Surf Kayaking Event September 19-21

Michael Gray of Uncommon Adventures will be hosting the Flotnar Sea Farers Assembly now known as Sleeping Bear Surffest. Kayak Surfers, Kite Surfers and Board Surfers Come on Up!!!!

The weekend will be hosted at Moonshadow Herb Farm. Space is limited to 30 participants. I will be signing up and bringing surf kayaks for those that would like to try their hand at a dedicated surf craft on the Great Lakes. Let us pray for the wind to make it necessary.

Meals are potlucks with main courses provided by Uncommon Adventures. The accommodations are tent camping! Moonshadow Herb farm is a private camp with hot showers, sauna, wooded tent area, covered outdoor kitchen, covered dining and fire pit. It’s located about 1 mile from Lake Michigan here in the heart of Sleeping Bear Country.If you need to rent camping gear call Michael! (866-882-5525).

Register for the Uncommon Adventures Sleeping Bear Surf Fest Online Now

Note Very Important
Michael will be sending specific directions and other info about meals after registration.

Are You a Kayak Asshole? Video

I am off to Grand Marais for the GLSKS Symposium tomorrow morning. I hope there is surf like last year. I am excited to do some instruction and work with Steve Scherrer on a class.

I have been trying to write more articles and do less “posting”. However this particular video found through questionable means is possible the best thing I have ever seen from user submitted video.

And to answer my own non-paddling friends inevitable question, yes I know I am the person described in the video, minus the SUV.

So for those of us who are too focused on paddling, maybe go out and drink some beers, play some frisbee, and chill the hell out!!!

First Four Mile Run after hernia repair

I tore my tendon 5 weeks after my hernia repair surgery at my first Ultimate Frisbee game of the season. I was able to keep cycling even with the torn tendon. The doctor said the flexion and extension would bother it. The stabilizing needs of running however were painful and out of the question anyway. I began to feel some imaginary weight and some real weight dragging me down each day I wasn’t running.

Cycling, though I love it, is not the same as running. Cycling is a different type of awareness and fitness. I love them both. I’m not sure I could live without either. But I know I would be in the looney bin without running. I suited up after work, feeling confident that I would take it easy and turn around if the tendon hurt. I followed my normal after work route across the north end of Kalamazoo. I was literally weeping with happiness by the time I hit mile one out of four. It’s safe tp say I place way too much value on this activity. But it’s my life.

Running is not like cycling, or kayaking, it is a safety net, a place to vent, it is the padded room where all my anxiety and fear are pounded out with no intermediary. A place where schemes are hatched, plans made, thoughts held dear, memories rebounded, grief reconciled, love and redemption found, and it is entirely independent of weather, equipment, or external forces. I can run in a rainstorm, a whiteout, 10 degree weather with 3 feet of snow, or ninety nine degree heat. I do not need a running partner, or encouragement, I do not need praise or reward, it is not to impress or show off for anyone, it is entirely between me and the road.

At times I feel like my body has failed me, but in my heart I know it has not. Sometimes things are taken away to teach compassion. Now that perhaps I can continue for some time, I don’t know how long, I will be more thankful for each mile, for each step my body gives back.

I have to offer thanks also to Laura for enduring my confinement. Certainly it must feel like she lives with a lunatic in the tower when I am not running.

As additional food for thought, check out the copy from this new Pearl Izumi ad campaign. I’ve been reading online how most people hate it. Personally I identify with it. I guess if they wanted to sway people over who are not runners, maybe this wasn’t the way to do it. But if they were trying to create a brand impression for the runners that are already out there, they got my attention. I think the copy is genius.

WMCKA Sea Kayak Symposium 2008 My Home is the Sea

Every year I attend the WMCKA Sea Kayaking Symposium it takes me a few days to absorb the impact of what it means to me. It is easy to say this happened and that happened. It is also easy to say this is the one thing that it meant, to go for the grand recit. What is infinitely harder is to say what it meant in smaller terms that make up the big picture. For my part WMCKA means a lot to me, as it is a culmination of planning efforts and coordination with the Symposium Committee, the WMCKA governing board, and a governing of my own desires for a great symposium.

I’d been trying to get Shawna Franklin and Leon Somme to come to our symposium since about 2005. Finally this year it worked out for both parties. This alone made me very happy in my heart. We decided to plan an instructor update prior to Symposium. This event was very well attended by our instructor group.

Shawna and Leon suited up and got us all out on the water asking us to paddle across Duck Lake and turning upwind. Their approach was to allow us to find our own way. They asked us to find five ways to turn upwind and simply let us paddle. We all came back with about seven ways to paddle upwind. The objective here it seems was to give us an objective, and allow us to interact with our environment, and then come up with our own conclusions. Based on the level of skill and experience each person has, they will come up with a variety of ways to deal with the environment. Only after we had tried a few things did Shawna and Leon call us in to have us give our ideas about what worked and what didn’t. Then after we had told them what we thought, they finally gave us their input. It was a really interesting way to teach a class. They barely spoke and allowed all of us to teach ourselves, each other, and finally when all that was done they gave us some pointers.

Derrick and a lot of the instructors were very juiced up about the bracing and rolling progression Shawna and Leon were sharing. This progression starts in a low brace, then high brace, and finally rolling. It focuses on starting the paddler on their back. Shawna and Leon have been using it with a high success rate in Washington. I would love to see a video of this progression a couple more times.

One of the more interesting points of the instruction for me was a paddle power demonstration. Shawna and Leon had us pair up with another paddler and link in tail to tail with another paddler on a contact tow. One paddler would use a euro paddle, the other would use a wing paddle or a euro paddle. The objective was to see who would tow who with the different paddle. I was paired off with Alec Boyd Peshkin who is my size and of equal power and skill. We started out with my carbon fiber greenland paddle and his werner shuna. Invariably the euro paddle would quickly overpower the Greenland paddle. We switched back and forth with the same results. We then used an epic wing and the Greenland paddle. It was dead even on these two paddles, I was surprised by this. We then switched to the wing and the euro. Again the euro paddle started dragging the paddler with the wing around.

I’ve held a not very scientific or empirical bias that the Euro and the Greenland style paddle were pretty much the same under these conditions. But after this I am not convinced. Doug Van Doren and Steve Bailey experienced the same results. Though Steve Bailey is a very powerful paddler and much bigger than Doug. Food for thought!!

A few of us headed out to Lake Michigan to paddle in the wind and waves afterwards. My inguinal hernia let me know pretty quickly that it was too soon for this type of exertion. I was left in the dust within a few minutes. I managed to take a few pictures regardless.

This was the point of the weekend where my mental state went in the drink. As a person I am competitive, gregarious, and outgoing. I found it very hard to be the slowest man on the water. It was a knife like jab in my belly to be unable to lead the pack when there was wind and waves to be had. My greatest joy in life is to be flying down wave with the wind at my back. To watch others easily out pace me felt like a clumsy root canal from a sadistic dentist with no anesthetic. I find I am a very poor spectator.

Once on sight at the Symposium in my spectator status I observed that the energy and enthusiasm Shawna and Leon exerted was as palpable as the pollen in the air. They were the first to be suited up to paddle and often the very last off the water. They were omnipresent and engaged in a way I have not seen any other instructors behave. You could tell that they loved being on the water, loved kayaking. And this enthusiasm melted over to the instructors, and the participants.

They also participated in the rodeo, and I saw kindred spirits, (I love a rodeo) in their competitive fun loving nature in the races, rolling contest, and passion to be involved, in the thick of things. Leon may have been channeling my wounded spirit when he and two other racers tackled one another into the shallows. What more could one ask for besides a rugby style tackle in a drysuit?

My grand recit for the weekend was observing Shawna and Leon as a couple. They spent every moment happily in each other’s company. I can say with some authority that this is very rare. You rarely saw one without the other. This sort of affection and dedication was so genuine one could hardly not feel it’s contagious gravity. I found myself more calm, more open towards friends, Laura, and the symposium in general. It seems to be the sort of bond you only read about in books, or see in movies. And perhaps this is not unlike kayaking, where you only get out of it what you put into it. And if this is any indication, the relationship and their kayaking seemed to have an effortless grace. Meaning there has probably been a lot of hard work on both ends.

Their slide show presentation on the Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwai was fantastic. This expedition took place on the inside and outside of this island group. The outside is right on the edge of the continental shelf. The unbroken Pacific Ocean has no barrier between swell generation and the islands. So the full force of the world’s largest ocean breaks on these islands. Justine Curgenven went with Shawna and Leon and filmed the trip, so look for it in the next installment of This is the Sea.

One of Leon’s opening statements about the trip has been firmly cemented in my mind.
“You will never have enough money, you will never have enough vacation time, you just have to go.” Too bad that is too big to get as a tattoo.

I actually had many many participants and beginner paddlers come up and tell me how great the presentation was. That was a first. It is further proof that the energy you give to something is very real and palpable.

I hope to be able to find someone, or somebody as dedicated, enthusiastic and as skilled as Shawna and Leon for next year. I know there are some folks I would like to ask to visit us on Big Blue Lake. Some small part wonders if this may have been the proverbial summit of our little symposium.

I will leave you with a song by Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) that probably explains the energy we all feel about kayaking, instruction, and a life full of adventure, either small or big.

My Home Is the Sea-Bonnie Prince Billy Lyrics

I have often said
that I would like to be dead
in shark’s mouth

a woman swimming under
her warm breath sendin’ a thunder
on two parts south

and love is stripped and frayed
and duty is delayed
until next life

someone has my mind
holding yes so kind
it is my wife

and my home is the sea
my home is the sea
look not for me

my home is the sea
disaster flies upon me
and i sleep
we can see the house lights
colored from a distance
for a party as a dream

my tongue will into me
my arms unfold these seeds
cause im a strong man

and do not love my tummy
is round and firm and funny
and thats what i am

my home is the sea
my home is the sea

i am under your spell
you will have me i reckon
and the drowning this town
as a drowning i welcome

i know nothing and im over joyed
i know nothing and im over joyed
i know nothing and im over joyed

god gave you life and thought
now its ours to waste
i have the finest love
and the finest taste

see her when im home
i am home

you are home

Greg Stamer will attempt to circumnavigate Newfoundland by Sea Kayak starting June 1st 2008. He needs a little assistance getting his Nigel Dennis Greenlander Pro kayak transported there.

Greg is now a veteran of an Icelandic circumnavigation with Freya Hoffmeister. Their circumnavigation set a record for the number of days (33 days).

If you think you can help transport Greg’s Kayak read the request below from Greg Stamer himself. Leave a comment on the blog here or head over to the Qajaq USA site and comment on the forum post.

All,
I’m preparing for a solo circumnavigation of Newfoundland starting this June and need some help with kayak transport. The container with my kayak (NDK Greenlander Pro) is delayed. It might arrive in time, but I need to make alternate plans just in case. Plan “B” is to use a kayak from Tom Bergh’s stock in Maine. I need help getting the boat from Tom’s shop to Newfoundland (ideally St. John’s but anywhere will do).

If anyone is traveling from Maine to Newfoundland between now and the second week of June, and would like to help by transporting an extra boat, please give me a shout! Depending on when you are traveling, I might be able to join you in Maine and help with gas and expenses, but if this is not an option, just getting the kayak to Newfoundland will be a major help.

Alternatively, if anyone knows of another economical way for me to get the boat from Maine to Newfoundland (short of renting a car), please let me know.

Thanks!

Greg Stamer

My forward forward rolls have been suffering it seems from a lazy form. I finally hit the sweet spot this weekend by really tucking in tight to the fore deck. By not coming as far off the deck of the kayak when I initiate the sweep for my hand roll I was coming up with more ease than in the past. I think after another session I may be able to begin working back towards using a mitten and not the norsaq.
Cheri Perry had cautioned me against the commonplace arm thrust on this roll and to concentrate on the abdominal crunch and tuck.

Lo there did I feel the tummy burn on this roll…

Compulsory, like latin or greek to a traditional classic education, I went back to get my 3 star. I speak as if I did it with the thought I dropped something on the pavement and went back for it. Not sure.
I feel ready to take my next step towards my Coach 2. I It just seemed funny last night when I went through the hoops, because I already had my 4 star, and I had also taken my canoe safety test. Was it necessary? Maybe not, is a reverse figure of 8 really ever strictly necessary? No, but having done it, I can say I’ve passed the exam, no one can take it away from me, much like crossing the line (the equator in sailor speak). It is a rite of passage, and for me it is part of the experience.

Ron Smith made an excellent suggestion that I travel outside the midwest for my coach 2, to get some new perspectives on the whole thing, maybe hear some things from people out on the east, west, or some unknown foreign coast.

I agree. New perspectives are needed.

Thanks to my benevolent benefactor and intrepid guide Chuck Freedman, I was able to paddle not once, but twice on what would normally have been a land based trip to San Francisco.

Chuck made a long drive from Reno Nevada with gear to paddle with me.

We decided to head out to Santa Cruz and paddle north along the coast. We were treated with sea stars, pelicans, a hoard of sea lions, and after some searching, sea otters. As a great lakes paddler, I am used to an inert sea, a sea teeming with life sometimes bigger than the kayak is a real treat. The sea lions were not very wary of humans and let me get quite close. The sea otters were quite jumpy about me. I tried to gauge distance, but found that I drifted too close, the sea otter turned and hissed at me in anger and then dove.

Chuck and I proceeded along the coast followed by sea lions and pelicans. We ducked into coves, caves and around sea stacks. Can’t top that.

The wind was up around 20 knots and gusting to thirty, so we turned around and sailed back into the harbor.

The paddle under the Gate and along the Marin headlands was nothing short of magical. The wind was up again in the bay, around 25 knots. We ducked behind the headlands and followed the coast tucking in and out of coves. We hurried past gay nude beaches, and then finally saw some harbor seals. They were quite nervous about us and all nipped into the water once our kayaks were within a few hundred yards. But they continued to be curious about us until we rounded the Marin Headlands and saw the lighthouse. The seas were very lumpy around the outside. I managed to squeeze off a few shots, but the clapotis off the rocks was pretty intense while my hands were not on my paddle.

Chuck and I surfed back with the wind and the tide. Two and a half hours out, 45-50 minutes back. It was the sort of sea state that brings joy to my heart. White caps as far as the eye could see, green frothy seas whipping along. A few good sprints carried me along at a terrific pace. It was one of those days where you wish you could go on forever, and then off the edge of the map.

Once again, I am surprised and given faith in human kind when you meet someone as generous and kind spirited as Chuck. He didn’t know me from Adam, but dedicated his time and his effort to bring me out onto the sea in one of his favorite places. The world seems a brighter place for this sort of person.

Check out the Santa Cruz Gallery

Check out the San Francisco Golden Gate Galleries

Trip dynamics are a difficult relationship to manage. When selecting a paddling partner you’re sort of looking for that sibling/spouse/wing man vibe from the person you may have to share a tent with. I’ve been relatively lucky on my trips to have really good vibes from my tent mates. We comprise separate elements of the Aubrey/Maturin dynamic. For those not in the know, Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his particular friend, (no don’t read gay lover) Doctor and Natural Philosopher Stephen Maturin are the protagonists of author Patrick O’Brian’s wildly popular Napoleonic naval warfare novel series. 21 Books in all.

Captain Aubrey of whom I’ve written before is at sea, a leader of the James T Kirk variety. His presence commands respect among both the officer gentleman class, as well as the foremast jacks. He is a gifted navigator and seaman. He is blessed with a keen tactical sense that has provided his crews and his career with bountiful wealth in prize money. He is friendly, open, and eager. On land, though he is a bit of a buffoon. Incapable of managing his money, or political maneuvering against his best interests. He is his own worst enemy on terra firma.

Dr. Stephen Maturin on the other hand is an Irish Catalan who signed on as a ship’s surgeon in Jack’s first command, the Sophie. His temperament is moodier, more introspective, and mercurial. He knows nothing about the sea. Even after years aboard a square rigged man of war, he is deeply ignorant of the mechanics of sailing. He is however deeply interested in natural philosophy in the vein of Darwin. Because of his natural hatred of tyranny in any form he has swallowed his Irish pride and decided to work against the common enemy of Napoleon. But his linguistic gifts, Latin, Greek, Catalan, French, Gaelic, and Portuguese have provided him with a natural inclination towards clandestine work. He is a keeper of secrets and confidences by nature. And as the popular author, Daniel Silva has said, “to speak another language is to possess another soul”. His various souls have allowed him to thwart intelligence activities of the French and her allies in many countries during the HMS Surprises voyages across the world.

The relationship between Stephen and Jack is rooted in their love of music. And they encourage and entertain one another through cello and violin duets while at sea. The relationship has weathered many storms and come back to some basis of respect because of music.

No one person is really all Stephen, or all Jack. But possess traits in kind with each. We recognize parts of ourself in each. And certainly I identify with Jack deeply at times. Feeling ungainly on land, unnecessary and lost. But while at sea, alive and finally whole. But I also see a great empathy with Stephen in his need to understand every thing that walks and breathes, and what they mean to one another. His intellect serves him well in most ways, but makes other things both unavailable and impossible at times.

Jim Svensson and myself form our own Aubrey and Maturin in this way. Each of us in our own way both inept and competent. Certainly I can’t explain why we as two men apart in years and temperament choose to continually go to sea together and put up with cold, rain, danger, confined living quarters, sub-standard food, and lots of insect bites.

Suffering is just part of the joy I think, one is intrinsically linked to the other. So we venture out again on the premise that there is more joy to be had on Lake Superior, more beauty, and to paddle because it is hard, and slow. We leave family and comfort at home to have something to miss. So we can feel that longing for home at the end.

I can’t figure out all the reasons why it’s necessary to go, but I can say I know why we go together. The dynamic just works. And it’s a good thing. Having seen Derrick’s post on Kayak Quixotica, I feel for him. I’ve had a bad trip dynamic vibe myself. All I can say is from my minimal “expedition” tripping whatever experience, you do not want bad mojo at sea. Anyone can tell you that. The sooner you get that bad black voodoo in the open the better. It may seem ugly on land, but I guarantee it will be f#@!ing ugly at sea.

I don’t know Wendy, I do know Derrick. So I wish him the best of luck on his trip and hope the bad vibes run their course on land and are quickly forgotten once at sea. I hope he finds his Aubrey/Maturin voodoo soon.

I just got word from Conor Mihell, the organizer of the Naturally Superiors Greenland Symposium that I will be assisting with traditional paddling instruction in Wawa Ontario for their 2nd Annual Traditional Paddling Symposium.

Naturally Superiors is situated right in the mouth of the Michipicoten River mouth, near Wawa Ontario on Lake Superior. The Rock Island lodge is the coolest place on Lake Superior I’ve ever seen. The site is a zen-rock garden for paddling. The first time I ever saw it I wanted to move-in for good. The pre-Cambrian granite on the lake shore crops up organically around the lodge which is seated high on the shore with a terrific view of the harbor. It is Valhalla and Shangri-la all rolled into one tidy package for paddlers who dare to seek her out.

Doug Van Doren and Bonnie Perry will be coming to instruct at the event. August 24-26th. I will strive to bring what I know to the symposium.

For details on how to sign up, I would mosey over to Naturally Superior’s Web site. Also you can download the .

If you’ve never been to Naturally Superior Adventures or the North Shore of Lake Superior you really have to see it. The instruction should be top notch and the lodge accommodations are amazing.

The Symposium Details:
August 24-26th
Rock Island Lodge-Naturally Superior Adventures, Wawa Ontario Canada