Song of the Paddle – Buying a Boat, Part 2 The Beginning

So, the hype being built up and what we had in our minds the kayaks we wanted, the three of us (myself, Steve, and Peter) started looking around for shops that would carry our chosen kayaks. We all decided to get the Wilderness Systems Tempest 170 without even having had set foot into one. We checked out the local Adventure Guide store, a multi-sport all around outdoor store, but the sales guy there told us that we would have to wait 12 weeks to get one, that we should have preordered one long ago in the winter and that the people at that company take the summer off to go kayaking, so good luck getting three of them for that summer’s paddling season. Gimme a break. So we called around and heard some good things about The Complete Paddler off the QEW in Toronto, a paddling only shop. They happened to have stock of the model we wanted, and two hours later, we walked out of there, each of us having purchased a kayak and all the accessories needed to start. Mine orange, Peter’s mango (orange fading to orange) and Steve’s yellow. I nicknamed them Agent Orange, Agent Mango and Agent Banana. I also picked up the top of the line carbon fiber Ikelos paddle. Go hard or go home. Even though it’s kind of crazy to drop that much coin on a sport I had never even tried before, I knew that I would love it and spend many hours doing it. Thankfully I was right with my choices on all accounts and haven’t looked back.

It sounds a bit cliché but getting into this pastime/sport was a revelation to me, something that has brought some great happiness, excitement and joy to my life and I have spend many hours/days/weekends/weeks enjoying it ever since. It’s something much more than simply the pleasure of linking your strokes, pulling the water and gliding across it. It opens a whole new world of opportunity.

Suddenly any body of water around – reservoir, river, creek and even streams has the potential to be traveled upon for a day trip or longer adventure. Sure, in my area there’s the standard locally well known day paddling routes such as the Grand River, but anything was now fair game. Google Earth, google maps and my GPS are incredible new tools to find put-in and take-out points where previously would require a lot of scouting by car or word of mouth to find. We came up with the term ‘bushyakking’ obviously a take on bushwhacking, going down small creeks, and many times we brought saws to be able navigate through the deadfall across the creek’s path. Exciting adventures around the Ontario countryside and wilderness await. An added bonus was that these adventures would enable us to become intimate with smalltown Ontario and see the local areas in a way that simply driving through towns doesn’t let you do.

Song of the Paddle – Buying a Boat, Part 1 The Decision

      It’s funny that one rarely hears of anyone referring to canoes and kayaks as boats, probably because the word boat has utilitarian connotations associated with it, instead of the more soulful feelings conjured up with using the words canoe or kayak what but that’s what they are - boats. Growing up, I had not much experience with paddling. I think my parents just weren’t into it very much. I had gone hiking and backpacking a lot with my parents and Scouting/Venturers but not so much paddling, although I did feel a great lure towards it. At one point in my youth I was somewhat obsessed with canoeing, or rather the idea of it. I had watched Waterwalker, Bill Mason’s 1984 feature length documentary about him exploring the areas around Lake Superior with his canoe and it fascinated me. The beauty of the landscape and the adventure of canoeing in the wilderness captivated me as a 12 year old. But at that time, I did not do anything about my attraction towards paddling, other than taking a short canoe paddling course on the Ottawa River.

      Years went by and during my university time, I ignored my passion for the outdoors, aside from car camping trips. After I started working full time, I started to rekindle my interest for hiking and began backpacking, mostly solo in different areas in Ontario. I did this for many years, my yearly ‘summer vacation’ (more like autumn vacation) usually consisting of a week’s backpacking somewhere but not much consideration for purchasing a boat. In hindsight, this was partly because I had no place to store one, partly because I really didn’t know what boat I would want and partly because the backpacking world around me was still relatively new and there was much to be explored still in that regards.

      Then there was that fateful day in spring 2008. A bunch of people including myself were gathered at my friend Steve’s parents’ cottage on Rice Lake for the May 24 weekend for some partying. We started poring over some canoe and kayak marketing literature Steve picked up at the Adventure Show in Toronto a week or two back, at first just a curiosity, but turned into an obsession by the end of the weekend. After all, this cottage is on a lake, but there were no boats to use there, only a dilapidated aluminum rowboat hiding in the bushes so the lake being in front of our faces led to the itch for some paddling. As with many sports nowadays, the amount of choices and styles of products is simply astounding and actually quite overwhelming. I had only been in a kayak once – a day trip in a rented tandem one at Arrowhead that couldn’t track a straight line if it’s life depended on it. Despite that experience I figured I would prefer a kayak over a canoe. To me, a kayak has a more pure and intimate paddling experience much better suited for solo trips, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

      Aside from which make to get, the number of choices are incredible: hard or soft chine, Greenland or North American style, skeg or pedal rudder, whitewater, river or ocean kayak, what style hatches, rotomolded polyethylene , fiberglass or Kevlar construction, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17ft long, number of hatches??? In the end, only one really stood out as the clear choice for a rough and tumble, jack-of-all-trades multipurpose performance kayak, and that ended up being the rotomolded Wilderness Systems Tempest 170.