an indication of your energy going to waste instead of into turning your kayak. The goal for now is to focus on finesse rather than on how much your boat is turning: if you extend fully and remain splashless, turning will take care of itself.

More Advanced Sweeps.

Edging your kayak can really improve the effectiveness of your sweeps. Putting a boat up on edge results in lifting the ends out of the water, shortening its waterline and decreasing the resistance to turning. (Note the important difference here between properly edging your kayak—by lifting your knee while keeping your head centered over the boat to maintain balance—and leaning your head and upper body out over the water and letting yourself get off-balance.)

Generally, the further you can edge your kayak toward your sweep strokes (forward or backward), the better it will respond Go easy at first, but to really learn how far on edge you can get your boat, you’ll want to actually tip over every now and then. (It’s a great way to lead into a little roll or recovery practice.)

Compensate for the outward lean by adding an element of bracing to your sweep strokes. Angle the top edge in the direction of the sweep—about 45-degrees or more—to give yourself some support. What turning power you may lose in a less-vertical blade angle will be compensated for in reduced hull resistance if you can get your kayak well up on edge.

Gliding Low-Brace Turn: Next we’ll try some sweep turns on the move. One of the more useful and elegant maneuvers in kayaking is the low-brace turn. Not only does it look really cool, it is also the quickest way to turn around to retrieve a dropped piece of gear or get to a capsized partner (when you are too far away or the seas are too rough to simply back up).

Speed, blade angle, edging, and glide are four keys to an effective low-brace turn; but the “ignition” for those keys is a solid sweep stroke.

To turn to the left, begin with a good head of steam. Then “initiate the turn” (an important concept we’ll apply from here on out) by sweeping and edging on the left—lifting the left knee to angle the right side of the kayak downward—to start your boat carving to the left. (A good trick for us dyslexic paddlers who have trouble remembering which knee to lift is simply not to think about it. Think instead about reaching out as far as you can for more extension on the sweep; as you reach, the boat will naturally edge to the correct side.)

Next, as you reach your left blade back well behind you, edge your boat back to the left and gently plant the back of your blade flat on the water at about 7 o’clock (your bow is 12 o’clock). Reach back as far as is comfortable (this is essentially the beginning of a backward sweep, so again, leverage is important).

You want to be reaching across your bow with both hands so the knuckles of your right hand will be almost skimming the water on the left side and the paddle shaft is nearly horizontal. Now lean some weight gently onto your horizontal blade, held parallel to the surface like an outrigger, and use your momentum to “ride the glide” for several seconds.

A common mistake is pushing down on your blade too soon, dragging it through the water, which kills your forward momentum and ruins the efficient and stylish glide we are shooting for. The idea is learning to trust that the paddle will support your lean and being patient: allow the turn to happen rather than trying to force it.

If you lean on the paddle and ride the glide too long, obviously you’ll capsize when your momentum gives out, so this is where the “low-brace” part of the technique comes in.

As you start to sink into the water at the end of your glide, counteract the capsize and brace yourself back upright by pushing gradually against the left blade with a slow, full, backward sweep stroke all the way to your bow as you did with the stationary spin turns earlier. At first, practice the finesse of riding the glide for as long as you can.

Then practice bracing back up as smoothly, and with as little splash, as possible. Later, experiment with getting your boat as far up on edge as you dare, even if that means some frantic bracing and occasional capsizing. Eventually this teaches you how to get your boat further on edge while still being able to brace back up smoothly.

Bow Rudders

Developed by whitewater slalom racers who need to make constant quick and subtle course corrections, bow rudders—sometimes known as the running draw, hanging draw, static draw or Duffek—can come in extremely handy for sea kayakers.

While convenient for things like reaching a partner’s bow more efficiently for a T recovery (or for sliding up alongside her before she finishes the last bite of her snack bar), as well as being fun to mess around with, bow rudders are essential for the tight maneuvering required by advanced rock-garden paddlers.

If the core of turning is the sweep stroke, then true blade finesse—necessary for the bow rudder and the other maneuvers below—begins with sculling. Developing this finesse and a better “feel for the blade” can also help your roll. Some familiarity with sculling draws is assumed, i.e., you know that feeling of “spreading peanut butter” with the face of your blade toward you at slightly less than a 45-degree angle. Turn your shoulders sideways to “face your work” and keep your paddle shaft fairly vertical by reaching your top hand out over the water on the sculling side.

To find the right position for a bow rudder, start a sculling draw slowly on your right. As you scull from behind your hip back toward your bow, lean slightly forward as you slide the right blade forward to about your foot and about one foot away from the side of the boat.

The blade should be facing you and the leading edge (the bottom of the blade) should still be angled away from your bow slightly. If your bow is at 12 o’clock, then your blade should be opened up to an angle of no more than 1 o’clock (on the right side; 11 o’clock on the left). Hold that 1 o’clock position and remember it, because for this to work, you’ll now need to get some momentum, and then put the blade back in precisely the same place by your foot so that the slightly angled face of the blade catches the water now rushing by. (Another way to find the right angle is to plant the blade parallel to your bow so that it slices through the water, then slowly roll your palm outward until you just start to feel the paddle pulling.)

If you keep the paddle stationary it should gently turn your bow to the side your blade is planted on. A common mistake is trying to force the turn by rotating the blade too far outward (to the 2 or 3 o’clock position) and grabbing too much water, ripping the paddle out of your hand.

For the cross-bow rudder, establish momentum, edge and sweep to the right, then bring your right blade back up over the bow as if setting up for a roll, and plant the cross-bow rudder by your left foot. Work on maintaining your edge on the right so your boat continues to carve.

Like the glide on the low-brace turn above, the bow rudder maneuvers also require the patience and finesse to allow them to happen. You’re going for a gliding course correction here with little loss of speed.

Once you’ve got a feel for proper blade placement, to make the bow rudder really work, you’ll want to initiate the turn with an edge and sweep on the left before planting your bow rudder on the right.

Think of it this way: You’re not using the bow rudder to make the turn, it’s simply being used to tighten and control the turn you’ve already stared carving with your lower body. Practice carving turns using “offside lean” (edging away from the bow rudder), maintaining the edge to the left you had when initiating the turn with the sweep stroke as you glide on the bow rudder on the right—the more extreme the edge, the sharper the turn.

Since this is not a very powerful turning stroke on its own, it takes good edging to be effective. Keep your paddle as vertical as possible, reach well forward and immerse the blade completely so that it applies more turning leverage on the bow. A common mistake is to plant only the tip of the blade by the knee instead of burying the blade by your foot.

There are two styles in which to practice bow-rudder turns: one to maximize the turn, the other to maintain momentum. First, practice turning as far as possible until your momentum dies out; see if you can turn 90 degrees. Next try for subtle and precise course corrections of only a boat width (just enough to slip past a submerged rock or another kayak, for instance) while maintaining as much forward momentum as possible. This is the style you’ll use in “real life.” For more sudden changes in direction, you’ll use the low-brace turn.

Doing the bow rudders with one hand, and the free hand on the aft deck refines technique and makes for a good show. For a one-handed bow rudder of either kind, start by planting the paddle as above with both hands, then, when you think you’ve found equilibrium, let go with the top hand. Lean the top blade away slightly, to help balance out the force of the water on the bottom blade. Finding this equilibrium requires you to develop extreme finesse and a better “feel” for the blade.

Blending Strokes

The next level of difficulty involves “stroke blending.” As you finish a bow-rudder turn, you’ll be reaching forward by your right foot, with your body all wound up and in perfect position to begin a forward stroke that will set the kayak on its new course.

You might as well take advantage of that position. Smoothly pivot the face of your right blade to transition your bow rudder into a smooth forward stroke. As you exit the turn with the forward stroke you’ll regain the momentum you lost while gliding on the bow rudder.

Practice on both sides, using this S-turn drill: Get some speed up, sweep and edge to the left to initiate the turn to the right, bow rudder right, glide, and blend it into a forward stroke—still with the right blade—and take a few hard forward strokes on both sides to get your speed back. Then sweep and edge on the right, bow rudder left, glide, and blend into a forward stroke on the left. Repeat several times on either side, trying to use as few forward strokes in between turns as possible (try to get it down to only two strokes) while still maintaining momentum.

Do this drill in the maximum-momentum style, making only slight S-turns back and forth. Remember to keep your kayak carving on its offside edge instead of allowing it to flatten out as you plant your bow rudder.

To further refine blade finesse, this S-turn drill can be practiced with a cross-bow rudder. As your glide starts to wane as you hold the cross-bow rudder, notice that you are all wound up as you would be for a forward sweep stroke, but reaching across your deck.

Hop the paddle over the deck and blend into a sweep stroke on the right to regain momentum and continue the turn. Another technique to unwind out of the cross-bow glide, say with your right blade in by your left foot, is to lower the left blade into a low-brace left turn. Warning: this is a good way to capsize, so try it slowly and carefully at first, or when you’re prepared to practice recoveries.

This blended stroke is particularly valuable for developing the blade finesse needed for stroke blending but my intermediate students often ask, “So when would you actually use that?” Well, never, if you haven’t practiced it first. But more advanced paddlers find it useful in tight quarters, like sea caves.

Blending It All Together: Sweep Circles and Figure 8s
A multilevel exercise I call “sweep circles,” is a warm-up routine designed to work on stroke combinations, edging and carving all at the same time.

Get some speed. Sweep and edge on the right to start your boat carving, and take a forward stroke on the left, followed by another sweep on the right. Repeat this combination—alternating long, slow, wide sweeps on the right with short, vertical forward strokes on the left—until you’ve completed a full circle.

Then reverse it, sweeping on the left and forward stroking on the right until you’ve completed a circle in the other direction. These two circles in opposite directions will form a figure 8. Work on maintaining (or intensifying) your edging throughout the 8, and see if you can make tighter and tighter circles. Eventually see how few strokes you can use to complete each circle.

Remember: no splashing!

Add a level of complexity by doing sweep circles with a bow rudder. Start a sweep circle as before, but this time throw in a bow rudder to further tighten the turn. Edge and sweep right, bow rudder left, glide for several seconds (allowing your boat to turn but not so long that you lose too much momentum), blend the bow rudder into a forward stroke, sweep right again, and repeat this three-stroke pattern (sweep, bow rudder and glide, forward) until you’ve completed a circle; then go the other way to finish the figure 8.

The challenge is to maintain your edge and carved turn as well as your momentum, while also remembering which stroke comes next. This can seem a little like the old trick of patting your head with one hand while rubbing your belly with the other.

To get over this awkwardness, expect to spend a good 5-10 minutes practicing in slow motion at first, again focusing only on getting the stroke combination in order and not worrying yet about how much your boat is actually turning. Having trouble maintaining momentum?

Start with more speed and focus on stronger sweep and forward strokes and more subtle bow draws, or take several sprinting forward strokes to reestablish momentum any time you start bogging down.

Sweep circles with a combination of bow and cross-bow rudders is a stroke-blending drill designed to challenge even the most dexterous paddlers. But with a little practice, this drill will teach you to smoothly blend a variety of strokes, one leading fluidly into the next, until it all starts to feel like a dance.

Establish momentum, sweep and edge left, bow rudder right, glide and blend into a forward stroke to regain momentum.

Here’s where it gets tricky. As you finish your forward stroke on the left, notice that your right blade is starting to cross your bow. Let it continue down and across your bow into a cross-bow rudder on the left.

Glide on the cross-bow rudder, noticing that you are all wound up for another sweep on the right, which starts the whole process over again: Sweep right, bow rudder left, blend into a forward stroke which blends into the cross-bow rudder with the right blade by your left foot, which after a short glide blends back into the sweep on the right, and so on until you complete the circle and then reverse it into a figure 8. If this is too easy for you, try getting your boat further up on edge or throw in some one-handed bow rudders.

Warm-Up Mind Set

I find that starting my paddling day or my classes with a few spin turns and sweep circles as warm-up exercises seems to set a tone for myself and my students.

It loosens people up and makes everyone more willing to play and experiment with new techniques during our paddle. It is also a subtle reminder that we are out there, each of us, as much for any eventual destination as for the experience of being on the water in a kayak and simply “messing about in boats.”

And, as Ratty noted to Mole in his famous Wind in the Willows bon mot, “There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing.”

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Calm-water training for broaching

You don’t need a wave machine. Just a webbing sling can be used to make a fairly good simulation of taking a breaking wave broadside. Handling your kayak in the surf zone is dependent upon your ability to stay upright when hit by a wave while in a broached position because, sooner or later, you’ll end up broached with waves hitting you broadside.

If you do not learn this essential skill, you will never feel comfortable or be very successful in the surf zone. In addition to learning how to keep from getting capsized upon the initial impact, knowing how to side-surf to shore while balanced over your kayak will help you stay upright.

Most students are very anxious during their first encounter with the surf zone. The usual dry-land drills never seem to prepare them for the feeling of being hit by a wave while broached. A drill in calm water can simulate the force of the impact from a wave and give you the chance to try side surfing so that you’ll know what to expect before entering the real surf zone.

By practicing in calm water, you will experience less anxiety, you can quickly be righted if a capsize occurs, and you can gain immediate feedback from an instructor, who is right there, and not chasing you through the surf. A fairly good simulation can be done with the aid of a rescue sling, instead of a wave machine.

The keys to side surfing success are a combination of edging your kayak and bracing. You need to lean and brace into the wave to keep it from knocking you over.

The most important element to your success in staying upright is the edging of your kayak. If you do not edge your kayak with the deck leaned toward the wave, you will capsize when hit. Sitting straight up in the kayak with no edging is a guaranteed capsize. Edging the kayak in the wrong direction (deck leaning away from the wave) not only means a capsize, it means a very fast capsize.

After edging your kayak, you need a brace to keep yourself upright after impact, and to help get your upper body back over the balance point of your kayak while it is still edged and side surfing toward shore. In photo A, the kayaker is ready for the wave to impact the side of the kayak.

The kayak is edged correctly. Keep in mind that the larger the wave, the greater the edging that’s needed. Notice how her upper body is balanced over the boat. Upon impact of the wave (photo B), the kayak is knocked out from under the kayaker. She is ready to fall toward the water on the wave side with a brace ready to keep her from going under.

The brace gives her the opportunity to balance her upper body over her kayak again. The sooner she can re-balance over her kayak photo C the more control she will have while side-surfing toward shore. In big waves, edging alone isn’t enough. You may have to throw your body into powerful waves with your paddle in a brace position so you won’t capsize. After the impact of these large waves, you can regain your balance over your kayak, but still maintain the edging as you move quickly toward shore.

One of the great aspects of side surfing is the lift the water dynamics provides to your brace. The faster the side surf, the more powerful the lift on the paddle. As the power of the wave dissipates, the lifting power on the paddle also decreases. At this point, you must be balanced over your kayak or you will do a slow capsize toward the wave.

By quickly getting your balance point back over your kayak, you increase your options. You can side surf toward shore, leaning on the force of the wave. However, you are limited from moving your kayak in any other direction if you need your paddle for constant support. To avoid obstacles (rocks, swimmers, surfers, kayakers, etc.) that you may be approaching, if you are balanced over your kayak, you can initiate a forward or backward stroke while moving sidewards toward shore.

A word of caution regarding side surfing: It’s not uncommon for novices to capsize after successfully surviving the impact zone. While traveling sideways, it’s easy to regain your balance over the boat, but don’t forget to keep the kayak on edge.

Sitting straight up without holding the kayak on edge while side surfing will lead to a capsize. To simulate the feeling of side surfing in calm water, you will need an assistant to help by having him pull your kayak out from under you while you are balanced over your boat in the edged position. First, loosely loop a piece of sling webbing around your boat as seen in photo D. Place the webbing so your kayak will move sideways evenly. (I have found that point to be around the lap of the paddler.)

I use a 15-foot piece of one-inch tubular climbing webbing as my sling. Tie the ends together to create a seven-foot loop. The kayak must have the freedom to roll as needed within the sling. Next, prepare for the simulated wave by edging the boat in a ready-to-brace position.

The trainer then takes hold of the webbing and quickly pulls your boat sideways. Notice how, in photo E, the kayaker’s upper body is no longer balanced over her boat: Her brace keeps her from capsizing.

In order to stay upright, you will need to brace while side surfing (photo F). This is the same technique used in the surf in photo C. The longer and faster you keep the kayak moving sideways, the more lifting power there is to the paddle blade. This will allow you to practice the feeling of side surfing. It will also allow you time to recover to a balanced position over your kayak. Aside from simulating the feeling of side surfing in the ocean when hit by a wave, I have found this exercise to work well for bracing practice, as well.

Try putting the kayak on edge the wrong way when pulled by the sling. The resulting capsize is a lot less traumatic than a real wave, and it will give you the chance to practice how to tuck correctly to set up for a roll before the real thing.

This drill is not a substitute for learning in the surf zone, but you will have greater success during your first surf zone encounter if you practice first in a controlled environment. This drill is of particular value if you never have the chance to practice in a surf zone. When you find yourself in the situation of being hit by a wave or moving through a surf zone, if you have practiced side surfing in calm water, you’ll know what to expect and how to react.

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Futura II, Sport Touring Kayak by Futura Surf Skis

Futura II Design Statement: We wanted to create a surf ski similar to our world-class racing kayaks with more stability and the added utility of a touring kayak, thus allowing more people to enjoy true performance in a wider variety of conditions.

The Futura II, Sport Touring Surf Ski is the evolutionary result of 25 years of research and development. Inspired by the ancient Polynesian oceangoing canoes, the long, narrow sit-on-top surf ski was originally designed for lifeguards to penetrate the surf zone in order to rescue victims of water sport accidents.

The surf ski was mostly used in tropical climates; paddlers would wear only sunscreen and swimsuits, which made it slow to sell in North America. With advancements of dry and wetsuit technology, surf skis have gained popularity in northern climates.

The surf ski is not a dry ride. We recommend that anyone paddling north of Chesapeake Bay or San Francisco Bay wear a Farmer John wetsuit, booties and a dry top during winter months. Dress appropriately to be comfortable in the water.

The Futura II, Sport Touring has the design aspects of the fastest kayaks in the world, but with the added security of a low seat and stable hull design. The seat is positioned below the waterline, increasing the stability. The Futura II can be paddled up to 8 knots by an athletic performer.

The low waterline and punch bow keeps most of the composite out of the wind, which helps prevent wind drifting. The kick-up rudder system provides responsive steering with pedals that fit persons with an inseam of 30 or more inches. Regardless of the conditions, you can point this surf ski and it will go. Vince Darwood

Reviewers:

KN 5′ 7″, 125-pound female. Two day trips, windy with some whitecaps, small surf and boat wakes.

TE6’1″, 200-pound male. Several day trips in conditions from calm to winds 25 to 30 mph with waves to 31/2′ and whitecapping.

DM 5’10”, 175-pound male. Several day trips in winds to 8 knots, chop to 1′.

Futura II Review:

The Futura II is an open-top surf ski with a “nice gel-coat finish and a smooth hull without ripples” (TE). “Despite its long, sleek and perhaps intimidating appearance, it is very stable and easy to handle” (KN).

The model we tested had no handholds amidships, making it “nearly impossible to carry [solo], especially when wet” (KN). Carrying with a partner is easy, though there are no toggles or handles on the ends of the boat either. Fortunately, the Futura II is not a heavy boat, and with handholds installed it would be easy to manage.

The recess for the paddler is contoured for comfortable seating and has enough length in the leg wells to accommodate a wide range of paddlers. Like DM and KN, TE “missed having some lower back support. The boat calls for an upright racing posture and, for me, required I hold myself upright with my stomach muscles. The recess is appropriately sized to keep me from shifting laterally.” The Futura II fit KN well enough that “its reactions to my efforts were so direct I felt really connected.”

The foot braces are made of aluminum sheet. They adjust for leg length with a pair of wing nuts. The lower half of the foot rest is rigid and provides a solid connection to the heels to drive the boat forward, while the upper half pivots for steering. DM couldn’t get the wing nuts tight enough to prevent the foot braces from slipping under high pressure.

The aluminum rudder has a bungie to allow the blade to ride over obstructions. The Futura II is designed to be used with the rudder deployed at all times: There is no line for retracting the blade. “For a long, skinny boat, the Futura II has a lot of stability” (KN).

“It is not a solid platform for non-paddling activities like fishing and photography, but it feels fine while underway. It is not a high-strung kayak that will wear you out just sitting in it. Secondary stability is a moot point since you don’t edge for turning, and when leaning into the face of a wave the boat takes care of itself” (TE). Since the rudder is always down, the Futura II has no tracking problems.

“The boat responds well to its rudder, and a little tilt seems to help” (DM). “The only thing it can’t do is spin around as quickly as a kayak you can lean would when set on edge” (TE). KN thought the boat “picks up speed nicely and keeps a moderate pace.” TE and DM summed its speed up as “fast.” Using a knot meter, TE could hold over 4 1/2 knots for miles and sprint at nearly 7 knots.

DM did 5.9 knots for a nautical mile and could sprint at 71/2 knots. It’s not a dry ride,”though water doesn’t end up in the paddler’s face. In a short chop it is fairly easy to fill up the open cockpit with a couple of quarts of water” (DM). Weathercocking is “not a problem.

The full-time rudder makes steering and course holding in wind effortless. In 30-mph winds I didn’t feel I was being blown around” (TE). In small waves KN noted “its stability and responsiveness make it very unintimidating to maneuver in surf and wakes” though she didn’t have waves long enough to get good rides.

She and TE noted that following waves wash over the stern and the weight of the water on deck makes it harder to accelerate. TE had occasion to try bigger waves: “Great boat for catching waves. The bow would bury slightly and then drive to the surface as the ride picked up speed. The wind waves that made the bow dive were steep and short and I would have expected the bow of most any kayak to go under.

On flatter waves the Futura II gave good fast rides-the bow stayed up on the surface. I was concerned about getting washed out of the boat, but taking cresting 4 footers over the bow or beam didn’t threaten to dislodge me.” The Futura II has two small, clear screw-on hatches for carrying small items for day paddling.

They do not open to the entire interior of the boat, but to small molded glass cargo pods. The rest of the hull is inaccessible and serves as buoyancy. The Futura II “lives up to the designer’s claim of being a ‘recreational performance kayak that people can easily take out.’ It is surprisingly easy to handle, moderately fast, and fun. Great for workouts and, if I lived in a warmer climate, I would consider it for day trips as well” (KN).

TE “enjoyed it every time I took it out, whether paddling flat water for speed or rough water for surfing. Well suited to the paddler who prefers training and rough water play instead of cruising. I’d keep this one around for fun.” “A fun boat for exercise paddling. Its relatively stable feel makes it accessible to the intermediate paddler. If you like to go fast, this boat is a good choice” (DM).

Designer Response

Wow! I’d like to congratulate the reviewers for capturing the subtle essence of the Futura II Sport Touring model. Our goal was to create a performance kayak similar to our Futura Blade and C-4 racing models, with the added stability and utility for a more practical paddler.

The reviewers’ comments were typical of most people who try the Futura II Sport Touring surf ski for the first time. The top three comments are: “It accelerates effortlessly,” “It’s more stable than I thought,” and “Can I get it with ___?” The answer to the third comment is usually yes.

There are a multitude of optional accessories which could have accommodated the reviewers. For example, KN would benefit from our bow/stern handles for easy carrying. The other reviewers could easily carry the surf ski with our side handles. For those paddlers with a casual posture, we could install our custom high-back seat.

Futura tries not to standardize the accessories so that our buyers don’t have to pay for or carry something they don’t use. Customizing our boats keeps the prices low and the satisfaction high. Other accessories include knee straps, water bottle holder, bow foil, deck bungies and three types of storage hatches, including a bulkhead and deck lid design which opens the aft hull compartment for storage and longer-term touring.

The only objection a reviewer had that wouldn’t solved by an optional accessory was DM’s difficulty getting the wing nuts tight enough to keep them from slipping. I’d recommend replacing the wing nuts with Nylock nuts and using a wrench to crank them down with as much pressure as needed. We encourage our customers to contact us before altering the boat so we can help reduce the risk of undesirable side effects.

Vince Darwood

Options and Pricing

Designed: 1996
Standard Lay-up: Polyester gelcoat, vinylester resin, hand-laid fiberglass.
Optional Layups: 6-ounce carbon fiber with Kevlar-reinforced hull. Carbon fiber/Kevlar weave with clear gelcoat.
Standard Features: adjustable foot braces, kickup rudder, resin coated marine plywood stringer, choice of colors and striping.
Optional features: small lunch-box hatch, double large hatch for overnight gear, deck pack, highback seat, knee straps, side handles, bow and stern handles, water bottle holder, deck bungies, bow foil.
Approximate Weight: 40 lbs.
Price: custom glass $1500
Availability: 37 dealers nationwide. Call the manufacturer for the nearest dealer.
Manufacturer’s Address: Futura Surf Skis, 180 Southwood Drive, San Francisco, CA 94112. Phone: (415) 586-0331