Sea kayaking: There’s still time to get your feet wet

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October 16, 2009
by Christine Yeres

I discovered just recently that there is another variety of kayaking than the kind that makes you feel like you’re tumbling in the wash cycle of a washing machine, and that it isn’t too difficult or too late (in the season or in life) to try it: sea kayaking. A friend recommended that I tag along with David Watson, 57, of Gadsden, Alabama, who has lived in New Castle since 1978, and came late to sea kayaking himself.

“I’d grown up with canoes,” said Watson, “and wasn’t interested in kayaking. I’d always thought, ‘Hey, what if you have to go to the bathroom? You’re trapped.’ But gradually I crept into sea kayaking.”

“Originally,” explained Watson, “my goal was to be the first person to start at Lake Tear of the Clouds and canoe down to the Hudson.” At an elevation of 4300 feet, the one-acre Lake Tear of the Clouds is a tarn, a lake formed by glaciers, the highest lake in New York State and highest source of the Hudson River. Watson learned though that the way down is not entirely navigable, so he adjusted his sights to the Hudson itself.

Big difference between whitewater kayak and sea kayak

The sea kayak is designed to ply all open waters other than whitewater: the ocean, rivers, and estuaries such as the Hudson River, and all its ponds, bays, marshes and coves. You can choose any degree of serenity or excitement you wish. The Hudson itself falls on the exciting side, with its tides, currents, winds, whitecaps and ocean-going vessels for paddlers, as kayakers call themselves, to take into account.

“It can be pretty exciting when you get onto the Hudson and it becomes raucous,” suggested Watson, “especially if you find yourself against the wind, against the current and against the tide, but it’s still not like whitewater. There are people who can do both and flip flop back and forth, but sea kayaking and whitewater kayaking are very different things.

Sea kayaks are longer than those designed for whitewater. A 6-foot whitewater kayak is “extremely maneuverable,” explained Watson, “and gives you the ability you want to swivel and turn on a dime.” In comparison, the sea kayak measures more like 14 to 18 feet. That additional length, plus a rudder or skeg, allows you to paddle forward in a relatively straight line more easily. Sea kayaks also contain two sealed bulkheads – one in front and one in back – mainly for flotation, but paddlers often stow an extra paddle, a hand pump for bailing and a safety kit in them, along with anything else they want along for the trip that needs to stay dry.

First challenge: Overcoming fear of the skirt

For most people, as it was for Watson, the scary part of kayaking is the idea of being joined to the kayak by a Gortex skirt that you have cinched close at your waist, the hem of which is pulled tight, by means of a drawstring, around the cockpit. Although the skirt is easy to release if you’ve rolled over, you need to experience it in learning situations first, explained Linda Hoffmann of Hudson Valley Outfitters in Cold Spring, New York. “Beginners usually learn sea kayaking without the skirt.” You have to be rescue trained to wear a skirt in a Hudson Valley Outfitters rental sea kayak, Hoffman cautioned. In fact, until you’ve had the rescue training, these outfitters will only allow you to explore the Hudson’s marshes and coves in their kayaks, but won’t let you take them into the Hudson itself. Hudson Valley Outfitters offers day trips that incorporate the required training.

Second challenge: Using your legs for balance, your torso for paddling

With or without the skirt, in kayaking your legs work constantly to help keep the boat balanced in the water. On the floor of the kayak, there are two adjustable pegs against which kayakers plant their feet. The pegs are positioned in such a way that when you rest your feet against them, your knees are forced to bend just enough to be braced against the inside walls of the kayak, helping you to keep it balanced.

“This wedged-in position in the cockpit gives you the best control,” Watson explained, “which is mostly a function of the hips. The key to rolling is the ‘hip snap,’ which propels the upper body from under the boat back to an upright position. More importantly, hips are used to ‘edge’ – tilt the hull—which greatly facilitates turning. Beginners want to keep the hull flat so they feel stable. Experienced kayakers can edge aggressively without tipping.”

Although kayaking looks hard on the arms, said Watson, good paddling comes from swiveling your torso, not from working your arms alone. Sore arms are not a common complaint, even of beginners.

After first lesson, Watson never looked back

Twelve years ago, Watson signed up for his first sea kayak lesson and tour with Atlantic Sea Tours in one of their state-of-the-art rented kayaks. Launching from Newburgh on the far side of the Hudson, he and his companions headed out from under the Beacon-Newburgh bridge.. “They gave ten of us newbies a whole safety course,” Watson recalled, so he earned his skirt that day.

“As we paddled south,” he recalled, “the river was in its glassy mode. But just as we were ready to cross the deeper part of the river, [the channel] where the tankers and barges travel, the winds came up and the river was in angry-sea mode, with whitecaps splashing up over my prow and I thought, ‘Good thing I’m not out in my canoe. From now on, I’ll be in the Hudson in a kayak.’”

Later, Watson took an in-pool lesson at Club Fit in Briarcliff Manor, which served to excite him further. “That gave me an intense hankering to get good at kayaking, including Eskimo rolling – the ability to right your kayak without removing your skirt and taking in water – as well as getting yourself out of a kayak to help someone else get out of theirs. And, of course, learning how to get back in.”

However does a lone paddler get water out of the cockpit after righting the kayak? The handy pump, stored in the bulkhead does it. “This is one of the benefits of having a partner with you,” said Watson. “You can use his boat to prop your own on, upside-down, to empty the water.”

Watson convinced me to take the plunge

After listening to Watson’s experience with sea kayaking, I decided to give it a try. I traveled with him and his two yellow one-seater sea kayaks to Croton-on-Hudson. We entered the train station driveway and drove all the way past the station to a gravel and dirt area where we parked and put the kayaks into the broad, shallow Croton River lined with reeds. We headed away from the train bridge, going upstream. The sky, the water, the bridge, the train and the day were all gray and gorgeous. Our yellow kayaks were the flashiest things around. Watson says you want to be flashy – and noticed – if you paddle the Hudson. We steered clear of it, of course.

Because the water was so shallow and still, I wore the Gortex skirt. I wedged my legs against the insides of the kayak, and paddled with him a little more than a mile. Experiments in turning were slow but not difficult. When we hit a bit of current that ruffled the water, I felt I was getting nowhere, but that may have been an illusion.

We turned around there and paddled the mile or so back to our launching place. In no way did I attempt any fancy “edging.” Instead I was very careful to keep my vessel flat and used my legs and waist just to counteract the off-balance action of putting in the paddle on one side, then the other. At Watson’s urging, I modeled my paddling after his, turning my torso to strike up, out and into the water, and was pleasantly surprised the next day that I felt no muscle soreness at all. He was a good teacher.

A healthy respect for a serious waterway

“The Hudson is tidal up to Troy, [New York], with oceanic vessels going up and down it,” cautioned Watson, “so you have to have some sense of how big a place you’re playing in. The only smaller thing in the water than you and your kayak would be a swimmer. You have to have plenty of time and distance because you’re only going 4-5 knots, and they aren’t going to be able to get out of your way. You have to scope things out and be careful. If you were to capsize in the channel it could get dicey, whereas along the shoreline you could take your time getting back into your boat.”

Beginners should keep off the big majestic Hudson and stay in its friendlier marshes and coves. “Kayaks can operate in as little as a foot of water,” explained Watson, “although you’re almost poling at that depth instead of paddling. But it is part of the appeal to go where nothing else can.”

Watson cautioned, “If you’re inexperienced, you shouldn’t be out alone. It pays to be ultraconservative until you gain respect for what can go wrong. Once you go over once or twice, you say ‘Ah, yes, I see!’ ”

Spring is deceptive, warned Watson, “although it looks warm and sunny, the water still thinks it’s winter,” Watson pointed out. “But in autumn, it takes time for bodies of water to cool down. Although there are all-weather kayakers, Watson plans to end his season in mid-November. Hudson Valley Outfitters ends its season the last weekend of October, or sooner, if the water temperature falls to 60 degrees. It was around 64 degrees this week, Hoffmann reported.

A comeback for the Hudson

“There’s been a return to the Hudson river on a lot of levels,” Watson commented “There’s a huge contingent of Manhattan and Brooklyn kayakers and a great deal of email broadcasting on the subject: where it’s legal to put in; whose jurisdiction certain locations fall under and what Coast Guard regulations require if you’re circumnavigating Manhattan at night.”

“My sense is that the Hudson is cleaner,” said Watson. “There are people fishing and even swimming in it. But we also see a lot of debris, the products of ocean-going vessels, anything that been tossed or fell overboard. The Hudson flows both ways, which is convenient if you time your trip well and can go with the tide to your destination and back, but it also accounts for the debris hanging around. Because of that, anything that’s bad that drops in doesn’t go away anytime soon. It doesn’t have that nice flushing that goes on with actual rivers.”

“Kayaking groups connect on the internet,” Watson noted, “and go out from time to time to clean up tin cans, bathrobes and tires. It’s a real community.”

Where to begin a kayaking life

Atlantic Kayak Tours’ Paddlesports Center at Annsville Creek in Peekskill, http://www.atlantickayaktours.com/index.html

Upcoming events at Atlantic Kayak Tours

Sunday, October 18

Annsville Easy (Beginner Tour)

Popolopen Creek (Beginner Tour)

Valentino (Intermediate Tour)

Saturday, October 24

Hudson Highlands Intermediate

Tivoli Bays (Beginner Tour)

Sunday, October 25

Housatonic River (Intermediate Tour)