PART 1 - Planning The Escape
The late summer of 2022 had been one of the hottest on record in Seattle, Washington. The first week of August had seen a high pressure system drift in from the Pacific Ocean which became hemmed in by the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula in the south and the Cascade Range to the East. For three days, the heat dome sat over the Juan de Fuca Strait bringing crisp blue skies and scorching daytime temperatures exceeding 107oF. The sea was smooth like glass and the air was still except for the shimmering humidity that levitated the container ships on the horizon. Paddling the kayak through these waters felt like rowing a crucible in a furnace.
At least the sea isn’t hot like bathwater like it is in South Florida, I thought.
For the last 1,000 miles I had become acquainted with the entire variety of experiences the Pacific Northwest is infamous for; stormy seas, dense fog (what the locals call the liquid sunshine), powerful maelstroms, treacherous tidal races, and the odd encounter with an inquisitive bear. Extreme heat waves, however, were not something I had planned for.
Rolling the kayak helped; on every break I went through a ritual where I would put on my nose and ear plugs, tuck my wide-brim hat between my legs in the cockpit, and store my sunglasses into the front day hatch. Then, paddle in hand, I closed my eyes, dipped sideways into the cold water and held my breath upside down for at least half a minute to let the coolness seep in.
When I rolled back up I was infused with rejuvenated vigor, ready to paddle on again - but only for about 10 minutes. Even before the first paddle stroke, a countdown clock of heat building up in the body would quickly demand that the cooldown ritual be repeated. So it went, with lots of little rolling breaks, the seven hours it took to cross Juan the Fuca Strait Strait from Victoria to Port Angeles. That, and also keeping an eye out to make sure that the flying container ships didn’t get too close.
The heat was forecast to last for another three days, the same time when I expected to finally finish the journey. The finish was definitely on my mind, but not the finish line. By this same day next week I’d be sitting not inside the cockpit of my kayak, but in front of my desk monitor in the office, but waiting for two months worth of unread emails to load up. Maybe the monitor might even have a background photograph taken from the cockpit of my kayak on this same journey and show a distant island on the horizon coming and going with the swells. A twisted irony of sorts; to envision yourself at a time you were looking forwards to something, but not looking forwards to the time you are envisioning.
I arrived back at the same boat ramp I had taken off from two months prior. Almost immediately the phone messages started coming.
“Congratulations! You did it. We are so proud of you.” Mom and dad wrote.
Play it up a bit! It’s a big deal. No small feat to paddle around the world’s forty-third largest island, said the voice in my head. I grabbed one of the bear bangers which had been unused the entire journey and squeezed the trigger as I pointed it over the water for some celebratory fireworks. The bang sounded like a rifle which startled the fishermen on a boat two slips away. Five minutes later the police showed up asking who was firing shots.
“Sorry. It was a bear banger.” I said trying to sound as innocent as possible. They let me off with a finger wag and a warning.
“What do I do now?” I asked myself out loud.
For the first time in two months there was no headland to go around, no swells to overcome, no crashing waves to dive under. The hypnotic rhythm of putting one paddle in front of the other without noticing the hours go by was over. If one is supposed to have a sense of fulfilment in completing a long ordeal and returning back to the familiar world, I could not feel it. Until that point I felt like the main character of a great story. I looked around the marina and saw people going about their lives, to them, whether I had just finished paddling a thousand miles or was returning from a quick outing in the sound on a hot summer day meant nothing. Everyone is the main character of their own story. I gathered my gear together into the cockpit and began pulling the kayak behind me with the cart wheels squeaking over the tarmac, and became invisible.
For some of us, there comes a time in life when we conclude we are living in a version of the Allegory of the Cave. You're one of the shackled prisoners who has spent his entire life in the cave believing that the shadows on the wall in front of you are reality. One day you break free; you climb out of the cave towards the light and at first it’s blindingly bright and you can barely see. It can be stressful, even overwhelming, and you long for the comfort and simplicity of the shadows you were accustomed to. As your eyes adjust, however, it becomes evident that the shadows are mere crude representations of the true forms. Eventually you can even, if only briefly, stare directly at the Sun.
If you venture back down into the cave you’re shocked to discover that your eyes don’t see as well in that environment as they used to. Your former prison mates think you’ve become less capable because you can’t distinguish the shadows like they can. You struggle to learn to see the shadows again, but it’s a futile effort and in the end, it’s obvious; you have to climb back out and not look back.
I was in the cave for 15 years.
In my professional career I was a wastewater engineer. I designed the treatment processes for several municipal and industrial wastewater plants. The work involved multitude of tasks; evaluating the biological and chemical processes of the water treatment, sizing the tanks that could hold millions of gallons of water, selecting equipment like pumps and valves as big as vehicles, and aerators and mixers powerful enough to stir an olympic swimming pool into a turbulent whirlpool. It was an interdisciplinary endeavor and I worked with a broad team that included civil engineers who planned the site layout, structural engineers responsible for the building foundations and concrete support columns, electrical engineers that laid miles of cables and wire to power the treatment equipment and monitoring instruments, architects that planned the living spaces and floor plans, and numerous suppliers and contractors and construction workers.
It wasn’t a dull job. There were a lot of things that needed to be learned to be good at it and that kept the mind busy, but it wasn’t a career I chose out of passion. It was a necessity. Engineering was the way to get permanent residency in the United States (and a good income). Fifteen years went by from the time I first landed in Florida in 2002 as an international student to study engineering, to the day the letter from immigration services arrived in the mail. I held the envelope in my hand and immediately felt the stiff rectangular shape inside it. Looking at the small card printed in emerald green plastic that split the sunlight falling over it like a prism made ecstatic like I had just won the lottery. It didn’t matter that the photograph of me they chose to put on it was particularly unflattering.
However, as good as it felt to have achieved that, it also caused a deep sense of unease and unsettling. “What’s the job for now?” I asked.
Whenever the question came up, the voice in my head was always quick to answer; it’s to get the Green Card, it would say in a disapproving tone, as if I should be embarrassed to even dare to ask. Now, however, the voice was struggling.
It’s a noble profession, don’t you think? You take the dirty yucky water and you help make it clean. You know, so people can drink it, and fish can swim in it. Is that not fulfilling enough to make it a life’s task?
“Well… No. It’s not.” I answered firmly. “You’re trying to guilt me into shutting up.”
Every job has its own nobleness; the doctor cures illness, the policeman fights crime, the judge administers justice, the trashman keeps the streets clean, and even the humble accountant could say that without him, all the other workers, noble as they may be, aren’t getting paid. Whether a profession is noble or not isn’t relevant. What needs to be answered is this; is your profession a vocation, or is it a job. There’s a simple way to find out. If the money got taken away would you still do it?
In 2017 I changed jobs. Same type of work, even the same client, but a higher salary, and better career prospects. I was selected to lead the design for part of the expansion of the local wastewater plant, to treat an additional 50 million gallons per day. The work was demanding, we sometimes worked nights and weekends to make deadlines, but I felt enough fulfillment in the feeling that I had decision making power over how the work was done. Two years into the work, however, the client changed their mind about what it was they wanted, and axed a significant portion of the project. The company I worked for still had a contract, but several of our sub consultants were left high and dry.
“It happens,” my manager said. “Ultimately it’s the client that decides what they want or don’t. As the engineer, we are the paintbrush that paints the landscape, but we are not the painter. A fine and expensive paintbrush, mind you, but only the paintbrush.”
I wondered for a while if I could come up with the names of any paintbrush companies used by famous artists like Picasso, Monet and DaVinci off the top of my head, but it was a futile effort.
I don’t want to be a paintbrush, I thought.
On the northeast corner of Ponce de Leon Street and 22nd street in Coral Gables, Florida is a historic pink colored building called the Colonnade Hotel, built in the 1920s, with a facade of smooth columns and arches that hang over the cobbled sidewalk of Miracle Mile where dozens of shops and restaurants line both sides of the usually busy street. The entrance from the pedestrian street (which today is the back entrance) is reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome. A tall double door made of hardwood leads into a wide oval atrium lined with tuscan columns two stories tall centered around a fountain illuminated by shafts of natural light from small glass windows and the oculus in the dome above. The floor is made of pink marble laced with dark streaks in the shape of an eight pointed star, and the trickling water from the central fountain echoes between the walls like waves in a swimming pool. The atmosphere of the enclosed space is cool and crisp, which sharply contrasts with the hot and muggy South Florida climate immediately outside, and would have been all the more refreshing and pleasant to visitors in the days before air conditioning. The architect of the building put in a lot of careful thought into the design, which I much appreciated every day I walked into the building on my way to the office.
In between almost every pair of columns along the circular wall, which in the Pantheon there’d be an altar to a Roman Emperor, is instead a checkered wooden door with semi transparent glass that leads into a labyrinth of cubicle farms for the different companies offices housed in the building. Unlike the open architecture atrium, these offices were cramped and tortuous, without much natural light.
The office I worked in was one of the better ones. The room accommodated seven cubicles and four corner offices had two windows facing a concrete wall, which from midday until late afternoon would have a ray of sunlight bounce its way into the room and over the table where drawing plans were laid out for review.
Today, however, the spring rainstorm had been incessant, and the dark clouds outside meant that the office lights had to be kept on the whole time. Not that it would have made any difference to anyone but me; for months I had been the only one that came in with any regularity. In these times, working from the office just wasn’t a thing anymore.
The entire day I sat in my cubicle working on a flow model for the piping network for a wastewater plant. The network had to be set up in the model, the scenarios had to be run, errors needed to be flushed out and the results tabulated. I was in a rush to complete it along with a written set of instructions and explanations for the most likely questions that would come up. At 7pm I sent an email with the file locations in the company server to the engineer that would be taking over the project from me. After that I grabbed a cardboard box and filled it with my personal belongings, dropped my card key onto the empty front desk and closed the checkered glass door behind me which locked automatically with a loud clunk that reverberated through the empty atrium.
Well, You did it. You quit your job. How do you feel? Asked the voice in my head.
“Empty.”
I had been thinking about leaving for almost a year since I’d returned from the journey around Vancouver Island. Having gotten used to a routine that involved long days of intense physical exercise, making decisions on matters of life and death, and nights of dreamless sleep from exhaustion, returning to normal life lacked vitality even more than before.
The struggle to justify to myself what purpose my job was for and why I continued to do it was taxing my mind and resulting in many sleepless nights. I could tell that the lack of seriousness I took in my job was deteriorating the quality, and the feeling of wasting everyone’s time, including my own, felt embarrassing. Few things hurt more than someone pointing out your lack of commitment to your craft and your colleagues, when that person is you. How do you deny it?
Would you have put in more effort if they doubled your salary?
“No. I wouldn’t.” I said. “But the sense of emptiness is profoundly disquieting. What do I say when I meet someone and they ask, "What do you do?””
Well, it’s Friday. Until today you were an engineer. On Monday, you’re free to start being something else.
My journey into kayaking began around 2013. Three years before I had moved to South Florida after finishing graduate school at the University of Florida in Gainesville. As a foreigner from Brazil in the United States, my predicament would be familiar to every international student with a Diploma in hand. I need to find a job fast if I want to stay in the country.
The Government gives us only a three month grace period. In good times that was hardly needed as you could likely line up an offer or two in your senior year, but now, only two years after the Financial Crisis, even engineers did not have encouraging prospects.
I had one promising lead.
During my undergraduate studies I had interned with a local company in Miami as the field operator for a pilot membrane water treatment plant, and I had kept in touch with my supervisor with whom I had a good relationship. I called him up.
“Hey Felipe! Oh gosh, you know things are tough. Not many projects going on. We’re all light on work. But hey, we can find something for you to do. Come on down, we’ll hire you!”
In a week I had sold all the furniture from my one bedroom apartment in Gainesville, fitted three cardboard boxes with a few remaining small possessions in the back of my car, and drove the 330 miles to South Florida. My destination, a friend’s living-room couch in Coral Gables.
“You can stay with us for a little while until you get settled.” He said. “Oh, you know something… we do have a friend of a friend who is looking for a tenant if you’re interested.”
And so the border pieces of the puzzle of life were put in place. I had a job, a roof over my head, and a couple of close friends. Then an opportunity came along. Although the Financial Crisis had been devastating for the property market in South Florida, it did, for once in a lifetime, make homes affordable.
There was a property for sale in Key Biscayne, a little community on a barrier island connected to Miami via a causeway where I would often ride my bicycle on the weekends. It was a charming adobe style townhouse with bright white walls at the end of a street lined with shady sea grape trees, and a narrow cobbled footpath that led out to the beach. I put in an offer well below the asking price. I was the sole bidder, and I got the house.
“Well, now that you live by the water you need a kayak.”
I decided to search for used kayaks on the Craigslist classifieds near Miami. I found a blue 9.5-foot sit on top perception up for sale in Hialeah, an hour’s drive away. I drove to the address, and came back with the kayak shoved into the trunk of my Toyota Prius, the cover held closed with a flimsy string. The next day I went on my first paddle and set off from my house to kayak 10 miles around Key Biscayne. It took me 6 hours, I was exhausted and could barely drag the boat up the beach. How can this thing be so bulky and heavy, I asked myself. It soon became obvious; the rear plug was missing and the boat had filled up with water.
A few years passed. My mother and her husband moved to South Beach after he retired, and the little blue kayak became my preferred mode of transport to go visit them on the weekend. I would leave early in the morning heading south around the lighthouse on the southern tip of Key Biscayne, turn north to paddle up Biscayne Bay and under concrete pillars of the Rickenbacker Causeway before arriving in South Beach after crossing through the Port of Miami, sometimes with astonished looks from the sailors working the ferry on government cut. After a two hour break for visiting mom and a free lunch I would head back along the ocean side of Virginia Key to arrive home. The whole trip was about 17 miles; the five hours spent on the kayak were a very worthwhile trade to the two hours I would have spent in the car stuck in traffic.
I’ve long since lost count of how many times I made the round journey to visit mom on the little blue kayak. All these paddles instilled in me a liking for kayaking. Like cycling, running or any other activity that requires continuous repetition of your physical motions. Your mind is free to wander, you hardly feel the hours go by and life’s worries have to take a backseat to the present moment.
On one of those paddles, a thought came to me. Where else could I go on my kayak? That afternoon I searched on Google for “Great Kayak Journeys.” My conclusion: I’m going to need a bigger kayak.
I purchased a 16-foot skin on frame kayak.The fact that it could be disassembled and packed into a bag seemed like a great advantage. I could take it with me wherever I chose to go and explore. It fits inside the Prius! I said out loud, being delighted the first time I tossed it into the trunk.
With it I planned my first overnight expedition, a 45-mile journey from Miami to Key Largo over the Thanksgiving holiday. The journey went well, but the horrendous calluses I developed on my hand palms taught me the first of many valuable lessons. Don’t paddle without gloves.
Confident with this small success I did my next expedition that same year. A 100-mile journey around Florida Bay over the Christmas and New Years holiday. On that trip I ran into another paddler on his way to Key West. He owned a green Wilderness System Tempest 170 and he did something I had never seen someone do with a kayak. He could roll it.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“With practice.” He said. “It’s an essential skill if you ever want to paddle in the ocean.”
He was right. Being from South Florida where the water is almost never more than a few feet deep and the waves are hardly bigger than ripples even on windy days, I had not given much thought to just how rough the ocean can get. What would happen if I ever got into a situation where I capsized and couldn’t get back in? I would need this skill if I would ever want to do something more daring than paddling close to home.
“Where can I learn to do that?”
“There’s a kayak shop in Key Largo where I work. Give them a call and they can arrange for an instructor to teach you the roll.”
At first I was a bit skeptical that I would need an instructor. He made it look easy. I watched a few YouTube videos to understand the mechanics and felt ready to experiment on my own on a calm day at the beach close to home. The experiment went terribly, my only triumph was not choking from all the seawater I was swallowing through my nose. I called up the phone number he’d given me and scheduled my first practice session with the Key Largo kayak shop.
Learning to roll took many lessons. The kayak roll (also called the Eskimo roll) is a very unintuitive movement. After you capsize the kayak 180 degrees upside down you have to uncoil your body like a spring, swinging your paddle in a wide arc, snapping your hip to slide the kayak under your back which will then roll the boat back upright. My first few unsuccessful trials felt like trying to walk up a staircase using only my butt cheeks. More than once the instructor had to pull up beside me and lend a hand so I could catch a breath.
“The secret to getting it right is making sure your head is the last thing out of the water.” He said. “If you keep your eye fixed on the paddle as it swings around it will help. Keep looking at it the entire time. Then snap your hip and don’t think about getting out of the water, it will happen on its own.”
On the third hour of practice, and what must have been around the twentieth attempt I succeed.
“Alright, you got it! Now let’s do it a few more times to build muscle memory. You’ll be quite sore on that arm. Next time you come I’ll teach you how to do it on the opposing side. It’s just as intuitive as writing with your other hand...”
A few more years went by. I eventually learned the intricacies of the roll, participated in a few kayak symposiums around the country, and picked up some long boat surfing skills. In that time I had also upgraded through a few more kayaks (the skin on frame turned out not to be that well suited for big waves. After an incident where the frame poles came apart and I had to swim to shore, it felt like the last straw). I bought a used tempest 170 on Craigslist, which served me well on a 10 day expedition to paddle from Miami to Marco Island on the Gulf side of Florida. The kayak was fast, versatile, forgiving when my rolling technique was less than stellar, and gave me confidence when catching the swells and breakers that I could roll myself back up.
I loved that kayak, but there was one issue with it. Travelling any with it was a major hassle. My Toyota Prius is fairly small to carry a 17-foot kayak. On the roof of the car it looked like a missile battery, and traveling with it on the highway faster than 40-miles per hour while hearing the tiedown straps buzz like a swarm of bees were one of the few situations I felt ready to embrace religion.
One day I saw a video on Youtube of someone surfing big swells with a long fiberglass sea kayak. The paddler had a gracious style. He turned into position quickly with a paddle stroke or two and accelerated quickly down the wave face with ease as he stern ruddered the kayak all the way to the beach. The video ended with the paddler getting out of the water and pulling the kayak apart into three sections and shoving them into the trunk of his car and driving off. That’s exactly what I need, I thought.
Previously I had run into a few sectional kayaks, but they had all been flimsy plastic kayaks, suited only for paddling in calm lakes and rivers. This was the first performance sea kayak I had seen with this feature. I paused the video and squinted to read the brand name etched on the bow. Rockpool, a British kayak company based out of Anglesey in Wales. I googled the name and found the kayak model the paddler had been using; the Taran.
Intrigued, I found that the American distributor for the brand was based in Greenwich Connecticut. I called them up and scheduled a weekend to fly into New York for a full day trial. The boat paddled like a dream. For a sea kayak, it was fast like a racehorse, yet even at 18-feet long, felt more maneuverable than my Tempest (having a rudder definitely gave it some help). The beam was only 20.5-inches, a little slimmer than the Tempest and quite tippy, but the slenderness also made the roll feel effortless, especially in the swell. It did, however, have a rather unsightly look; the result of an oversized bow compartment that made the whole contraption resemble a sperm whale.
“It’s got more storage space than any kayak of its size, and will keep the nose from plowing into the waves. Trust me, you’ll learn to love it.”
“And you can get me a 3-piece version like the one in the video?”
“Yes, but you have to wait about a year for it.”
I grumbled, but reluctantly accepted that I would need to have the patience of a tortoise if I wanted a kayak that could take me places. I put in the order, along with a $1,000 deposit. It was an investment into future kayaking adventures. The Taran was to be the vessel to take me around Florida, Puerto Rico, and Vancouver island.
I woke up at 6:30am on Monday with no specific reason to get out of bed. For once, no one was depending on me, and that felt relieving but also disquieting. It was as if I had stumbled on a magic lamp, when the genie came out asking what wish he should grant me, I didn’t know what to ask for.
“If you don’t know, then I can’t help you. Think about it and call me back when you’re ready.”
I went out for a longer than usual bike ride and my first thought was that perhaps I should have asked the genie to help me drop a few pounds. Since coming back from Vancouver I’d hardly been exercising, and my lack of strength to ride up the Rickenbacker Causeway out Virginia Key was telling.
I then thought back to a conversation I’d had with Justine Curgenven, who was a friend and fellow paddler based out of British Columbia. When I kayaked around Vancouver Island, I had teamed up with her, her partner JF and a group of paddlers for part of the way along the Pacific Coast. She was an experienced paddler who had been to many places around the world in her adventures. New Zealand’s South Island, Tasmania, Ireland, the Aleutian Islands, and the Coast of Labrador to name a few, she would tell us stories about on a long day’s paddle..
“So where do you plan to go after this trip?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It takes a lot of planning, not to mention convincing the company I work for to give me the time off to do it.”
“You could go around Ireland or Britain. I’ve done Ireland. Takes about two months to do it at a leisurely pace and sit out the storms.”
“If I had enough time, maybe I could do Britain and Ireland.” I said jokingly.
“You could.”
Now I had nothing but time, and over the next few days, I gave the idea some thought.
Of all the places where sea kayaking is practiced, the British Isles and Ireland are one of the best locations in the world. The jagged coastline runs for thousands of miles and has countless bays, and estuaries. The environment could hardly be more varied. The coasts of Cornwall and the west of Ireland are rocky, mountainous and remote; exposed to the North Atlantic storms that built towering waves and gigantic swells. The shores around the Irish sea can be tranquil like a mountain lake on a calm day, or stirred up like a bubbling washing machine when the winds mix with the currents. On the west coast of Scotland and and the Hebrides the land indented with fjords carved by glaciers into a labyrinth of islands, passageways and dramatic cliffs. The North Sea coast has long sandy beaches dotted with historic castles and seaside towns, and in the south facing France is the English Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world where the tides can recede beyond the line of sight, or submerge a plain that only hours before seemed to be a permanent feature of the landscape. Beyond all that, the coastline is replete with hundreds of far flung islands, rocky outcroppings with brightly painted lighthouses, sea arches and stacks that are hundreds of feet tall, and furious tide races and maelstroms named for the Celtic gods. The experienced sea kayaker would be spoiled for choice in the variety of challenges to pick from.
Kayaking as a sport is very popular in the UK with more than a million people that practice some form of sea kayaking, whitewater rafting or paddle boarding. Many seaside towns in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland have canoe and kayak clubs that organize regional competitions, and tour operators offering instruction and guided trips. Throughout the year there are several kayaking symposiums organized throughout the country, the most well known ones being the Anglesey symposium held in May, and the Cornwall symposium done in October, which attract enthusiasts and instructors from around the world. Even Facebook is replete with regional kayaking social groups from every part of the UK and Ireland and have thousands of active members. There must be a wealth of knowledge out there that I can tap into, I thought.
While researching the subject I stumbled on a website called PerformanceSeaKayak that records an chronology of sea kayaking expeditions in the UK and Ireland. I found a list of sea kayakers that paddled around Great Britain and around Ireland. The list was longer than I expected, which was reassuring. It’s doable, I thought. Over the years there have been eighteen people who paddled around Britain alone, and twenty-three who accomplished the feat in a team of at least two people. For circumnavigating Ireland the list was even longer; twenty-nine had been solo paddlers, and fifty-seven were part of a team. To my delight, a good number of paddlers had done their expeditions using the same kayak as mine, the Rockpool Taran 18. It seemed like a good sign.
For paddling around the UK and Ireland, however, the list was quite a bit shorter. Only seven people had ever accomplished it. It was first done in 1986 by a group of three friends, Richard Elliot, Bill Taylor, and Mick Wibrew using Nordkapp kayaks. They completed the journey in 157 days starting from Gillingham on the Thames estuary following a clockwise route along the south coast before crossing to Ireland via the St George Channel from Wales. Their total distance was just over 2,600 miles.
The feat wasn’t repeated until 2004 when two paddlers made separate solo attempts. One was a lady named Fiona Whitehead who started from Portsmouth on the south coast and followed a similar route as the 1986 team. She shaved 17 days from the initial record and completed the journey in 140 days. The other was a gentleman called Sean Morley who achieved the incredible feat of not only paddling around the UK and Ireland, but also included the additional challenge of doing so by going around all the inhabited islands. His journey took him around the outer Hebride Islands on the west coast of Scotland, the Orkneys and the Shetlands Islands in the far north, and even the remote and tiny St. Kilda archipelago forty miles out from the nearest mainland in the Atlantic Ocean. His journey starting from Falmouth in Cornwall took 169 days and covered an incredible 4,500 miles.
The last successful attempt happened in 2013. Andy and Jane Morton were a couple from Plymouth who paddled a double Aleut sea kayak. Their journey lasted 143 days.
Bill Taylor published a book about his expedition, Commitment and Open Crossings, which is still widely available, if out of print, and Sean Morley has an extensive account of his adventure in an e-book, Paddling in Circles. Both would be required reading materials for my own planning.
“So what do you plan to do now that you’re retired?”
“I’m not retired.” I answered mom with some disgruntlement. Her question stung a little. So much of a man’s identity is tied to his job. At that moment, I couldn’t say that I was anything. At my age, I would feel embarrassed to say retired. Have you got nothing respectable to do with your time? And yet, I was walking with mom along the shaded footpath to the cape Florida Lighthouse in Key Biscayne on an early Wednesday afternoon in May. It was a pleasant walk, but it wouldn’t be the time and place someone with a job would be at. I didn’t feel like I had the right to be there.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. You weren’t happy at your job, I could tell it. No mom wants to see their son going through life depressed. But now you’re not there anymore, and you can do what you want. You especially, you don’t have kids, you’re not married, you’re not skirting responsibility with anyone.”
“Yes, I get it. But it’s kind of weird to be asking myself, what will you be when you grow up? when you're already a middle aged adult. Can I say I want to be… a Kayaker? Would that even be a thing?”
“Who’s judging you?”
If I was going to paddle around the UK and Ireland, I wanted the endeavor to be more than an extended vacation. The journey would be my job, my profession. Maybe not a paying job, but something to be taken with due seriousness and dedication, like a musician honing his craft for a performance. Completion would be a yardstick by which I would measure success, and my dedication and effort would be my trademark. It was now late May. I had about ten months to get this project set up and ready to go.
I began researching and planning the route.
The majority of paddlers who’ve gone either Great Britain or Ireland, have done so in the clockwise direction to take advantage of the prevailing southwest wind, which helps to paddle with the swells on the Atlantic, while also diminishing the headwind strength on the North Sea coast. Of the solo paddlers who circumnavigated Britain, only one, John Willacy, has done so counter-clockwise, which was his second time at it after completing the journey clockwise three years prior. Having never paddled in the UK, the majority consensus seemed like the most sensible option.
Perhaps the most important decision would be from where to start and when. Given the vast distance of the journey and brevity of the British summer, being mindful of the calendar and arriving at specific milestones during the most favorable times would be essential to complete the endeavor within the same year. After reading Bill Taylor’s book, I agreed with his reasoning to start from the Thames estuary around mid April to arrive in the west coast of Ireland by June. That would normally be the calmest month of the summer, when the fierce storms in the Atlantic most likely would be subdued. The south coast of England should also be the “easy part” and a fair warm-up for the subsequent challenges. My preferred route to Ireland would be via the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea taken by Sean Morley, rather than Bill’s crossing of the St George Channel. Sean’s seemed like the more scenic route, and if the timing were to work out, I would make it to the May Sea Kayak Symposium in Anglesey. This meant that my starting date from somewhere near London would have to be about one month earlier than Bill’s.
A London start would also facilitate another important aspect. Getting the kayak to the UK. Preparation for my three previous journeys around Florida, Puerto Rico, and Vancouver Island had been, in part, exercises of progressively increasing complexity in logistics. Florida was easy; I started and ended on the beach next to my home. For Puerto Rico I sent the kayak via a shipping container to San Juan and picked it up at the shipping company’s warehouse. With the exception of twice having to convince an apprehensive Uber driver that my 18 foot 3-piece kayak could indeed fit inside his minivan, I got the kayak to the water and then back to Florida without issues. Finally, for Vancouver Island I sent the kayak from Florida to Seattle by truck, which was more convenient than by boat, but it had the added task of finding a contact in Seattle Washington to receive the kayak and hold on to it for sometime until my arrival. David Slepak was a lucky find. He was a kayak shop owner in Everett who owned a storage facility and pickup truck. He had me and my gear dropped off by the boat ramp to start the journey.
After some research, however, shipping a kayak to the United Kingdom and navigating a complex web of customs declarations, would be a much more complicated operation than I initially anticipated. The kayak would take about a month to arrive at the Port of Felixstowe where I would either need storage until my arrival or arrange for separate ground transportation to a delivery address. It would be a two, perhaps three step operation which I would need to coordinate from the United States to get the kayak to the launch point. What apprehended me the most was having to go through the whole process a second time to ship the kayak back to the United States.
“Seems like a lot of bureaucratic effort. Would it be easier to buy a kayak there, then sell it at the end of the journey?”
“You know Mom, I think you’re right.”
A friend suggested that I should use the journey as a way to raise money for charity.
“If you’re going to be the 8th person ever to paddle around the UK and Ireland, a lot of people will want to follow your progress. You’ll have an audience.”
“I don’t like the idea of asking people for money...” I said.
It wasn’t the first time someone had asked me about this. When I paddled around Puerto Rico, the question came up whenever I met someone on the beach as I was packing to head out, or arriving somewhere after the day’s paddle.
“Wow, you’re going all the way around the island?! Are you doing it for charity?”
“No. It’s just how I spend my paid time off from work.”
Admittedly it was a nuisance how often the question came up. Planning the journey while also staying on top of things at work left little time to think about anything else. Shaking down people for money wasn’t in my list of priorities even after setting up camp or doing my daily logs. Asking people for donations, even for a charity, for doing something of my own volition, never set well with me. Why should anyone’s giving be bonded to someone else’s physical endeavor to run a marathon, or hike up a mountain, unless the health benefits of physical exercise could be transferable from one person to another?
“...if you're being asked to give to a cause, you need to get some benefit from it.”
“Like a bake sale?”
“Yes, like a bake sale. The person giving gets a slice of cake, and the charity gets the revenue from the bake sale. In fact, the person who organized the sale also gave their time. Something like that would work, but I can’t run a bakery out of my kayak.”
I gave the concept some thought in the subsequent days. I read a book about Captain Cook’s voyages in the South Pacific where amongst the many responsibilities entrusted to him were the mapping and claiming of new lands for the British Crown. All these discoveries needed names, and Captain Cook was more than willing to honor his expedition patrons by christening the newly chartered bays, mountains, headlands, and islands with their names. As I would also be embarking on a great voyage of discovery, then I also could bestow names of my expedition patrons on to the unfolding landscape.
“What I’ll do is this; anyone who donates at least $5 to a charity that I support, I will rename a geographic feature of the coastline with their name for the duration of the journey. In addition if someone helps me in any way along the way, like carrying my loaded kayak off the beach, then I’ll also bestow their name on something, and I’ll donate $5 to the charity. Getting help carrying a laden kayak up a steep beach after paddling all day is definitely worth five bucks.”
“Yeah, that might work. College campuses sell naming rights for millions of dollars. The Stadium at the University of Florida is called the Mazda Gator Stadium. And you have a charity you want to support?”
“Yes, they’re called St. Mungo’s. They help the homeless in the south of England.” In past journeys, I had often depended on the goodwill of locals who offered to take me in for a night, who hadn’t even asked me my name before giving me a bed and a meal. It seemed fitting therefore, to pay forward some of that gratuitous generosity by helping a charity assisting those who had fallen on hard times. The economic situation in the UK especially, had been quite dire. After more than a decade of austerity combined with spiking interest rates meant that even middle class families were finding themselves in homeless shelters.
Subsequent discussions led to me concluding that I should also create a logo to represent the expedition. Something that anyone following the journey would immediately recognize, if they come across me. I researched several ideas and settled on a simple silhouette design of a paddler looking straight ahead. This gave the image symmetry, and I added two distinct details. I gave the paddler a large wide brim hat which I always wear as protection from the sun, and wing paddles which are by far my favourite type.
“It’s definitely you.”
“Yes. I’m going to put it on a few beanies to take with me. I’ll give them out to people who help me along the way in addition to also giving the $5 to the charity. That way it’s a Win Win Win. St Mungos gets $5 from me, the person helping me gets a fancy beanie, and I get to not break my back carrying the laden kayak on my own. Maybe it also helps get the word.”
“I hope it works!”
On my journey around Vancouver Island I had made a stop in a village called Heriot Bay on Quadra Island and stayed two nights at the Heriot Inn, a picturesque hotel near the ferry landing that had served travelers and explorers to the region for over a hundred years, and was known for hosting lively karaoke nights on weekends. While there I met a fellow paddler who had been working at his father-in-law’s estate for the season, and we talked about the kayaking journey I was on.
“You know, this is a big trip. Have you thought of getting sponsorship?”
“I haven’t really.” With most of my free time prior to the trip being dedicated to planning the journey. I’d hardly given the idea any thought.
“Something to consider for your next journey.”
Now, more than a year later and with more time to spare, perhaps that was an idea whose time had come. Going around the UK and Ireland seemed, at least to me, an endeavor worthy of corporate interest. I soon found out, however, unless you are already at the level of a famous professional athlete, the chances of receiving a reply from an inquiry were fairly slim, and getting a meaningful amount of funds was next to none. Nevertheless; I knew this was a game of large numbers and after many shots in the dark, some started hitting their marks.
The first success came from a small company called Skwoosh that made kayaking accessories. My previous experience with their products had been using their bilge sponges to mop up water inside the gear hatches of the kayak. I’ve often found that after paddling in rough seas and rolling the boat, some water inevitably finds its way in, and having at least one super absorbent sponge in each was a prudent and inexpensive way to avoid soaking critical gear. I flattered them by saying that any paddler who started using their product would definitely become a repeat customer. Skwoosh graciously agreed and provided me with 30 sponges to give away to fellow paddlers I might run into along the way, whom I could reward for any assistance they chose to give me.
The next hit came from a company called SafeVision that made industrial goggles, which I had previously used for work. Most of their goggles would not be great enhancers for an engineer’s dweebish looks, but some models were quite stylish, and their sturdy nature, tight fit around the head and scratch proof prescription lenses not only served me well for eye protection at the wastewater treatment plant, they were also fantastic for rolling kayak carefree. “I’ve never once lost them in the water; not even in the surf when I’ve had to duck under a wave. I’ll be wearing them on every picture I take of myself; you’ll be getting free advertising. Perhaps I might help you break into a new market!” I told them unapologetically. SafeVision bought the idea and gave me two pairs of their fanciest models, one polarized, and another with transition lenses.
Falcon Sails, makers of small sized sailing rigs for canoes and kayaks, agreed to be on standby throughout the journey to overnight mail any equipment spare parts I might need free of charge, no matter how remote the location. The owner, Patrick Forrester, gave me his cell phone number and said that I was free to call him at any time, day or night.
Zijie-Sport was a manufacturer of canoe and kayak paddles based in China. I had never heard of them before and stumbled on their website one day, window shopping for kayak paddles. The best high end lightweight carbon fiber paddles from most established North American and European brands cost upwards of four or five hundred dollars, yet theirs were at the time going for less than a third of the price. I felt compelled enough to try one and purchased their flagship wing paddle. I liked it enough to propose to their marketing department if they would be amenable to give me two paddles as a challenge prize contingent on completing the journey around the UK and Ireland using their paddle. “The journey should last about six months, nearly every one of the hundreds of pictures I take from the kayak will feature your paddle; folks will want to know where I got it.” I told them. They agreed.
The last sponsor resulted from an unexpected arrangement. It would be prudent, and Mom insisted, that I purchase travel insurance for the duration of the journey. “You never know, so many things can happen, you could break an arm or a leg and end up in a hospital.”
I therefore bought a six month medical insurance policy from IMG, and with a why not give it a try and see what happens attitude, also sent their marketing department a sponsorship request with details about the trip. To my delight, the email must have been passed around and landed in the inbox of their public relations coordinator, who must have also been a kayaking enthusiast, as she wrote back with excitement for my upcoming endeavor. IMG agreed to give a modest amount of financial support, provided that I make periodic posts noting their association with the journey and added their logo to one of my paddles to be shown on trip photographs at beautiful and interesting locations.
“You’re going to be an insurance salesman during the trip?” Mom said jokingly.
“In a way, yes. If Guinness or Dominos had also gotten back to me, I would be paddling around the UK and Ireland handing out free beer and pizza.”
By the time July came around I had completely agreed with Mom’s assessment that shipping my 3-piece kayak to the UK would be a tremendous hassle. However, finding a used Rockpool Taran for sale was also proving to be difficult. I was particularly adamant that the journey should be done with that particular kayak. Firstly, because that would mean that when selecting and organizing the gear, I could do a dry run with my present kayak, and be confident that everything would fit inside the correct hatch, and the weight would be properly distributed. Secondly, every kayak has its own quirks and oddities that you develop an intuitive feel for. The particular manner it rolls, how it handles the crosswinds, the way it climbs over the swells, or how it prefers you to brace in the surf, the kayak has a personality. With time, the relationship between the paddler and his kayak becomes akin to an experienced cowboy and his horse. The rider doesn’t tell the horse to go left or right, he thinks it, and the horse feels what’s being asked, and does it. For a journey in a place I had never been to and seas I had never paddled in, I would want the kayak to be confident in knowing what I’d be asking it to do. The horse can feel it when the rider lacks conviction.
I sent an email to Rockpool in Anglesey, telling them of my plans and asked if they would be able to build me a new Taran kayak in time for the journey. Mike Webb, the owner of Rockpool, answered after a couple of days.
“Yes, it will be tight, but we’ll put you in the queue. Send me the color scheme, layup and anything else you want done.”
I felt both relieved but also a sense of guilt. Make that the only expensive present you give yourself, the voice in my head said with a hint of disapproval.
“It’s not a present. It’s an investment into the success of the expedition.”
The summer and fall went by almost without me noticing. For weeks I settled into a routine where I would wake up early, go on a 25 mile bike ride from Key Biscayne to Coconut Grove, downtown Miami, and return home before the heat of the day picked up. The South Florida summer is the inverse of the winter's up north; the humidity and heat is what keeps people indoors for most of the day.
I would then spend a few hours assessing the route for the journey. In the previous trips, I stored waypoints in my GPS unit with potential put-outs every ten miles so that if an emergency developed, I would know exactly where to head to for plan B. The process required meticulously crawling through Google Earth aerial photographs and marking the locations of sheltered beaches, harbors, boat ramps, marinas, and camping spots on a map. I would then, whenever possible, evaluate the suitability of each location with the street view image to confirm that it was a place where a kayak could safely land. This involved looking for clues in the images such as the steepness of the beach, the condition of the boat ramp, or an indication of how high or low the tide could get. For this journey between the UK and Ireland, there would be thousands of miles of coastline imagery to comb through, and imagine what it would be like to paddle there.
Later in my research I reached out through Facebook to fellow paddlers throughout the UK and Ireland asking about their knowledge where they paddled. One individual in particular was profound in the wealth of information he could give me. Mike Conroy from Newquay, Cornwall had a thin scruffy old man’s beard and was slim like a flag pole with narrow shoulders and limbs that were as thin as pencil sticks. Not the stereotypical athlete kayaker I would have visualized, with a muscular chest, and strong bulky arms that could swing a paddle through the water like a snow shoveler. And yet, Mike could do a graceful free handstand like a gymnast, and had the flexibility of a ballet dancer. His pictures showed him paddling down steep waterfalls on a whitewater river in the Alps, and rock climbing a vertical cliff with a group of adolescents who could not have been more than half his age. In conversation his eyes seemed to gaze into the distance when listening, and when he spoke, he talked in a slow and deliberate cadence that conveyed an air of authority on the subject of discussion. In the previous year, Mike had paddled around all of Ireland, and the year before that he completed a circumnavigation of the south of England, via the river Severn and the Thames. I was eager to hear his insights.
“I don’t reckon you’ll have as much trouble on the west coast of Ireland as you might think,” he said. “The shoreline’s so incredibly indented, with so many bays and islands everywhere, you’re almost always bound to find a safe spot to land.”
“You didn’t have any landings through the surf with your loaded kayak?”
“Surprisingly, I didn’t need to. Yes, the swells can be absolutely massive, and there were days I certainly felt I might’ve been a bit out of my depth. But you know, if you keep your wits about you, you see what’s coming before it gets you. There’s some lovely sandy beaches for a bit of kayak surfing, but last year the weather was downright dreadful. I had to wait almost two weeks to get around the Mizen Head.”
The Mizen Head was a Peninsula close to the southernmost point in Ireland which marked the beginning of the Atlantic coast. I had been warned by other paddlers that it was also the point beyond which I could expect to run into the monster sized swells the west coast of Ireland was known for.
“Yes, it gets pretty hairy there when the weather turns nasty. Before that, when you get to Kinsale in the south of Ireland, call up a gentleman named Jon Haynes. He’s paddled around Ireland before as well, and he's very experienced the seas in that area. I’ll get you his contact and let him know you’ll be going through and to keep an eye out for you.”
“What’s the south coast of England like?”
“Oh, it’s not quite as committing as the west coast of Ireland - well, not in the summer months at any rate, quite lovely, actually. Now, around the Portland Bill on the Dorset coast, that’s a spot you’ll want to plan your route very carefully. Pick a calm day for it, and mind the tide. It can whip up some really dreadful tidal races and overfalls around the Bill. Oh, you’ll be paddling there sometime in the spring next year - be careful.”
In January I received a message from Mike Webb from Rockpool that the new Taran kayak was ready.
“Where should I deliver it to?” He asked.
I had been looking into this issue for the past several weeks. My original plan was to have the kayak delivered to a paddling shop in central London by the Thames, which would have facilitated the initial launch. However, the only available delivery driver Mike could find was adamant that driving a wide vehicle through the narrow streets of London while towing a trailer with about a dozen other kayaks was not something he was prepared to do (to say nothing of the congestion charges). Instead he proposed to bring the kayak as far as the M25 ring road from where he would transfer it to someone from the paddling shop. The owner of the paddling shop was, rightly, incensed at the plan. “Felipe, asking me to hold on to your boat for a few weeks is one thing, but having me run around London for the better part of the day when I have things to do is quite an ask. I’m afraid I’ll have to rescind the offer. Good luck.”
“Well Mike, I’ll figure out a way of picking it up at your factory. I’ll see you in the first week of March.”
This added a layer of complexity to the logistics of getting the kayak to the water’s edge, but I was at least relieved at having greater control of events. It would take some leg work. I would need to rent a vehicle, drive 300 miles to and from Anglesey, and find a suitable campsite on the Thames west of London, but that was also close enough to Heathrow Airport to drop off the car.
“Have you ever driven a car with the steering wheel on the opposite side?” My mom asked, in a tone that suggested she already knew the answer. I had forgotten that the British drive on the left.
“Never done it. Is it tough?”
“Well, it’s kind of like learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. Second nature once you get used to it, but you might have a little mishap or two in the beginning, and I certainly remember your falls when you first started without training wheels. You know what, let’s make it easy, I’ll go with you and help you get sorted.”
“Are you sure you want to go Mom?”
“Yes, it will be fun. I haven't done a road trip with you since you were little.”
“I think I was 37.”
“To me you’re always a baby. Besides, after you take off, I’ll hop over to Switzerland to visit your sister and her kids.”
On all my journeys, Mom has always been the most supportive and helpful person in my corner. In my first extended trips Key Largo and Marco Island, she was at the finish line waiting to celebrate with me, and most importantly, drive me and the kayak home; In Vancouver Island she was indispensable in providing the weather forecast along the Pacific Coast when phone reception was out of range; and when I paddled around Florida she was on standby to drive more than 300 miles from Miami and help me with a 30 mile portage to the Suwannee River.
“Oh it’s nothing. I help out here and there, where I can. Things Moms do, you know.”
“Oh no Mom, you help out a lot. You give me peace of mind. Also, can I use your checked bag allowance on the flight to London? I’m going to need it for the kayak gear...”