Training Is Neat on the Rocks

I’m very fortunate to have a deep Everglades Challenge (hereafter EC) talent pool here in the Triangle of North Carolina. Besides Kristen, there’s Dawn Stewart, aka SandyBottom, who has seven ECs to her credit as well as one Ultra Florida Challenge (around the entire state), and the members of Carolina Kayak Club count several other EC finishers and very experienced paddlers. It’s been a privilege to paddle with them all; their generosity has been remarkable.

The training really started in earnest last August, when a group of us spearheaded by SandyBottom did a two-day trip from Cedar Island, dubbed by Dawn as "The Vacation to Hell." North Carolina paddling may turn out to be pretty good EC preparation, as folks down that way have a lot of interesting sayings. For example, “Mosquitoes visit lots of places, but they call this home.” A month later, entering the 100-mile North Carolina Challenge (SandyBottom race director), I’d learn another one: “When fishermen hear that the kayakers are coming, they figure they’d better get the flounder nets out. Means weather’s coming.” Boy did it! That was an interesting baptism, one that ended up in hypothermia and my withdrawal after day one. You don’t have time to read the list of lessons learned.



Since mid-December I’ve been paddling with Dawn and sometimes Jaybird (NC Challenge finisher) and Lyman. Have you heard that it’s been cold here? A week ago Sunday Dawn and I scaled back a 4-to-5-hour paddle to 2-to-3 because of the rate of ice accumulation on our decks and spray skirts. (For the uninitiated, a spray skirt [winter version] seals around the kayaker’s waist via neoprene and connects to a flange around the cockpit. It keeps much of the water out of the cockpit.) Spray skirts become a particular concern below freezing, as we depend on their ready removal for escape should the bottom of the boat moon the sky. (Full disclosure: The photograph above of pack ice on the Haw is from a more-recent adventure, about which more anon.)

Most non-kayakers seem to consider this sort of activity a complete leave of senses. But actually, we dress for it, and I’m rarely uncomfortable. The hardest parts are getting a tired body in bulky clothing and boots out of the boat at the end of the paddle, and then having to remove toasty neoprene gloves to get all the delicate bits and pieces into the car. Landlubber gloves that allow a little bit of manual dexterity help.

And the lake in winter is an entirely different place, in many ways more enjoyable than in other seasons. For one thing, few others are so crazy. Lyman and I had a 4-hour paddle just before Christmas during which we saw no other people, let alone a powerboat. (Yes, there are occasional tensions.) Water levels also tend to be high, so we’ve been able to explore areas unreachable during drier times. Since the North Carolina forest in this region averages about two-thirds deciduous, we can peer back into the woods, looking for elusive bald eagles. Lyman and I watched one that must have had a 5-foot wingspan soar for more than 10 minutes on thermals generated by the relatively warm water. I’m convinced it must have been playing, since hunting didn’t seem to be involved. But I’m just anthropomorphizing: It just as well could be called practice/training, although I prefer the two sets of activities to be indistinguishable. Skoal.