Paddling Free, by Ed Gillet

Ed Gillet ponders his several thousand coastal miles...

Ed Gillet is one of the most accomplished sea kayakers in North America. Among other places, his kayak has taken him along the west coast of South America and down the coast of British Columbia through the Inside Passage from southeast Alaska to Washington State. Most recently, Gillet completed the first recorded crossing in a sea kayak from California to Hawaii - a trip that was supposed to take 40 days but actually took 63. (That's right, he slept in the kayak.) We asked him why he likes to paddle.

I bought my first "sea" kayak (actually a river kayak fitted with a rudder) the day before I began a 700-mile trip down the Baja Peninsula. Although I had thousands of miles of offshore sailing experience behind me, I had no paddling experience at all when I launched my kayak into the steep small surf at the edge of the Sea of Cortez. Compared to getting underway in a sailboat, my first kayaking trip seemed to begin too easily. The usual smells and sounds of leaving port were missing. The nauseating mix of stove flumes, scrambling eggs and reheated coffee had not pulled me out of my bunk. There was no clash and clatter of breakfast dishes, no pounding feet overhead, no banging hatches as the crew grabbed lines and pulled over thin metal edges as sheets were wrapped around shiny winches and pulled home. There was no rising excitement as the engine warmed at idle; no fog-muffled commands to drop dew-wet docklines and head to sea.

I heard only the raspy goodbye kiss of the beach on my thin fiberglass hull when I straddled my slender craft, pushed off and dropped snugly into the cockpit. I pulled my feet out of the water, folded my legs back, and stowed them inside my kayak like landing gear in the wings of an airplane.

Floating in a foot of water, I fastened my watertight spray skirt to the hull. Immediately, I felt as comfortable on the water as if I had been born there. I felt every movement of my boat and I controlled my boat with my movements. I was immediately captivated by the simplicity of my new sport. Sitting in that silent, slender hunting craft with 5,000 years of history behind it, moving forward was as natural as breathing. After a few days travel in my kayak, I was so closely attuned to the sea's rhythms and my own paddling cadence that I felt as though I could go on paddling forever. Wrenched out of the 20th century, I found myself in a simpler world. A world where hungry hunters with a single purpose moved along a dark coast searching for food, and prehistoric explorers endured months of hardship to satisfy their curiosity. I might have been part of an ancient migration. I didn't know how or where my journey would end and I didn't care. As long as I kept moving forward, I was satisfied.

Most of the skills my first kayak trip demanded were familiar to me from other contexts, but they were combined in novel ways. Kayak touring presumes some backpacking experience and equipment, except that you can stuff three times as much gear into a kayak as you can fit into a pack, and your boat, not your back carries the load. Kayaks can travel long distances with little effort. In that respect, paddling is like cycling. But on the ocean you are free to go wherever you want. There are no trails or roads, and in most places you might care to paddle, there is no traffic.

Offshore sailing and coastal cruising were exhilarating, but sea kayaking offered me more challenge. I was delighted by the opportunity to combine seamanship and navigation with back-packing and human-powered travel. And kayaks are versatile. Instead of spending about $100,000 on a boat, slip and maintenance to visit a few new harbors, I realized that I could take my relatively inexpensive kayak anywhere you can drive, fly, sail or paddle, and explore places most yachtspeople see only through their binoculars.

Like most people, I thought that large vessels were most seaworthy. I have learned that this is not always true. Consider the yachtsman who buys an expensive boat and then spends obscene amounts of money equipping his vessel for a sea voyage. What is his ultimate safety insurance? It's a rubber life raft with little room for food and water, a floating bubble at the mercy of capricious winds and currents.

Survival on an ocean voyage depends on preparation, experience, and prudence - not on the size of one's boat. A properly equipped touring kayak can be one of the most seaworthy vessels imaginable. Kayaks do offer a bit of space problem, thought, and packing them can be a test of one's foresight and ingenuity. Paddlers quickly learn to discard non-essential equipment. During the last several thousand coastal miles, I have learned to be selective. I try to carry more food and water than I think I'll need, as I am wary of getting or making more when my initial supplies run out. I carry fishing gear, tools, spare parts, and a well-stocked repair kit, as well as a few flares, a signal mirror, and a strobe light to alert rescuers if needed. I always take a good medical kit. The rest of my gear is drawn from backpacking: tent, sleeping bag and stove.

Sailboats are like whales. They must spend their lives at sea. If sailboats go ashore, they die. Kayaks, however, are amphibious. Like seals, kayaks enjoy cavorting in the water, but they like to lie about the beach, too. Kayaks rarely ply the open ocean; they are coastal creatures. The shore offers paddlers rest and refuge. Few kayakers have had to endure the terror of a sleepless stormy night at sea. When the weather looks threatening, kayakers head for shore and spend the night in a tent.

One of the most endearing qualities of touring kayaks is their human-proportioned size. Before I understood this, I named my first kayak. After all, it's supposed to be bad luck not to name a boat, isn't it?

A few days in my kayak convinced me that a name for my boat was not necessary. Few paddlers bother naming their kayaks. The reason for this breach of nautical tradition is that kayaks are more like violins than horses, more like clothing than vehicles. Competent paddlers "wear" their boats, they do not "ride" them. Kayakers perceive their boats as extensions of themselves. In pitching seas, kayak and paddler are tossed and drenched as one; there is no separation. It is the unity of boat and paddler that makes a name superfluous. On larger vessels, we have the impression that the boat has a personality and a will of its own, so we name it, hoping she will treat us kindly. Just as a boat name tacitly admits the separate identities of vessel and its crew, the need for navigational instruments aboard larger boats marks a separation between a sailor and his environment. Crews keep their eyes on radar screens, not the shore, their ears alert to the depth sounder alarm, not the sound of breaking waves.

In a silent kayak, a paddler can hear, feel, and smell what is happening around him. For dolphins, navigation comes as naturally as swimming. They are immersed in information: light, sound, temperature, salinity, and (probably) countless other clues to tell them where they are. Kayakers also move through a sea of information barely noticed by the people who rely on depth sounder, loran, and radar.

I have paddled at night and in fog along ocean coasts unknown to me. When I could see neither horizon nor any trace of the shore, odd things happened. Sometimes I hallucinated, seeing shapes and flashed in the dark. I felt as though I was spinning, or wandering off course. Even frequent glances at my compass did not dispel this illusion. These phenomena were accompanied by feeling of irritation and a profound sense of despair. There was only one cure. I stopped paddling, closed my eyes and listened. It took me several minutes to orient myself in my sound world, as though my ears needed as much time as my eyes to adapt to the dark. My "lost" feeling subsided as the world composed itself into sounds I could identify.

The different sounds of the surf told me more about the coast than any chart or electronic instrument could tell. There were hollow slapping sounds from small waves hitting steep cliffs, booming concussions of big surf pounding a sandy beach, or the staccato clapping of surge sucking at pebbles and stones. Sea lions barked when I approached their offshore dens, and their pungent smell fixed the bearing of the colony as surely as if I had used a compass.

My kayak kept me in touch with the sea's movement and rhythm. Nearing a point, I felt the wind freshen; if I got too close, reflecting waves rocked my boat with their gentle warning. Before I heard it, I felt the throbbing of a ship's engine resonating in my kayak hull.

As stealthily as a panther approaches its prey, I felt my way into dark harbors at night, listening to the babbling brook sounds of water pouring off the rocks that reared their heads at each receding wave.

When I learned to trust all my senses, I stopped nervously using my flashlight to look at my chart and compass; my night vision became acute. I could see the phosphorescent glow of a bow wave made by an unlit fishing boat a half-mile away, the moonlight reflecting on a dew-wet deck, or pick out the serpentine silhouette of the coast, black on black. Kayaking has made me a more curious and more competent navigator than when I was a sailor. Paddling offshore, I feel like a glider pilot soaring along a coast with a destination in mind but keeping a sharp lookout for an alternative landing site in case of trouble. It is that heightened awareness of my environment and the need for "seat of the pants" navigation that makes sea kayaking fun for me.

Since that first open water trip in a modified river kayak, I have attempted increasingly demanding coastal trips. When I look back on trips like my year-long, 4,500 mile paddle up the west coast of South America, I don't dwell on the difficulties. Instead, I marvel at how easily I moved along that coast. A long trip is nothing more than a succession of day trips. A trip across the ocean is nothing more than a string of days on the water. I have paddled into countless coves and beaches. I have eaten and drunk with poor fishermen and town mayors. My kayak has served as my vehicle for exploring magnificent parts of this planet.

Contemporary kayakers, I believe, are merely following in the wake of early paddlers who understood more than we do about the harmony of self-propelled travel. Sea kayaks can take us to some of the best parts of this watery earth. And they can take us along avenues to freedom, self-sufficiency, and accomplishment. I don't sail much anymore, but I plan on paddling kayaks for a long time.

When he's not off on a trip, Ed Gillet and his wife Katie run the Southwest Kayak shop in San Diego.