AMC Outdoors, March 2000

By Katharine Wroth

Before you read this, there's something you should know about me: I'm afraid of water. Actually, to be precise, it's drowning that gets to me. I can't explain this. I didn't have any early-childhood experience that scarred me — in fact, I grew up canoeing and splashing in a Vermont lake, and I am even a fairly strong swimmer. But over the years, I've gone through phases when I'm utterly petrified. I have drowning nightmares — horrible, airless descents into death — and they are enough to keep me on dry land for months at a time.

I'm trying hard to conquer my fear once and for all. So when this "learn to sea kayak" assignment came up, I jumped at the chance. I knew little about kayaking, beyond the footage I'd seen of paddlers flipping into raging whitewater, and even less about sea kayaking. But I did know, as with the proverbial horse, that getting on the water could be my only salvation. And I thought there was the off chance that it might be fun. Shortly before the big day, when my mother called with the very questions I'd first put to myself — "You're heading out into the ocean? In what?" — I found I had made some progress. "I'll be fine," I told her, and I almost believed it.

I was feeling good as I made my way to Gloucester, Mass., on a gray, windy August day for an AMC Boston Chapter intro-to-kayaking class. I'd had only one panicky dream about the excursion, and it didn't end with suffocation. I had just read The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger's tale of an ill-fated Gloucester fishing vessel, but I wasn't letting my overactive imagination create associations between my voyage and that one — well, not too many. When I got to the town boat ramp a few minutes before 9 a.m., and the other early arrivals and I had that nervous "I've-never-done-this-have-you?" conversation, I felt even better.

But then the van pulled up with its trailerful of brightly colored kayaks. My heart began to pound. I tried to focus on the way the hues — teal and purple and yellow and orange and red — added brightness to the day. On the cheer and calm of Jeff and Gary, the two AMC leaders, and Brian, an instructor from Charles River Canoe and Kayak, as they asked for our help unloading the crafts. And on the labor of doing just that — though "labor" might not be the right word; the kayaks were surprisingly light.

My confidence was dwindling, and it didn't come back as Brian handed out paddles, PFDs — personal flotation devices, a.k.a., life vests — and sprayskirts. We stood on the beach, three instructors and nine pupils. Those of us learning were all women, and our ages ranged over several decades. One was there because her dentist had gushed about the sport, another because she had family who had tried it, others out of pure curiosity.

I looked around at my seemingly calm compatriots as we followed the paddling instructions from our leaders: use the torso to pull, not the arms; grip the paddle firmly with one hand but loosely with the other to let it rotate. I nodded and swiped at the air with the angled blades, but couldn't imagine how this would work in the water. The next step was to get into our kayaks to check the placement of the foot pedals, which serve as braces but also control the kayak's rudder. I was relieved to learn that we would not be complicating our initial voyage with that steering mechanism.

After adjusting for legroom, then getting back out to stow our gear in the hatches, we put our sprayskirts on. We looked like forlorn circus clowns, the vivid nylon skirts suspended on straps from our shoulders. Then, one by one, each member of what had been a group put on a PFD, clambered into her own pod, and was shoved into the water. Soon it was my turn . . .

Next:
Shoving off into choppy waters