The stability was well proven, when my friends Don and Marilyn Reid came to our home on Kodiak Island. It's the only single kayaq I know of you can stand up in.
They needed some stable kayaqs to paddle in our waters for a few days and do some photography, before returning to their home on the North Island of New Zealand. We had become friends after meeting on our Alaskan ocean ferry Tustumena, while they were vacationing after skippering Mike Ball's diving operations off the east coast of Australia, but this was the first time they had had a chance to try my kayaqs for any extended period of time. They enjoyed several days along our northern shores and channels, finding the puffins especially humorous when they tried to take off the water after a full meal. (My wife had also found them to be in like character, so when she decided to paint one, she gave them some dignity in "Puffin's Formal Portrait". A fantasy, of course, but she had fun doing him that way!)
The life on the water and surrounding tundra has in their turn, fascinated me in many ways. Yet when there one cannot forget the basics - such as where you are while enjoying that fascination. I needed a solid nav watch to help, and knew that the usual would not handle the strain. There's no greater equalizer on equipment than the stress of the working ocean environment.
So I turned to Don, who as a Skipper for Ocean Tugs would understand what I needed. He didn't let me down, recommending the Sector watch to take with me. His council was good, the stainless unit standing up to not only the sea, immersed and hammered as it was while kayaqing, but also years later through my service in the shipyards - with only an occasional change of batteries and one cleaning.
But it was the friendships I gained through association with their company that made the memories special, and Jonathan Nettelfield proved to be chief amongst them as their North American Director. The friendship we forged through our Arctic years went well beyond the watches, and his family likewise. Those two watches are with me still, and the Titanium is on my wrist now as I write.
Time and distance is everything on the water, and having these watches has stood me well when I had my hands full with building weather. A good case in point was my run from Demarcation Point into Canada. This was a time that the design of the boat and the navigational aids had to hold up.
I had only been on the water barely two hours, having crossed the Canadian Border when the weather began to pick up - again. Within the next three hours, the previously modest swells were running at six to eight feet high, and the wind blowing at well over 35 knots. The shallow approaches were what were steepening the swells, and after several hours I was also learning as I passed, that the openings which would have normally been available to get out through, had been cut off from me by the surf crashing over the bars. The only refuge left that I could count on was behind Herschel Island, over 50 nautical miles from where I had started. To say the least, I had my hands full.
By the time I reached the Island, I had been in the boat over 16 hours without a break. What awaited me, however, wasn't the relief I sought - the seas were plowing forcefully into a spit across the small bay I needed to reach to get out of this. As I approached, the seas were steepening and by watching along the shoreline to my right the waves could be accurately measured. And, just as I was realizing that the 10 + foot waves, which were burying my kayaq and me up to my chest, were going to drive me relentlessly into the bar, an opening appeared that would let me through and out of the surf - if I could quarter across the swells enough to reach it.
Fortunately, the kayaq proved up to the pounding, and maneuvered the seas well enough to allow me a shot at the entrance to the beckoning calm beyond - only to run as I shot for the opening right into an opposing current! The river behind the bar was feeding an ebb tide, which needless to say was only worsening the conditions I was in by piling the seas higher against the wind. I fought for over a half hour just to get through the small opening and into the protection of calm water behind the bar.
Once in, I sought a spot where I could get out of the boat, only to find a barren land grizzly patrolling the shoals. No brainer as to my next decision - I bid him good fishing, and went down the coast past his domain, then turned up into the bay at the end of Herschel Island itself - and right into the wind. For another hour and a half my 19 foot kayaq and I fought against it, my paddles against the unhampered wind and choppy seas. It was better than the alternative, however, and after working nearly an hour and a half to cover less than one nautical mile, I was finally able to crawl out of the boat. We had been struggling together for over 19 hours, and camp sounded really good - with warm soup!
I have a general rule of thumb when kayaqing - always set up a full camp at the end of the day's run, no matter how tired you are. If there was ever a time I was tempted to just haul out the one man bivie tent and crash, this was it. But experience has taught me that the weather can turn only too quickly, and what you are caught in could prove to be your shelter for a long time. And if you've been sweating for several hours...?
I set up a full camp.
Room to rest, clean up, eat, enjoy light and a good book, stretch out. I've been accused of being too well equipped, but I've lived a subsistence lifestyle and know the difference in what is necessary and too much.
And in my humble opinion, a roomy tent and a warm meal is not too much to ask. Prior planning prevents poor performance. Wet and miserable does not an intelligent person make. Especially when you know better.
Here is also where the kayaq herself makes the difference, as it is in her design that the abilities to carry her cargo in a seaworthy fashion begins. I felt a sincere gratitude for my Yupik Grandfather's council in this, given many years ago. Grandpa Tim told me something then I would never forget.
He had just taken my 17 foot hunting kayaq out on Lake St. George, (in the state of Maine), and had returned my boat to me. At 80 he was still hunting moose in Alaska (which was our home then), so wanting to try out the kayaq didn't surprise me one bit. As we were walking away, he put his arm around my shoulder and told me he had liked the boat, because it wasn't as unstable as the skin boats he had grown up in. I remembered that he grew up being stuffed into the older skin boats as a boy with his mother, and paddling the same boats himself as a teenager. So his next council I took to heart, when he said,"Remember, Bill, that the Kayaq is first and foremost a vehicle of transportation. If you ever forget that, you will not have a kayaq - you will have a toy." Then he smiled, patted my shoulder, and walked to the car.
With that, knowing his history, he was telling me that the kayaq (not kayak, as is pronounced by outsiders, or gussucqs) was as important to a families' ability to provide for themselves then, as the car or truck is to a modern family today.
And when returning to my Island home in Old Harbor, as I used my kayaq to hunt and feed my own, I found again the realization of his council to me that day so long ago.
So the kayaq I am forming now is crafted under my hands in his memory. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, family is everything to me. And though my blood ancestors are Crow and Irish, his warm friendship over the years has kept that part of our family alive for me, and I feel that even now. I miss him. So I tie each knot remembering his council. And knowing that this Kayaq will make him proud.
She's going to be 18 feet long, shorter now as my wife has expressed a desire to double up in our canoe I'm also restoring, and paddle our kayaqs as they are. I actually don't mind, as this frees me to make this Kayaq an extension of the builder, as tradition would have it, making her distinctly my own.
The cedar byforcated bow is attached to the keel now, which is close grained fir formed and ready to have the cedar stern piece attached later. The bow stands straight, solid and ready for a life in the sea which she has been formed to embrace. The Arctic I have lived is in her creation, and the wealth of her heritage is going into her lines.
I think Grandpa Tim would approve.
-WKD
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