PART 2  - The Road to the Water

We were on the road to Anglesey before 10am, the fog cleared after we pulled away from London and the M40 highway wound through a patchwork of rolling hills, beige pastures, and farms separated in by tall hedgerows and fences. Mom did most of the driving in, leaving only the last stretch after crossing the Menai Straits Bridge for me after I asked to get a feel for left handed driving. I can say proudly that I only clipped the pedestrian sidewalks on two occasions, and the honking from other fellow drivers was also soon understood to mean that I needed to hug the left side of the lane instead of the right to let faster traffic through. Fortunately there was no need to parallel park at the hotel or I would have embarrassed myself in front of the sheep watching us from the adjacent farm field.

 

The next morning after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and mutton we drove into Holy Head to the Rockpool Factory, which was tucked next to a martial arts fitness gym and an antique furniture store. A big Rockpool sign in bold black lettering pointed the way towards an open roll up door on the inside corner of the L-shaped warehouse along the edge of the parking lot. “Hi Mike, this is Felipe, are you here?” I said walking into the building. 

 

“Hi Felipe, will be right with you.” Answered a voice that sounded some distance away in another room. 

 

After serving in the Royal Air Force, Mike Webb got his start in the watersports industry making windsurf boards in his spare time from work at the Anglesey Aluminum Mill. For a while he worked with Nigel Dennis from SeakayakUK, but sometime after branched off on his own to found Rockpool Kayaks (the two kayak shops are in fact right next door to each other) and in the later started a partnership with John Willacy. 

 

John Willacy is one of the most experienced kayakers in the United Kingdom. A search on google revealed a decades long career in the sport spanning the globe from Norway to Tasmania, with championship wins in white water racing, slalom, long distance, and so many accolades, awards and competition medals that even a North Korean general would feel humbled. 

 

In the late 2000s John and Mike had a hunch that perhaps there might be a niche in the kayak market for a different type of expedition sea kayak. 

 

In general, a specialized kayak is designed for speed, maneuverability, or storage capacity. A surf kayak is short and nimble with a flat hull made to carve and play in the waves but will struggle to move in a straight line or carry anything more than the paddler.  A boat like a fishing kayak is stable to the point you can stand on it, and can transport all the gear you will need for an extended journey, but is slow and unresponsive like a barge. If the paddler wants speed, then boats like surf skis that are long and tapered like a lance can glide over the water like a torpedo; however, they will be unstable like a rolling log and have the storage capacity of a glove.

 

A sea kayak can usually be optimized for two of the attributes. They can be made to carry sizable loads, and if the hull is designed with plenty of rocker and a wide beam, the boat will be maneuverable and stable in rough seas, but may have difficulty traveling in a straight line and the distance it can cover in a day will be limited. Conversely, if the hull is made straight with only a little rocker, then the sea kayak will track in a straight line, and the speed will also improve, at the expense of nimbleness and turning ability.

 

A sea kayak that could do all three things well, would be a pipe dream, but an idea worth exploring. Based on John Willacy’s experience in whitewater paddling and long distance racing, Mike constructed a sea kayak with a plump torpedo shaped bow, but that tapered into a flat section under the cockpit, and slimed into a long shallow fishtail at stern. This gave the kayak a long waterline for speed in flat water, but also allowed the bow and stern to be unencumbered when catching waves and swells for agility and control. Thus the Taran was created. In late 2009 John took the kayak for a run around the Isle of Anglesey, the weather wasn't great, but he managed to knock 20 minutes off the record. His later tests in the tidal currents of the Menai straits showed that in the hands of a skilled paddler, the boat could climb the waves and swell with precision and grace like a skier carving down a tight slalom course on a mountain.

 

“At first there wasn’t much demand for it. The boat got some very negative feedback.” Mike said. “People thought it was really ugly. Nothing like the slender lines of a typical british sea kayak”

 

“I guess the big hump on the bow does make it look like you're paddling in a giant dildo. At least that’s what I thought when I first tried it.” I said with a grin.

 

“Haha, perhaps if you have a dirty mind in the gutter. After it started winning races and getting noticed though, the orders started piling. We’re making several boats a week. Could be making even more if Brexit hadn’t slowed things down a bit. Well, let me go and bring out your boat. Oh, John said he’d like to come by tomorrow to meet you if you’re around.”

 

He walked to the back of the warehouse where he opened a tall roll up door revealing a room filled with Rockpool Tarans stacked vertically from floor to ceiling along support rails, and rolled tightly in bubble wrap like colorful mummies bound for the British History Museum. 

 

“A lot of these are for our friend Dave in Connecticut.” Mike said, referring to the distributor from whom I purchased my original three-piece Taran which I keep at home in the living room.” 

 

“That was the last time I’ve ever made a three-piece boat. It’s a real headache, you know. I have to chop the thing up with a saw blade and then faff about patching it up the bulkheads.  Takes ages. Ah, here’s your boat.”

 

He picked out one of the mummified kayaks from the stacked up quiver,laid it on a wheeled trolley, and then cut open the bubble wrappings.

 

“It’s one of the prettier ones, I have to say.” 

 

With the exception of the missing stainless steel hinges spaced around the front and rear of the cockpit for the three piece set up, it was an identical replica of my kayak back home. This was intentional. By picking the exact same color scheme, orange yellow for the deck and a jet back hull, I deliberately tricked myself into an immediate sense of familiarity with the kayak. 

 

“It is!” I agreed with excitement. “But I do need to add a few things though which might take a while.” 

 

In truth it would eventually take two solid days of work for me to modify some particulars that I felt needed for the expedition.

 

The first item was easy. I swapped out the lower backband and seat pan for an infinitely more comfortable foam seat made to the specific measurements of the Taran cockpit. My first extended journey around Florida with the Taran left me convinced that British paddlers either have a penchant for masochism or they’ve evolved over generations the robust, thick skinned buttock of a wombat. Anyone who’s ever had to sit for 12 hours or more in a kayak without the possibility of landing knows the importance of a comfortable seat.

 

I then proceeded to do something that Mike thought was a bit odd.

 

“I’m going to coat the entire hull with helicopter tape.” I said.

 

Perhaps it is something peculiar to me, but when it comes to pet peeves, few things irritate me more than discovering a major scratch on my boat. I remember the first time it happened to the three piece Taran. Oh the agony… It was my third outing, and I was pulling the boat on a cart, when one of the wheels hit a bump and the whole thing tipped onto the pavement. I screamed in pain for the kayak and anger at my carelessness, I saw the bump before I went over it. Why didn’t I go a little slower? When I flipped it back up there was a nasty gray gash under the seat area as if a tiger had dug its claws in it. The scrape remains there, even after many efforts to polish it off. 

 

“Eh… battle scars. A boat that doesn’t have any is one that’s never been paddled. It’s futile, bound to happen.”  

 

“Well I don’t care if I’m battling against the inevitable. I’m going to fight to keep my new boat looking beautiful for as long as possible.”

 

Helicopter tape is an abrasion resistant polyurethane film used on sports cars to prevent scratches from road grit and stones. You apply it in sheets to a surface wetted with soapy water and then skim the top with a hand squeegee to wedge out the water along with any trapped air bubbles. When applied by a professional in a carshop, the work looks flawless, the seams and junctions between panels are invisible, and lasts for years with proper care. I experimented with the tape during the Vancouver Island Circumnavigation and coated the middle section on the starboard side of the kayak with the material to see how it would perform. The result was encouraging, the tape had taken a beating from the shingle beach landings and draggings over the coarse sand, but when it was peeled off the hull section underneath looked smooth and scratch free.

 

“Sure, it won’t save me or the kayak if a big wave tosses me on the rocks, but maybe 3M will grant me a little forgiveness if I get distracted. Oh hell, you know what I just thought? I should have asked 3M to sponsor me.”

 

The next to do item was the one I had been dredging the most, the installation of the kayak sail. I loved having the sail in the Kayak. Sure, some purists would argue that a sail on a kayak is the equivalent of an e-bike; it takes away some from the physical strain of the challenge, but I would say that it opens up a different set of experiences. In a sea kayak, especially one packed full of gear, a little wind on the sail in a downwind run gives just enough push to catch the swells in the open sea more consistently for an enjoyable surf down the face of the wave (though I would not recommend catching breaking waves with the sail deployed as it makes rolling the kayak an awful lot more difficult). If conditions are right, 35 mile days can be turned into 50 or even 60 miles, which opens up the possibility for crossings you might not otherwise have been willing to attempt.

 

Kayak sails are normally an aftermarket addition, most sea kayaks are not designed with them in mind. The installation can be a very stressful affair, and the Taran was no different. 

 

“We have to drill twenty-three holes on the deck to install the padeyes for the stays, the line clips and the mast joint that goes inside the bow hatch.”

 

“We?” Mike raised one of his eyebrows. “You mean You. I’ll lend you the drill, but I’m not taking responsibility for puncturing holes in one of my kayaks.”

 

“Yes, that’s what I meant to say.”

 

I felt a pang in my conscience for what I was about to do; swiss cheese the brand new kayak  I had just sunk a considerable amount of money into before I’d even had a chance to paddle it. There would be no do overs. Every hole had to be right the first time, twenty-three times. I was fortunate, however, to have the Taran in Miami which already had the same sail installed for an exact guide. Before taking off, I had photographed every padeye and screw on the deck, and had their positions measured from at least two separate reference points. Now I began penciling in their locations on the new kayak, and after double and triple checking with a tape measure and comparing the marks with the photographs, I grabbed the drill, confirmed I had the right the bit diameter, and took a deep breath. In one second the whining drill went through the three millimeters of kevlar and carbon-fiber of the kayak deck like a hot knife through butter. “Oh, that wasn’t so bad.” I said breathing out with relief. “Twenty-two more to go.”

 

Finally, there was one last item to prepare the kayak for the grand mission ahead of it. Adding decals to the deck and hull and infuse it with a unique character and identity. A year prior I had come across the work of a local artist  from the south of England. Julian Witts had a talent for carving wood panels. With a simple stanley knife, a set of wood gouges, and two miniature chisels, he could transform a plank of japanese maplewood into a scene about the coastline of his native Devon replete with a cast of inquisitive birds, feisty grey seals, crafty pikes and slithering eels, each engaged in the eternal struggle for survival. The two dimensional black and white figures that emerged from simple geometric shapes reminded me of artwork of ancient greek pottery.

 

“I don’t normally work out of a Master Plan,” he said. “It takes more than a month to cut a large block, so I start with a few scribbles here and there before an image starts to emerge that I can start cutting. Much of the joy in the work is in not knowing the final destination. It’s like a mystery novel, I let the grain of the wood guide the path of the knife and reveal the story. Sometimes what at first looks like a mistake turns out to be a thrilling plot twist.”

 

One work in particular spoke to me. It was an image of three exasperated sea kayakers caught in a storm much tougher than they’d been prepared for. One paddler frantically shooed away birds nabbing fish kicked up by the swell, while one of his mates looked startled as if he’d only just about managed to keep his balance upright to avoid crashing into some rocks. The third paddler wasn’t so lucky and had capsized; her eyes looked puzzled at the fish staring back at her from the seabed as if her predicament hadn’t yet set in. Whether her companions would be able to assist her looked doubtful. The scene gave me a shiver. It was like staring at the confusion in Picasso's Guernica and feeling fear, and helplessness when you’re caught up in events beyond your control.

 

“Yes, that was a very rough day. Everything changed so quickly; we were lucky to make it back. These days I tend to be a little more careful when I’m out there. I also rediscovered a passion for cycling. It feels a little bit safer to be on dry land.” 

 

Julian and I discussed how we could incorporate his artwork in the kayak. I divided the boat deck into sections Julian used to size fourteen carving panels from which an imprint of the work would then be transferred to paper and scanned for making waterproof decals.  We settled on the theme of the seascape of the British Isles and Ireland and the various creatures that live in it. There would be a variety of native fish, birds, and marine mammals engaged in scenes and activities where they might be observed in the wild. The composition would be in the style of a history mural where a person scanning their eyes from one end of the kayak to the other would read a visual story. 

 

“Something that you could look at and see the theme, but not see everything all at once. You can go back to it a second or third time, and find something new; like when you paddle the coastline, the weather is always different, so when you go back the experience can feel familiar, but is a little different as well - if that makes any sense.”

 

“Yes, it does. I know exactly what you mean.”

 

Julian did not disappoint. From the bow to the stern he crafted scenes of flying seagulls and perched comorands on top of sea cliffs, with seals and whales hunting bait balls of fish in the swells. Around the hatches he drew eels snaking along the deck curves, and in between the stays were schools of mackerel, cod, and flounder with a few crawfish and crabs hidden between the a few inconspicuous rocks and kelp leaves drawn near the seat.  

 

“This was quite a fun project.” 

 

“It looks fantastic!” I said ecstatic.

 

“Did you notice the kayaker paddling with the basking shark?” 

 

“Yes. It’s me! With a beard and my wide brim hat!”

 

“That’s right! You’re bound to see them on the west coast of Ireland. They migrate to feed on the plankton blooms in the summer. I’m sure you’ll run into one.”