Wind,waves and wet long johns
This is a wet business. We’re part seal, part duck, sea-kayaking 2,400 kilometres around the Canadian island of Newfoundland, where the incendiary North Atlantic blasts into the island’s towering cliffs. Life here involves living out of a 1.7-metre boat for 105 days in a salty littoral that’s almost constantly worked by merciless pounding waves.
The rewards for this suffering are immense. Humpbacks follow us on daylong bay crossings, sometimes flashing their white bellies beneath our boats. Bands of sea lions escort us through their territory, barking and flipping us off. Leaping pairs of adolescent dolphins play chicken with us, always timing a final daring jump just short of our bows. Aside from the wonder of the natural world, we test our physical limits and find peace spending a season living along a thin coastal rind.
To kayak or not to kayak? That was the question. A few years before we circumnavigated Newfoundland, my paddling partner Zac Crouse and I rounded Cape Breton Island by canoe. It was a 25-day, 800-kilometre slog that was variously wonderful and incredibly frustrating. On the ocean, the force you pit yourself against, under your own power, is the wind. The canoe, with its more or less vertical sides and high profile (when compared to a kayak’s rounded deck and low profile) is a veritable wind magnet. After a long week of howling, in-your-face winds during the Cape Breton expedition, we would sometimes pitch ourselves against a gale just to do something, even though we knew little distance could be gained. That game, however, gets old pretty quickly.
Canoe versus kayak
When it came to planning for our circumnavigation of Newfoundland, Zac was firmly for using kayaks. I put up a meagre defence of canoes, arguing that there is more camaraderie in a canoe, and that packing is much easier; there’s no cramming of fit-to-burst drybags into tight compartments.
It wasn’t a long debate. Zac’s back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that Newfoundland would be a four-month voyage at about 24 kilometres a day without allowing for much in the way of lost time. In a canoe, there was a good chance that four months could become five, and then six. So we went with kayaks.
The plastic kayaks were our most important pieces of gear. We punished them for more than 100 days; whether we were riding breakers, surfing up onto beaches, or hauling them across rocks, the plastic performed marvellously. Instead of rudders, our kayaks were equipped with skegs, which are akin to 30-centimetre retractable keels located on the underside of the stern. While the skegs are engaged, the kayak tracks in a straight line; when retracted, there’s tons of manoeuvrability.
Rudders can also be engaged and retracted like a skeg, and have the added benefit of being attached to cables that connect to foot pedals in the cockpit – with a tap of your toes, you can adjust your course. This feature might seem like a big advantage over skegs, but I prefer to go without a rudder. Foot control can make you a lazy paddler, but a skeg forces you to focus on your paddle stroke to make course corrections. The added concentration doesn’t really matter in mild conditions. When the seas pick up, however, the extra sensitivity leads to better responses to wind and waves buffeting your craft.
Our kayaks had three hatches – one fore and two aft – and we mounted deck compasses on their bows. For the first two months, neither Zac nor I could account for a ten-degree difference between my compass and his. Then, one day, I noticed the flutter of the compass needle while unpacking the cooking pot from its stowed position an arm’s length away from the compass. It was a good thing that our basic direction on the voyage was ‘land to the left’.
Food for thought
For food, we tended to plan for ten days without resupply. Our logic was to have enough provisions to allow for the possibility of being land-bound for five days in an isolated cove, followed by five days of paddling without being able to replenish supplies. To restock, we partially relied on mailing ahead essential items such as pre-made trail mix (a nutritious combination of nuts, dried fruit and cereal), beef jerky, dried hummus and tomatoes, rice, falafel mix, and dehydrated chilli, red lentils and peas. We bought other items such as onions, carrots, cheese and pepperoni along the way. The advantage of mailing items to yourself is that it can be cheaper – as you can buy supplies in bulk at the outset of the trip – and you also guarantee that you will have on hand the items you enjoy for the duration of the voyage. We double-wrapped food in stiff plastic bags and stowed these in drybags.
For breakfast, we had a quick bowl of cold oatmeal and powdered milk. For lunch, we ate rehydrated hummus and cheese wraps and munched on a carrot. We began the trip eating copious amounts of pepperoni. However, as our bodies became accustomed to 50-kilometre days, they painfully rejected the spicy meats. Hummus became our standby food, and never led to gastrointestinal troubles.
Zac and I make four types of supper on any extended voyage: chilli, falafel, pasta and curry. These can all be prepared in a single pot, which is a handy way to conserve fuel when cooking on a single burner. We always use a multi-fuel stove with white gas, as it’s easily repairable. We pack twice as many parts as usual to fix the stove, which, inevitably, will gum up at some point in this salty environment. The stove is also capable of burning both petrol and kerosene.
Biggest mistake
While choosing equipment, our biggest mistake was selecting a relatively thin kayak skirt. The main advantage of a thin skirt is that it’s easy to seal around the cockpit and then pull off. But when the waves picked up, or the rain pelted hard, water always seeped into our cockpits and our kayaks became cold baths. Fortunately, our paddling gear was otherwise solid – and because we carried invaluable hand pumps, the water in our cockpits never became a serious issue.
Some kayakers – especially in the North Atlantic – wear full or partial neoprene suits, if they don’t mind sweating. Both Zac and I wore thin polypropylene long johns, neoprene shorts and breathable drypants with neoprene gaskets. This setup kept us relatively cool in the sun while at maximum exertion. Apart from having to put on the previous day’s frigid long johns at six every morning, this combination worked well on the water.
We each wore a thermal ‘skin’ on top of a skimpy polypropylene T-shirt. A skin is essentially a long-sleeve, two-millimetre-thick neoprene paddling shirt. Our jackets were waterproof, breathable coats with latex wrist gaskets. These jackets didn’t have a rubber gasket for the neck; gaskets are a pain to slip into and out of, especially when making layering changes on the fly. As the days heated up, I shed my jacket and paddled in either the neoprene shirt or the polypropylene T-shirt.
On our heads, we wore fleece-lined rubber skullcaps and had neoprene mitts on our hands. A good personal flotation device (PFD) is worth the investment. Almost any PFD will keep you afloat, but only a lithe touring PFD won’t cumber your paddle stroke – we attached a whistle, compass and knife to our PFDs for added safety. Our primary paddles were made of lightweight carbon and the backups were plastic.
It’s essential to have a set of dry clothes to change into at the end of each day, when you’re wet and encrusted with salt. We packed for four months as you would for a weekend: two pairs of socks and underwear, long johns, a pair of shorts and pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece sweater, a light rainproof jacket, and a toque. These last three items were packed in a small drybag near the top of one of our hatches for easy access on shore.
Two men in a tent
We chose down sleeping bags over synthetic versions because space is very much at a premium in a kayak, and down packs smaller. Wet down insulation, however, is useless. This could have become an issue, but never did – I double-drybagged my sleeping bag just in case. On sunny days, we aired our bags over a stunted spruce or a dry boulder.
Our tent was nothing special. For us, the keys to spending four months sleeping next to a friend are having a tent with enough space to sit upright in without your head touching the ceiling, and making sure each person has their own door and vestibule. Separate space meant that we didn’t have to crawl over each other too often, and gave us a place to stow our personal gear. The inner tent had mesh walls: as temperatures during the spring and summer in Newfoundland rarely drop much below –5°C, we opted for a tent that vented efficiently over one that sequestered warmth. The circulating air helped curb the build-up of our stench.
It’s worth noting that when we kayaked into a settlement, we were invariably offered three things: coffee, a life story and a shower.
Plastic Fantastic
To the best of our knowledge, the half-dozen kayakers who had circumnavigated Newfoundland before us did so in fibreglass boats. However, Zac and I preferred to paddle knowing that we could make origami of our boats one day and continue on the next. For instance, there were days on our trip when the shore was socked in with fog. On those occasions, we tentatively detected beach landings by the sound of the invisible shore being worked by the waves. But we never put too much stock in our ability to differentiate between the sounds of bouldered, cobbled or sandy beaches.
As is our preference with canoes on extended trips where we expect to meet rocks at speed, we chose plastic boats over fibreglass. Although fibreglass is lighter and more rigid (which allows it to track superbly and also requires slightly less force to propel), it is no friend of the rock; it can crack on impact. Plastic boats can be hurled against the gnarliest of granites, bent in half, and still pop back into shape.
Don’t forget…
… a ukulele. Ours provided sanity, especially for Zac, who composed future tunes for his band Caledonia when 25-knot winds blasted us head-on
Kip Keen is a science writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Zac Crouse works with youth at risk as a recreation therapist, and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Kip would like to thank Zac for his assistance in compiling the article.
Stockists:
Aqua Bound Paddles: +1 715 755 3405; www.aquabound.com
Extremities: 01773 837373; www.terra-nova.co.uk
Immersion Research: 814-395-9191; www.immersionresearch.com
Kokatat: 01768 840 055; www.knoydart.co.uk
Lifesystems: 0118 981 1433; www.lifesystems.co.uk
MSR: 01629 580484; www.msrgear.com
Outdoor Research: +1 206 467 8197; www.outdoorresearch.com
Pelican: 01457 869999; www.peliproducts.co.uk
Petzl: 015396-25493; www.petzl.com
Wilderness Systems: 01267 223555; www.wwc.co.uk
All prices quoted are recommended/suggested retail prices
August 2009
The rewards for this suffering are immense. Humpbacks follow us on daylong bay crossings, sometimes flashing their white bellies beneath our boats. Bands of sea lions escort us through their territory, barking and flipping us off. Leaping pairs of adolescent dolphins play chicken with us, always timing a final daring jump just short of our bows. Aside from the wonder of the natural world, we test our physical limits and find peace spending a season living along a thin coastal rind.
To kayak or not to kayak? That was the question. A few years before we circumnavigated Newfoundland, my paddling partner Zac Crouse and I rounded Cape Breton Island by canoe. It was a 25-day, 800-kilometre slog that was variously wonderful and incredibly frustrating. On the ocean, the force you pit yourself against, under your own power, is the wind. The canoe, with its more or less vertical sides and high profile (when compared to a kayak’s rounded deck and low profile) is a veritable wind magnet. After a long week of howling, in-your-face winds during the Cape Breton expedition, we would sometimes pitch ourselves against a gale just to do something, even though we knew little distance could be gained. That game, however, gets old pretty quickly.
Canoe versus kayak
When it came to planning for our circumnavigation of Newfoundland, Zac was firmly for using kayaks. I put up a meagre defence of canoes, arguing that there is more camaraderie in a canoe, and that packing is much easier; there’s no cramming of fit-to-burst drybags into tight compartments.
It wasn’t a long debate. Zac’s back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that Newfoundland would be a four-month voyage at about 24 kilometres a day without allowing for much in the way of lost time. In a canoe, there was a good chance that four months could become five, and then six. So we went with kayaks.
The plastic kayaks were our most important pieces of gear. We punished them for more than 100 days; whether we were riding breakers, surfing up onto beaches, or hauling them across rocks, the plastic performed marvellously. Instead of rudders, our kayaks were equipped with skegs, which are akin to 30-centimetre retractable keels located on the underside of the stern. While the skegs are engaged, the kayak tracks in a straight line; when retracted, there’s tons of manoeuvrability.
Rudders can also be engaged and retracted like a skeg, and have the added benefit of being attached to cables that connect to foot pedals in the cockpit – with a tap of your toes, you can adjust your course. This feature might seem like a big advantage over skegs, but I prefer to go without a rudder. Foot control can make you a lazy paddler, but a skeg forces you to focus on your paddle stroke to make course corrections. The added concentration doesn’t really matter in mild conditions. When the seas pick up, however, the extra sensitivity leads to better responses to wind and waves buffeting your craft.
Our kayaks had three hatches – one fore and two aft – and we mounted deck compasses on their bows. For the first two months, neither Zac nor I could account for a ten-degree difference between my compass and his. Then, one day, I noticed the flutter of the compass needle while unpacking the cooking pot from its stowed position an arm’s length away from the compass. It was a good thing that our basic direction on the voyage was ‘land to the left’.
Food for thought
For food, we tended to plan for ten days without resupply. Our logic was to have enough provisions to allow for the possibility of being land-bound for five days in an isolated cove, followed by five days of paddling without being able to replenish supplies. To restock, we partially relied on mailing ahead essential items such as pre-made trail mix (a nutritious combination of nuts, dried fruit and cereal), beef jerky, dried hummus and tomatoes, rice, falafel mix, and dehydrated chilli, red lentils and peas. We bought other items such as onions, carrots, cheese and pepperoni along the way. The advantage of mailing items to yourself is that it can be cheaper – as you can buy supplies in bulk at the outset of the trip – and you also guarantee that you will have on hand the items you enjoy for the duration of the voyage. We double-wrapped food in stiff plastic bags and stowed these in drybags.
For breakfast, we had a quick bowl of cold oatmeal and powdered milk. For lunch, we ate rehydrated hummus and cheese wraps and munched on a carrot. We began the trip eating copious amounts of pepperoni. However, as our bodies became accustomed to 50-kilometre days, they painfully rejected the spicy meats. Hummus became our standby food, and never led to gastrointestinal troubles.
Zac and I make four types of supper on any extended voyage: chilli, falafel, pasta and curry. These can all be prepared in a single pot, which is a handy way to conserve fuel when cooking on a single burner. We always use a multi-fuel stove with white gas, as it’s easily repairable. We pack twice as many parts as usual to fix the stove, which, inevitably, will gum up at some point in this salty environment. The stove is also capable of burning both petrol and kerosene.
Start the slideshow (10 pictures)
Biggest mistake
While choosing equipment, our biggest mistake was selecting a relatively thin kayak skirt. The main advantage of a thin skirt is that it’s easy to seal around the cockpit and then pull off. But when the waves picked up, or the rain pelted hard, water always seeped into our cockpits and our kayaks became cold baths. Fortunately, our paddling gear was otherwise solid – and because we carried invaluable hand pumps, the water in our cockpits never became a serious issue.
Some kayakers – especially in the North Atlantic – wear full or partial neoprene suits, if they don’t mind sweating. Both Zac and I wore thin polypropylene long johns, neoprene shorts and breathable drypants with neoprene gaskets. This setup kept us relatively cool in the sun while at maximum exertion. Apart from having to put on the previous day’s frigid long johns at six every morning, this combination worked well on the water.
We each wore a thermal ‘skin’ on top of a skimpy polypropylene T-shirt. A skin is essentially a long-sleeve, two-millimetre-thick neoprene paddling shirt. Our jackets were waterproof, breathable coats with latex wrist gaskets. These jackets didn’t have a rubber gasket for the neck; gaskets are a pain to slip into and out of, especially when making layering changes on the fly. As the days heated up, I shed my jacket and paddled in either the neoprene shirt or the polypropylene T-shirt.
On our heads, we wore fleece-lined rubber skullcaps and had neoprene mitts on our hands. A good personal flotation device (PFD) is worth the investment. Almost any PFD will keep you afloat, but only a lithe touring PFD won’t cumber your paddle stroke – we attached a whistle, compass and knife to our PFDs for added safety. Our primary paddles were made of lightweight carbon and the backups were plastic.
It’s essential to have a set of dry clothes to change into at the end of each day, when you’re wet and encrusted with salt. We packed for four months as you would for a weekend: two pairs of socks and underwear, long johns, a pair of shorts and pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece sweater, a light rainproof jacket, and a toque. These last three items were packed in a small drybag near the top of one of our hatches for easy access on shore.
Two men in a tent
We chose down sleeping bags over synthetic versions because space is very much at a premium in a kayak, and down packs smaller. Wet down insulation, however, is useless. This could have become an issue, but never did – I double-drybagged my sleeping bag just in case. On sunny days, we aired our bags over a stunted spruce or a dry boulder.
Our tent was nothing special. For us, the keys to spending four months sleeping next to a friend are having a tent with enough space to sit upright in without your head touching the ceiling, and making sure each person has their own door and vestibule. Separate space meant that we didn’t have to crawl over each other too often, and gave us a place to stow our personal gear. The inner tent had mesh walls: as temperatures during the spring and summer in Newfoundland rarely drop much below –5°C, we opted for a tent that vented efficiently over one that sequestered warmth. The circulating air helped curb the build-up of our stench.
It’s worth noting that when we kayaked into a settlement, we were invariably offered three things: coffee, a life story and a shower.
Plastic Fantastic
To the best of our knowledge, the half-dozen kayakers who had circumnavigated Newfoundland before us did so in fibreglass boats. However, Zac and I preferred to paddle knowing that we could make origami of our boats one day and continue on the next. For instance, there were days on our trip when the shore was socked in with fog. On those occasions, we tentatively detected beach landings by the sound of the invisible shore being worked by the waves. But we never put too much stock in our ability to differentiate between the sounds of bouldered, cobbled or sandy beaches.
As is our preference with canoes on extended trips where we expect to meet rocks at speed, we chose plastic boats over fibreglass. Although fibreglass is lighter and more rigid (which allows it to track superbly and also requires slightly less force to propel), it is no friend of the rock; it can crack on impact. Plastic boats can be hurled against the gnarliest of granites, bent in half, and still pop back into shape.
Don’t forget…
… a ukulele. Ours provided sanity, especially for Zac, who composed future tunes for his band Caledonia when 25-knot winds blasted us head-on
Kip Keen is a science writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Zac Crouse works with youth at risk as a recreation therapist, and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Kip would like to thank Zac for his assistance in compiling the article.
Stockists:
Aqua Bound Paddles: +1 715 755 3405; www.aquabound.com
Extremities: 01773 837373; www.terra-nova.co.uk
Immersion Research: 814-395-9191; www.immersionresearch.com
Kokatat: 01768 840 055; www.knoydart.co.uk
Lifesystems: 0118 981 1433; www.lifesystems.co.uk
MSR: 01629 580484; www.msrgear.com
Outdoor Research: +1 206 467 8197; www.outdoorresearch.com
Pelican: 01457 869999; www.peliproducts.co.uk
Petzl: 015396-25493; www.petzl.com
Wilderness Systems: 01267 223555; www.wwc.co.uk
All prices quoted are recommended/suggested retail prices
August 2009
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