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Shoving off into choppy waters AMC Outdoors, March 2000 The best way to get into a kayak is to place the paddle perpendicular to the boat, with one end on the ground and the other resting behind the cockpit. From within the L you've created, you then — with utmost grace, of course — place your hands on the paddle behind you, lean back, and scoot your body into the boat. Once I had managed that maneuver, I found the foot pedals again, fitted the elastic of the sprayskirt over the lip of the cockpit, gave Gary the OK — and felt the earth slide out from under me. And that's when it hit. Utter panic. I was trapped, paralyzed, doomed, dead. Here I sat in a craft whose dimensions were closer to those of a coffin than an actual boat. With my legs neatly tucked away under the snug skirt, I felt claustrophobia like I've never felt it before. "Um, is it too late to change my mind?" I croaked, as my kayak began to drift. No one heard me. I breathed deep, looked around at others making their way across the choppy water. "I can do this," I told myself. And I dipped my paddle into the briny shallow. The wind was picking up, and the idea of controlling this funny little craft with a twisted paddle seemed nearly impossible. The lightness of the boat was reassuring, though; it felt like being in a jumbo bath toy, all the way down to its textured plastic surface. Falling back on years of canoeing, I used the paddle the only way I knew how, dipping the blades in vertically and digging deep. That method got me where I needed to go, but the inefficient zigzag I left behind let me know it wouldn't be practical. Eventually, we struggled into some semblance of a group formation at the first buoy off the shore. Brian began to review a few kayaking basics, including the wet exit — material for my worst nightmare. After you've flipped, he explained, you "just count to three, get your wits about you, grab the loop [on the sprayskirt], and take off the kayak like you're taking off your pants." My attempt to absorb these horrifying instructions was complicated by my inability to stay in one place. Finally, after the wind had led several of us on inadvertent solo paddles, we held on to each other's sterns for the rest of his talk. The next thing we did was, quite literally, rock the boat. I had imagined that any shift would send me into the sea, but that wasn't true at all. I tipped. And then I tipped some more. I got carried away, in fact, convincing myself that it would take a lot to flip this boat. Then I heard a splash, followed by a few gasps. I turned to see that one of our group had rocked a little too hard, unintentionally providing our leaders with the volunteer they needed to demonstrate a rescue. I won't say I laughed at her, because I knew it could just as easily have been me. But somehow her misfortune lightened my mood. Maybe it was the ease of her rescue — in a flash, Brian was by her side, stabilizing her kayak while she pulled herself back in — or the very fact of her survival. Either way, she became our instant hero, and reminded me that immersion doesn't always mean certain death. I took that speck of optimism with me into our paddling practice. At this point, I had to stop pretending I was in a canoe. The biggest paddling difference is that the arms are not the whole game here. It's a twist of the torso that is key, an upper-body motion that feels unnatural at first. And while your upper body plays tick-tock, you're to keep your hips loose and your lower body relaxed. This is easier said than done, as I learned on the next part of our journey . . .
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