Martin Leonard—A Passion for High-Performance Touring

In the world of performance kayaking, there are paddlers whose accomplishments are so renowned that they become household names: paddlers like Paul Caffyn and Ed Gillet, Oscar Chalupsky and Greg Barton. Then there are those who remain resolutely out of the limelight, like Martin Leonard III. Leonard made a splash in the kayak community during the early and mid-1990s when he crossed the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia, then paddled the fabled Inuit (Northwest) Passage from Alaska to eastern Canada. Since then, he’s slipped back under the radar, all the while quietly pioneering a new brand of performance kayaking that blends innovative boat design with specialized skills and a unique philosophical approach to expedition touring and surfing. That philosophy is unfailingly holistic—from his knowledge of ocean conditions to the food he eats and the sunglasses he wears. “You don’t need a $4,000 boat and a carbon-fiber paddle to be a performance paddler,” explains Leonard. “It comes down to the entire system.”