Paddling the seven seas

I tell peo­ple one of my favourite pas­times is kayak­ing, but I hardly ever get to kayak these days.

Back when, then and all that time ago, I didn’t kayak all that often either. So I sup­pose kayak­ing is a favourite in the sense that I remem­ber lik­ing it a lot when I did do it.

I like kayak­ing for the quiet soli­tude it affords, though I don’t mind hav­ing a com­pan­ion kayaker who shares the same sen­ti­ment, and who might be able to help you out if you don’t exe­cute a kayak-capsize-drill prop­erly. I dis­like any motorised water sport, which I think to be the domain of clue­less land­lub­bers who think they love the sea. And don’t even get me started about wake­board­ing. If you really love the sea, you’d love kayak­ing, and per­haps sail­ing. But…

A kayak can go almost any­where in prac­ti­cally any weather. In the right hands it is prob­a­bly the most adapt­able and sea­wor­thy ves­sel afloat. Kayaks have been pad­dled across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean and up the Alaskan Coast and down the Nile and the Amazon.…

…There have been pad­dlers in kayaks at the (Cape) Horn for as long as there have been humans.… Four hun­dred years later the kayak is still unchanged in its basic design, because for its size it is as near as pos­si­ble to being a per­fect boat.

~Paul Ther­oux, Pad­dling to Ply­mouth, Fresh Air Fiend

I haven’t pad­dled even the short­est stretches of the Atlantic, the Caribbean or Alaska, but I have, with a friend, pad­dled from Sin­ga­pore to Tioman in a dou­ble Klep­per kayak, sim­i­lar to the ones the British and Aus­tralian com­man­dos used to blow up Japan­ese ships in Sin­ga­pore Har­bour. Made of maple and can­vas, it is the most sea­wor­thy craft I have ever pad­dled, even if I haven’t pad­dled many.

The trip took twelve days from Changi Beach to Pulau Tioman, and accord­ing to my kayak jour­nal, which I for­tu­itously found while try­ing to tidy my room (and which prompted this post), we set off from Changi on Wednes­day 7th of August 1991:

0700 Arrive at Changi Point. Ate break­fast. Bought water. For­got bread.
0720 Changi Beach. Assem­ble Klep­per. Load up.
0800 Leave Sin­ga­pore.
0900 Pad­dle past Tekong.
1100 Arrive at Tan­jung Penger­rang Immi­gra­tion check­point.
1630 Arrive at Tan­jung Datok, set up camp, din­ner, rest.
Total travel 30km, 8 hours pad­dling. Cur­rent and wind against us.

The rest of the jour­nal gets even more sketchy as tired­ness and bore­dom set in:

9th August 1991:

1600 Land on unknown beach. Super sea­sick.

And then there’s one long jour­nal entry about how Jason’s Bay (Telok Makhota) is extremely depress­ing. The whole beach is lit­tered with cow­dung. And our great­est chal­lenge is com­bat­ing bore­dom. , fol­lowed two days later by:

Most ner­vous moment of trip so far when storm blew up gale force 6 winds. Made it to Sibu after 8 hours non stop pad­dling.

That is a clas­sic under­state­ment. I remem­ber shit­ting bricks when the storm hit. I remem­ber throw­ing up on both sides of the kayak. I remem­ber the siz­able shark cir­cling us after prob­a­bly over­dos­ing on the scent of my vomit. The jour­nal ends with these entries:

Pulau Tinggi, Thurs­day 15th August 1991:

…Have decided to push for Tioman tomor­row. Will be tough­est leg so far (>50km) and will take 12 hours or so.

Fri­day 16th August 1991:

Woke up late. Decided to post­pone cross­ing till Sat­ur­day 3am or later, maybe 8am. Bored to tears. Word has got­ten around the island that we’re two Japan­ese commandos.

Sat­ur­day 17th August 1991:

Rained heav­ily in the morn­ing. Have to post­pone cross­ing again. Decided to slot mid­night as depar­ture time. Didn’t get to sleep last night because of the wed­ding party on the island.
Sun­day 18th August 1991:
Left Pulau Tinggi at mid­night as planned. Couldn’t see any­thing in the dark but our slip­shod nav­i­ga­tion skills man­aged to see us through till dawn, when a storm broke. Got ter­ri­bly sea­sick. Barfed twice. Sighted the island at 0745hrs but pad­dled like mad to arrive at Tioman at 1300hrs. Total time in the sad­dle 13hrs. Sore bums, hunger pangs and phys­i­cal exhaus­tion norm for the day. Booked into cheap resort (RM15 a night), relaxed. GAME OVER.

This is the one trip I’d love to be able to do again, for what­ever vain­glo­ri­ous rea­sons which I won’t admit to. Why, me and my kayak­ing friend even wrote the leisure arti­cle for Straits Times Life [Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 16, 1991, Leisure, Page Ten] and got paid $200 for our effort — writ­ing and the trip. Cheap adven­ture. But for some fucked up rea­son, the edi­tor decided to omit my name from the story, so it would sound like it was an almost solo adven­ture but the adven­turer decided to ask a friend along.

But these days, I find that a good kayak­ing day con­sists of two hours or so of pad­dling through scenic waters, and the only place avail­able with kayak rental and scenery is Pasir Ris Park, where you can rent a kayak for $15 an hour and pad­dle to Pulau Ubin and back. There are creeks on Ubin which are worth explor­ing for their flora and fauna and grumpy fish­er­men liv­ing in huts with big dogs that threaten to leap into the water and take a chunk out of your pad­dles. For­get the sharks, these marine dogs can be real mean too.

Back in Syd­ney, I pad­dled Mid­dle Har­bour , where you have to fight traf­fic as if you were on the road. I once pad­dled in the mid­dle of the chan­nel with­out know­ing there was this pas­sen­ger ferry bear­ing down behind me. The ferry pilot must’ve thought it was funny to wait till the last moment to sound his damned loud horn, star­tling me to the point of my bum leav­ing my seat. Good amuse­ment for the 100 plus pas­sen­gers on the ferry. Later that same day, a deranged seag­ull attacked me while the same ferry was mak­ing its return jour­ney through the chan­nel, so the pas­sen­gers had the ben­e­fit of watch­ing me fight off the seag­ull with my paddle.

I think there’s some­thing nag­ging me to return to the sea. (Duh. You think??) I want to do the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Alaskan fjords and maybe the Cape. I might start off easy again and go do the Pasir Ris to Ubin leg. But please don’t leave any com­ments about it being a mid-life cri­sis thing, all youse landlubbers.

Tech­no­rati Tags: kayak