Below find our interview with Paul, a sidebar on his voyaging history, and an excerpt from his new book The Audacious Alaskan Adventures of Kayak Dundee. To order any of his books visit this site.
Once New Zealander Paul Caffyn started sea kayaking, he just kept on going. How far did he go? Oh, only 40,000 miles or so. His voyaging biography reads like a National Geographic adventure series.
In the summer of 1979 Paul paddled 1700 miles around New Zealand’s North Island—including a crossing of treacherous Cook Strait. A year and several ambitious trips later he completed a 2200-mile, 85-day circumnavigation of Great Britain. If that epic journey wasn’t ambitious enough for a lifetime, in 1982 he spent 360 days making the first kayak circumnavigation of Australia—fully 9420 miles. This epic voyage included one 34-hour stretch of continuous paddling alongside impenetrable cliff walls where he had to pop Nodoz tablets to stay awake.
In 1985 Paul completed an arduous 4,400 mile, 112-day paddle around the four main islands of Japan. This was another first and led to widespread publicity of kayaking in Japan and some significant exposure for Paul, including his being featured as a “nude” centerfold in a Japanese edition of Playboy.
Over the ensuing decades Paul would continue voyaging at a torrid pace, with many circumnavigation “firsts” and expeditions to places as far-flung as Greenland, Thailand, and New Caledonia.
Paul is the author of several books and was for 28 years the editor at New Zealand Sea Kayaker magazine.
We caught up with him to ask about his best and worst moments on the water, how he packs for voyaging, and whether his epic trips are inspired by a desire to make memories.—Eds
SCA: When did you begin kayaking and did you have experience on other types of boats before you got into kayaking?
Paul: My first paddling experience was in a small double-ended wooden canoe. I must have been five or six years old, and my parents would drive down to Queensland’s “Gold Coast” for a day on the golden sand beaches and body surfing. At Broadwater, on the drive home, there was a ‘rent a canoe’ outfit with 30 minutes in a tiny canoe for about six pence (prior to decimal currency). My sister and I would kick up merry hell if we didn't stop for a brief paddle.
That and a black and white 1935 photo of my father and his brother in a Canadian canoe on the Brisbane River, I’m sure triggered my passion for paddling. Although my parents were not keen, that brother helped me purchase my first boat, a 17’ Peterborough Canadian canoe, with £10 of my pocket money. I could not lift the boat on my own, but joining the local canoe club led to week long river trips, and also encouragement to gain the skills necessary to balance tippy K1 kayaks.
Rock climbing, mountaineering and caving took precedence over paddling when I moved to New Zealand in 1970, until I resumed white-water paddling in a slalom kayak in the wild rivers West Coast of the South Island. A chance sighting in 1977 of the first NZ fibreglass sea kayak led to a plan to paddle around Fiordland, the remote south-western corner of the South Island. Which is really when the trouble started.
Most people are content to paddle for a few hours and then get off the water. What is it about these wildly ambitious circumnavigations that appeals to you?
In comparison to the golden age of mountaineering in the late 40s and early 50s, when the Himalayan giants had their first ascents, I reckon the golden age for sea kayaking kicked off in the late 70s. Certainly there had been historic ocean crossings in folding kayaks (Captain Romer and Hans Lindemann across the Atlantic Ocean), albeit with sails used, but there were islands and even continents that had not been circumnavigated by kayak. Even Great Britain, where a young English lad set off to paddle around in 1970, awaited a complete circuit. Geoff Hunter, in his Angmagssalik style kayak, took a short cut through the Caledonian Canal, missing out the wild north coast of Scotland, which was great for me.
With such strong maritime history in those un-paddled islands and continents, along with thousands of years of coastal travel in skin boats or dugout canoes, my kayak was a ‘passport’ to land and be acknowledged as a fellow water traveler and not just another rubber-necking tourist with a camera around their neck.
My interest in the development of skin boats increased expedition by expedition, leading to three northern summers paddling around the coast of Alaska from Prince Rupert in BC, to Inuvik on the Mackenzie River in the NW Territories. The shape and size of skin kayaks (and the bigger umiaks) varied from region to region, from tiny skin kayaks paddled by ping-pong size paddles in eastern Siberia, and eastwards across the top of Alaska and Arctic Canada, ultimately to the sleek stealth seal-hunting kayaks of east Greenland. The regional variation in kayak and size depended mostly on local sea and ice conditions. Although the seminal work of Adney and Chapelle’s The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, first published in 1964 by the Smithsonian Institution, showed the lines and shapes of skin kayaks from detailed museum surveys. How better was it for me to check out the actual conditions where skin boats evolved—by kayak?
This led to four summers paddling the east and west coasts of Greenland. Paddling into the small West Greenland village of Igdlorssuit (150 people and 500 dogs) via kayak was so special, as 40 years earlier, a young Scottish university student studying local hunting techniques, had taken a skin kayak back to Scotland in 1959, and it was that boat that ultimately led to the development of the Nordkapp kayak.
Of your many expeditions, which do you consider the most ambitious—the circumnavigation of Australia?
Certainly Australia was a tad ambitious, but for at least nine months, where roads allowed coastal access, I had a shore-based support party, and another paddler for much of the Gulf of Carpentaria and Arnhem Land. In terms of total commitment, the Alaskan paddle was a solo mission, no back-up team, no VHF radio, PLB or satellite phone, just me and the sea and a few scary creatures on shore. From the lower 48, I had posted out my food-resupply parcels, to the remote coastal Inuit villages, with a note taped on the outside to the postmaster, stating I was a Kiwi paddling around Alaska. It was total commitment, and that is what I wanted.
Of dangerous wildlife, cold weather exposure, seas and winds, and marine traffic, which have been the most significant concerns or factors?
Every trip has its own particular concerns, be it weather, ice, boat traffic, paucity of landings, big mammals at sea and on shore—and this is where meticulous research and planning came into play. Once my concerns are identified, I move into the next phase of visualizing, be it dealing with a hungry grizzly bear, or exposed coasts with lines of dumping surf. The only failure of my visualization, which led to nightmares for days afterwards, was not realizing how far the ebb tide would take the sea offshore in the Yukon and Kuskokwim river deltas of Alaska. In Etolin Strait, inside Nunivak Island, the sea can disappear rather quickly for up to 10 miles offshore. I spent two nights bivvying on mud/sand flats miles from the coast. I called them the ‘Diabolical Deltas’.
To the extent you can plan on a “typical” day on one of these expeditions, what does that day look like in terms of mileage and a general schedule.
For the 1985 paddle around Japan, it was difficult trying to explain to the police, customs and maritime authorities that it was the ‘tenki’ or weather that dictated my progress. No way I could respond to their demands of ‘Skedule kudasai!”
In planning the year-long Australian paddle, I used the all-up paddling average (including rest and weather- bound days) of 26 miles per day (mpd) from the round Britain paddle. The tally for the 360 days around Aussie was 36.7 mpd for the paddling days, with an all-up average of 26.2 mpd, so it was a pretty good estimate.
Do you always make landfall daily or have you been forced to overnight aboard?
My kayak cockpit is too small to even think about nodding off—to do so would result in a capsize. My philosophy has always been to minimize my time on the water, where weather and sea conditions can change so rapidly. The coastline of Australia has three continuous sections of vertical limestone cliffs all nigh on 120 miles long, with no landings. They would all require overnight paddling.
The crux of the year-long around Australian paddle came nine months into the trip—the 120-mile-long Zuytdorp cliffs in Western Australia. All the factors were against me; prevailing souwesterly winds, picking up in the afternoon, the cliffs pounded by a heavy souwest ground swell and I would be pushing into a north-going current. My longest paddle prior to attempting this crux was a 15-hour island to island crossing in the Gulf of Carpentaria. And I was facing up to 36 hours on the water! Even if I made halfway, and the weather changed, I would face 18 hours paddling back to where I launched. Then at the southern end of the cliffs, a treacherous dogleg entrance between two reefs to cross a barred river entrance.
After waiting a day for a better than average wind forecast, a dense land fog rolled offshore, and I launched early morning through a huge surf, keeping an eye of the binnacle compass until I broke clear of the fog onto the open sea.
A lifting afternoon sea breeze slowed progress, until it died late evening. I had taken Lomotil tablets to keep my bowels dormant for the overnighter, and No-Doze to stay awake during the hours of darkness.
A part moon initially allowed me to keep an eye on the cliff tops, but after it set, a light offshore (katabatic) breeze lifted. With no moonlight, I lost my ability to gauge height and distance. Concerned I was being pushed offshore, I used the over-stern rudder to angle back in towards where I thought the cliff base was. In the pitch darkness, I over-compensated.
Suddenly the kayak heaved skywards with spray fanning back in my face from what was imminently going to be a huge breaker. Realizing instantly I was way too close to the cliffs, I ruddered hard to seawards, and lit the flame, almost turning the kayak into a hovercraft.
It was the first wave in a big set of three. There was no way I would have survived if I had been a few yards closer to shore, and smashed by the breaking wave into the cliffs. Needless to say, I took up station well offshore, until the first vestiges of dawn allowed my scale perception back.
When I finally crossed the Murchison River bar, the dog-leg between the mongrel reefs, powering upstream to flat water—this was after 34 hours of paddling—I burst into tears!
The Baxter and Nullabor cliffs, nigh on the same length as the Zuytdorp Cliffs, both provided seriously challenging overnight paddling, but no more tears.
As one of a very few people who’ve been in a remote location running before 35-knot winds and 10-foot breaking seas in a sea kayak, we wonder if you have any seamanship or heavy-weather techniques you can share?
Once a wind boosts over 20 knots, for me it is a struggle to make headway, but when that wind is a following or stern quartering wind, the conditions are ideal for surfing the kayak. At 25 knots, the surfing rides have to be throttled back, as the swell height increases, with braking down a swell face to avoid burying the bow in the swell ahead, and a graceful end over end, or loop as it is called.
With winds of 30 knots, there is no place for paddlers to be on the water. And at 35 knots, the wind especially with stronger gusts, is trying to rip the paddle out of my hands—long past the time to be on the water.
Where in the world are the most beautiful, or your favourite, cruising grounds so far?
Every trip has special places, primordial scenery untouched by man, be it the big tidal country of the Kimberlies in northern Australia, the Shiretoko Peninsula of northern Hokkaido, or the stark tower karst country of southern Thailand and eastern New Caledonia.
Perhaps the most humbling and grandiose paddling experience was paddling through a mob of towering bergs in East Greenland. There was bugger-all open water, just kayak-width channels to sneak through the massive, mushroom shaped icebergs. The bergs had been blown into a narrow rocky channel, then stranded by an ebb tide. Icebergs look so stunning, glimmering tall out of the sea, but in the open sea, the unseen threat is either calving or rolling over. We always gave the big bergs plenty of sea room, the height of the berg away, plus a bit extra distance for mental comfort.
In this channel, the sea was calm, the bergs were stranded heavy on the granite/gneiss sea bed, and not rolling or swaying. Such grandiose scenery with a uncurrent threat of calving or rolling, I reckoned it added a fourth dimension to kayaking.
What kind of sea kayak do you use primarily, and what are the characteristics of a good adventure sea kayak?
For all my sea kayak expeditions, my boat is a Nordkapp, based on the lines of an Igdlorrsuit, West Greenland seal-hunting kayak.
I am rather meticulous with the build criteria:
• The three below deck storage compartments are 100% air/water tight
• The boat is as light as possible for the conditions
• The boat has a deep draft over-stern rudder
How do you pack for such long trips with so little stowage? Can you give us an idea of what you bring or how you maximize in limited space?
A serious background in mountaineering and caving expeditions allowed me a smooth transition to applying lightweight packing principles to what was stowed in the kayak compartments. Applying what you would carry on your back for a two week mountaineering trip, to a two week kayak expedition! Very much the Tilman/Shipton philosophy, and yes, my toothbrush has much of the handle trimmed off. My approach to sustained (month+ long) solo expeditions is a minimalist approach.
What’s one indispensable piece of gear you especially like or would recommend?
My two piece lightweight carbon-fibre wing paddle.
Is there a mistake (either in seamanship or technique) that you see beginning paddlers make regularly? Something you could share?
Not being aware of how quickly weather and sea conditions can deteriorate: not being dressed for immersion, and a lack of self or group rescue skills.
Paddling adventures seem to have dominated many years of your life—what are some of your other interests?
Caving, rock-climbing, singing and playing in a ceilidh band, dancing, and biking a 15 km trapline where I endeavour to reduce the number of predators (rats and mustelids) on the West Coast.
Jack Kerouac said, “Because in the end, you won’t remember the times you spent in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” Does this resonate with you? Do you voyage in part or mostly for the memories you’ll make?
Absolutely not! Post trip-memories have nothing to do with motivation for my trips.
The worst day of every trip is the day after finishing, and to overcome the post-trip depression, my best remedy is to pull out the atlas, maps and charts to start researching another big trip.
For me with each big trip, there are three stages, which are all equally important:
• Planning and research
• Training, and visualization
• Execution (the paddle)
The worst bit of my big trips is when they are over, having to return home, and resume working in the West Coast coal mines to fund my next big trip.
What are you up to these days—are you plotting any new voyages?
Sadly, my paddling fitness and stamina have diminished with aging. Summer surfing, offshore from home on a wave ski, and paddling the local big freshwater lakes does get me on the water, and although the mind would like to keep on with the big trips, my body can’t.
Which of your books has been most popular or which do you recommend as a first choice?
Of the four books I have currently still have in print, The Dreamtime Voyage – Australian Kayak Odyssey has been the best received, with two editions and one reprint. There are a couple of excerpts that I always find moving, the first, crossing the bar at Kalbarri at the end of the Zuytdorp Cliffs and the second after 25 hours of paddling along the Baxter Cliffs where I had to deal with a nasty, quick-moving cold front overnight, I was burnt out physically and emotionally. Endeavouring to stay upright during the night, I had worn the skin off my knees and heels down to the exposed blood vessels, after using the rudder to keep out from the cliffs and my knees in the knee rests to stay upright.
My latest book, Dark Side of the Wave – Stewart Island Kayak Odyssey, is one that I’m most proud of. I have included sidebar stories of island circumnavigators since 1979, with color photos and new maps and it is my current favorite—at least until I finish the Alaskan book!
Visit Paul’s site here.
Paul Caffyn’s Big Trips
How It All Started?
Most likely it was a black and white photograph in our family photograph album of my father and his brother in wood and canvas canoes on the Brisbane River. Not encouraged by my parents to chase up a newspaper advertisement, it was my uncle Greg who helped me purchase my first canoe, a 17’ Peterborough Canadian canoe.
Still at primary school, I joined the local Indooroopilly Small Craft and Canoe Club which had a boatshed on the river bank. Week-long club whitewater paddling trips, and being encouraged to try and balance a tippy K1 kayak certainly led to a lifelong passion for paddling.
Paddling was seriously sidelined during my university years when I met like-minded students who were passionate about caving, folk singing, rock-climbing and mountaineering. My lust for climbing and caving did lead to a fourth year at uni. My first visit to New Zealand and a mountaineering course at Ball Hut, was cut short following a telegram from my father re a supplementary chemistry exam!
After graduating, the lure of really deep caves, and climbing in the Southern Alps drew me across the Tasman Sea, and I was exceedingly fortunate to land my first job as an exploration geologist on the West Coast of the South Island.
By the mid 70s, I was teaching music and outdoor education at a local high school, which led to my purchasing a whitewater kayak, and learning slalom technique and rolling skills.
In mid 1977, a paddling mate saw a yellow sea kayak on top of a van in Greymouth. As one did in those days, when it was exceedingly rare to see another kayak on a vehicle, Shaun went and had a chat with the driver. And that’s where the trouble started; it was the very first Greenland style fibreglass kayak built in NZ. A bitterly cold white-water paddle in winter led to a cunning plan of buying two of these Nordkapp kayaks and paddling around the southwestern tip of New Zealand, better known as Fiordland —home to a squillion sandflies and more gales per year than you can shake a stick at.
Max Reynolds and I survived that first Fiordland paddle but swore our next paddling adventure would be across the Sahara Desert, as far away from the sea as possible. Although we had a solid background of expedition caving, whitewater paddling and mountaineering, we both experienced a really sharp learning curve.
We were both capsized offshore by huge reef breaks. Mine was on our second morning—my paddle was sucked out of my hands, but I stayed in the cockpit, upside down, till Max presented his bow to me and I rolled up. In the entrance to Bligh Sound, I rushed a landing in falling darkness. What appeared to be a sheltered sandy beach from a distance, was a steep, gnarly boulder beach with monstrous bumper dumpers. I executed a graceful loop to land on my head on the boulders. So lucky I was wearing a helmet. It got cracked as did my top lip with a tooth through it. The kayak hull/deck joint took two cracks by the cockpit but didn’t leak or bleed like my split lip.
At Jackson Bay, Max went back to work. With no job in the offing, I ended up paddling around the rest of the South Island, and wrote a book Obscured by Waves about the trip.
Then my so-called ‘mates’ kidded me, ‘Now that you’ve been around the South Island, when are you going to do the North Island?’ Which led over the summer of 1978-79 to a solo paddle around the North Island, with a shore-based crew, along with my lovely black Labrador, Ben.
The prevailing West Coast surf was much tougher than that of the South Island and the big harbor entrances sent me up to four miles offshore to clear a mess of breaking waves. A pavlova in the face from Lesley, at the completion of that trip back at Makara, set a precedent for all future circumnavigators.
To make a New Zealand kayak circumnavigation complete, I teamed up with Max Reynolds in August 1979 for a crossing of Foveaux Strait and a paddle round Stewart Island. Max only joined me after my assurance there would be ‘lots of sun, nice calm conditions and no beef curry on the menu!’ There wasn’t much sun, the swell was up to seven metres high off Mason Bay, the tide races off the south coast were monstrous and we nearly got squashed by a massive elephant seal when camped overnight in Flour Cask Bay. But apart from that, it was a brilliant, challenging trip. See KASK magazine number 199 for Max’s write up of that trip.
Tragically, I lost my paddling mate Max in early 1980 when he was caught by a flood pulse in the Aorere River gorge and drowned. Fortunately I had written up the story (Dark Side of the Wave) before I had to be the funeral celebrant for his send-off.
1980 - Around Britain
In 1970 a young English paddler Geoff Hunter paddled around England, Wales and most of Scotland in an East Greenland style kayak, but he avoided the worst of the northern coast by taking a shortcut through the Caledonian Canal. Although it would be a bit longer than the North Island, at 2,200 miles, I saw a paddle around Britain as a my next desirable challenge along with experiencing a power of history, ancient castles, smuggling ports and some really serious paddling challenges like Cape Wrath, Pentland Firth with tidal streams running at up to 12 knots, and the massive tide races of the mulls of Galloway and Kintyre. Although aiming for a solo paddle, I joined up paddling with a young English chap, Nigel Dennis, for an 85-day trip, with my girlfriend Lesley Hadley as shore support.
1982 - Around Australia
In 1981, my local ‘mates’ were now saying, “Well you’ve paddled around NZ, when are you going to do Aussie?” And that sowed the seed for the 360-day Around Australia Kayak Odyssey. I tried hard to attract some sponsorship for either kit or money or both, but reckon the concept was so outrageous that no companies approached felt that the trip would actually be attempted, or secondly my chances of survival were less than average.
We carried out the year-long mission on an absolute shoestring, even scavenging kit from rubbish dumps, but once we finished back at Queenscliff, we had no obligations to anyone, just the immense satisfaction of completing a really big adventure. The worst day of the whole year, well apart from not being able to keep food down when faced by kicking out on the 120-mile-long Zuytdorp Cliffs, was the morning after we finished back at Queenscliff. The challenge was over. No more elusive goal to be pursued.
1985 - Around Japan
An article in a 1967 National Geographic magazine got me mulling over paddling around Japan. It described a combined USA - British college student paddle from the Inland Sea to Tokyo. Photographs of centuries old fishing ports and stunning coastal scenery spurred my interest. The team had bypassed the exposed east coast of Honshu due to heavy, prevailing surf, which also got my interest up.
Grahame Sissons and I built Haya Kaze in Nelson, as I was keen to try out a microlight boat to see if higher daily averages distances were attainable. We used kevlar, carbon-fibre and vinylester to build a 15 kilogram Nordkapp. This all-up weight included hatches, bulkheads and the aluminium, over-stern rudder. A new seat was built, which when glassed into the cockpit, formed a third or middle bulkhead and a comfortable rigid, backrest. This minimized the amount of water which would enter the cockpit in the event of a capsize, and the middle compartment was easily accessible at sea with the VCP hatch just aft of the cockpit—very handy for cameras, the radio and my play-lunch.
With my girlfriend Lesley Hadley as shore support, we achieved a memorable trip around Japan—I was then probably at my peak in terms of paddling fitness and stamina, knocking up 96 kilometre days with pre-dawn starts, and averaging 66 kms per day around Hokkaido.
‘Anata wa tabi wa do data?’
(How was your trip?)
‘Subarashi demmo muzukashi’ (Splendid but difficult).
Subarashi is the word to describe the beauty and contrasts of the coastal scenery, our contact with the Japanese fishermen, the magic of sunrises and sunsets and the faith and support from our friends in Tokyo.
An early response to a letter of inquiry was very succinct and to the point: ‘I do not think you should consider a paddle around Japan. Too many ships, too many people and too much pollution!’ But apart from some of the huge coastal towns and ports, the coastal scenery was superb, snow-capped volcanoes rising sheer out of the sea, tunnels, more caves than you could shake a stick at, massive archways I had to paddle through and a myriad of small fishing ports that could provide a movie set for James Clavell’s novel Shogun. Sections of the coast were so rugged and remote there was no sign of man’s presence.
Japan must have the highest density of inshore fishermen in the world, and summer was peak season for those harvesting seaweed and salmon. The port of Uketo on the Honshu coast had a fleet of over 200 boats which left through a narrow entrance between 3 and 3:30 a.m. The roar of the engines was like the noise of peak hour traffic in Auckland. I had no choice but to barge into the bow-to-stern lineup of boats, but the experience of joining in that stream of boats speeding out to sea in the soft golden light of dawn was indeed splendid.
Many nights we slept by the open hearths of the ryoshi-no-banya (fishermen’s quarters), rising at 2 a.m. with the obasans (old ladies) who cooked breakfast over charcoal hearths, and departing before dawn with the fishermen. We were taken into the homes and hearts of the fishermen.
In marked contrast to previous big trips’, no one person in Japan said I was crazy for doing the trip; instead they would call out ‘Gambate’, no exact English translation but a combination of good luck, try hard and show you spirit.
The Japan paddle was far more muzukashi (difficult) than I had anticipated. Taifu (typhoon) number 3 was in the offimg when I commenced paddling on 26 May and number 13 gave me a dusting on the far north coast of Hokkaido. While plugging along the south coast of Honshu, three of the sods were in the offing, 12, 13 and 14. The taifu effects were felt four to five days of making landfall, with fierce winds, massive seas and thunderstorms. Doyonami is a specific Japanese word for swell generated by intense typhoons.
I completed the trip on 19 September with a 40-kilometre crossing of Tsugaru Kaikyo, the infamous narrow stretch of water between Hokkaido and Honshu. Total distance was 6,434 kilometres in 112 days for an all up average of 66 kilometres per day. All in all it was a splendid but difficult trip.
Months later in New Zealand I received copies of various magazines which carried articles about the Japan trip. The January 1986 edition of Playboy included a seven-page pictorial with a male nude centrefold picture of a certain paddler. It was actually a pic Lesley snapped when I was showering under a roadside waterfall. The photo appeared by the central line of staples and although it was not exactly a centrefold photograph, I like to kid myself that it’s close enough to being a nude centrefold.
When Haya Kaze arrived back in New Zealand, aboard a huge container ship, I was trying to speed my passage through the usual procedures of form filling and shuffling from department to department, by showing the Playboy to the chap from the Department of Agriculture and Fish. He said he would waive the normal $20 fee for the clearance if he could show the article to his rather attractive receptionist. I agreed. He asked her if she had ever met anyone who had posed nude for Playboy, and then showed her the photograph. And her comment, “You can’t see a lot!”
I reckon I got twenty dollars’ worth of embarrassment!
1989 - 1991 Around Alaska
After two failed attempts to paddle a double kayak across the Tasman Sea from Tasmania to Fiordland in 1987 and 1989, I needed a big trip to get morale back up. With no experience of paddling in ice, I decided to paddle from Prince Rupert in British Columbia around the entire coast of Alaska and finish at Inuvik on the Mackenzie River in Canada. With bugger all coastal access, I did this one solo, landing at the remote Inuit villages to retrieve food parcels that I had mailed from the lower 48. I always included a letter addressed to the postmaster, saying I was a Kiwi paddling around Alaska!
I planned this wee 4,690 mile paddle over one northern summer but that awful oil spill from the Exon Valdez scrubbed that 1989 mission when I pulled the pin at Elfin Cove. Resuming in 1990, I left the kayak in Nome for the winter, then followed the ice pack north in 1991, and spent the last three days of that magic trip paddling up the Mackenzie River to land at the Inuvik road end, finally back in Canada. That Alaskan trip was one of my most enjoyable and challenging; dumped by big surf in the Gulf of Alaska, charged by a bull Musk ox, my tent ripped open by a big brown bear when I was asleep, but worst of all dealing with the drying shallows off the Kuskokwim and Yukon river deltas. Nightmare country.
1993 - Not a Good Year
1993 marked the end of the really big trips for awhile. A perforated colon while geologizing on a remote mountain range led to nine months with a colostomy, perhaps the worst news for a paddler when waking from an anaesthetic. After a successful hook up nine months later, getting my mind and body back into paddling shape was not easy. That losing of core stomach muscle strength following two big belly operations, was a major challenge to resume expedition paddling.
Fortunately, in 1994 I teamed up with ex-pat British paddler Conrad Edwards who was not only a skilled and very fit paddler, but he also had a similar love of books and history, and didn’t mind a wee libation of medicinal whiskey after a long paddling day. Between us we notched up eight remarkable overseas expeditions, including four summers in Greenland, a circuit of New Caledonia, a paddle from Kuala Lumpur to the island of Phuket. Our last big trip in 2017 was down the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula with a team of six Kiwi paddlers and one Aussie. —PC
Excerpt from Paul Caffyn’s soon-to-be-published Alaskan Kayaking book:
The Audacious Alaskan Adventures of Kayak Dundee.
By Paul Caffyn
(https://paulcaffyn.co.nz/ to order books)
The Nickname
At Unavikshak Island, near Chignik on the south coast of the Alaska Peninsula, I ended up with the nickname Kayak Dundee. I was 37 days and 1,056 miles into the second season of my paddle around Alaska’s coastline. Apart from a brief challenge from a pair of brown bears, a sow and her yearling, about who had the right to have lunch on the only beach on an offshore island, the morning had gone well. I was looking forward to reaching Chignik where my next food parcel was waiting at the Post Office.
It was my 17th day out of Seward where I’d last stocked up on food. Since I’d planned only 15 paddling days to cover the 500 miles to Chignik, I was down to a couple of dehydrated meals, a few dry biscuits and barely a spoonful each of sugar and powdered milk. I was running on an empty tank.
Off the bold 2,300-foot high headland of Cape Kumlik, I’d jogged into the lee of a small island, to escape from a freshening north-easterly wind. Astern, the sky was ominously black, with all the signs of a full-blown north-east gale within the hour. This small island, bare-topped and surrounded by low cliffs, offered no show of a landing. I turned my gaze to the distant lump of Unavikshak Island, 12 miles to the south-west. There at least the map showed a jutting headland, which would offer lee protection from the building sea.
I kicked out from the island’s lee onto a 10-foot-high south-east roll, on top of which the freshening north-easterly was building a breaking chop. During the first hour, as the wind lifted from 20 to 25 knots, the deep draft over-stern rudder kept me easily on course for the island. I was almost enjoying the situation with several exhilarating surf rides.
The second hour was absolutely diabolical. The wind carried on lifting to a sustained 35 knots. I only looked back once. The dark inky blue sea was splattered white with a myriad of toppling waves. Row upon row of steep capping waves, with stinging spray flying off their crests, were tearing towards me. It was far better just to look over the bow, and hold my wildly bobbing course for the island. A momentary lapse in concentration almost led to a capsize when a 10-foot toppler almost dragged me under as it broke over the cockpit. Only a frantic, slap support stroke kept me upright.
When the heavens opened and heavy rain bucketed down, I fully expected the wind to ease and the chop to die with the rain’s impact. But it didn’t. Ever so slowly I closed on the island, and slowly lost the motion of the swell as I surfed onto the inshore beds of rudder-tangling kelp. Rounding the northern tip of the island, which was a flat-topped headland above a line of sheer 50-foot-high cliffs, I sighed with relief and sped in front of the wind onto a flat sea, and began searching for a sheltered landing. Although I was now in the lee of the island, the wind was hammering across the flat sea in bullet-like gusts and driving williwaws of swirling spray. At least I could see and hear them coming and brace accordingly. I kept looking for a cave or overhanging cliff where I could escape out of the wind and rain.
The best shelter I could find was a towering cliff overhanging a boulder beach at its base by a good three feet. Landing through a low, dumping surf onto a steep cobble beach, I dragged the kevlar Nordkapp onto the narrow band of dry cobbles. With cold fingers, I fumbled off the aft hatch cover. I needed a hot brew of tea in a hurry. But fingers with damp and wrinkled from the rain, my first mission to dry them sufficiently that I flick the wheel on the gas lighter. Cobbles and small boulders were dry, sheltered by the overhanging cliff. I must have pick up and fondled a dozen of the rounded rock before my dry enough to fire up the MSR cooker for a welcome brew.
As I slurped a steaming bowl of tea, I noticed a salmon purse seiner emerge from the murk to drop anchor 400 yards upwind from me. My grumbling stomach was still hoping to make Chignik by nightfall, however the wind and rain showed no sign of easing. Since I hadn’t seen a soul, not a plane or boat, for the past eight days, I decided to paddle out and ask for the latest forecast and/or synoptic situation. If I looked hungry enough, I might even be able to scrounge a little food.
Fighting the bullet-like gusts of wind and williwaws—I could not paddle when they hit but could only adopt a low profile and leave the paddle blade on the sea for support—I plugged slowly across a broad belt of kelp beds towards the seiner. I was pleased that the skipper and crew could not see my approach through the steamed-up windows of the seiner’s wheelhouse. I had to make two attempts to close on its stern for the wind gusts were so strong. I had to paddle upwind of Ms Valerie’s bow and then drift back during one of the gusts.
Don the cook helped me drag the kayak onto the aft deck. We then adjourned below into a different world where it was so warm and dry. My nose detected the delectable smell of a roast dinner. The seiner had a complement of skipper, three deckhands and cook. The afternoon’s entertainment was watching either a cops and robbers video or the needle of the anemometer. I didn’t feel so bad about the difficulty I experienced in closing on the seiner, for the anemometer needle did not drop below 40 miles per hour, and often swung up to 50 and even 60 mph during the stronger boat-rolling gusts.
One of the crew, after listening to my accent and story of how I could not get the book on the round Australia kayak trip published said, “You’ll have to change the title to ‘The Adventures of Kayak Dundee’. It’ll be a best seller.” The original film hit of Crocodile Dundee and its sequel were both popular video films on the Alaskan fishing boats. The nickname stuck and followed me around for the rest of the summer.
For more information or to order Paul’s books, visit his website. —Eds •SCA•
A newbie on Substack, I was haphazardly looking for like-minded souls and found this. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest; the daughter of a 1960s kayaker who become one myself. By 1995, with some solos and first-paddles in Asia and America under my sprayskirt, I somehow got landlocked in Indonesia with three neglected Feathercrafts for more 20 years. But I'm back in the Northwest, and not too old to a roll a loaded boat, so your post inspired me, and I thank you for that. It stirred up deep stuff as I read every word. Now I have tears in my eyes, and my heart hurts.
I can't recall if I might have met Paul Caffyn back the 80s. 90s. Maybe at a kayaking confab, the RGS or some other society somewhere. I wonder if he knows Craig Peterson, a contemporary paddler from the Seattle area who based out of my backyard while staging his 1992 solo from here to Juneau on the *outside*, along the Pacific coasts of Baranof, Chichagof and all. Dyer, the Broze brothers, or Gronseth . . .
Oops, let me try this again. I know I can type better than this!!
As you know I have said I was looking for a small kayak now that the Lusty Slogger is no more. However, I think I will confine my kayaking to the small rivers and creeks of Central Florida. I will be overcome with mosquitoes and alligators so I will have adventures galore. I just won't freeze to death while doing so! Although heat stroke is not out of the question!