adventure
magazine
adventure
pa d d L e Fa c e s
magazine
of Australia. Despite two crash-and-burn
landings, the three-week stint in Oz provided
invaluable lessons in everything from handling
big breaking surf and reading the weather, to
the necessity of getting a home beer-brewing
kit. By the time he headed back to Brooklyn,
he felt certain he wanted to do a longer trip.
Marcus demuth
That summer, the rainiest on record in Ire-
land since 1837, Demuth headed to Dublin. In-
furiated by the cold driving rain, overwrought
this expedition paddler is the real deal. a former pro
and exhausted by the endless hours of pad-
dling into the wind, he was nonetheless moved
musiCian who traded in his brooklyn drum store to by the verdant Irish landscape, the warmth of
foCus on paddlinG, he’s now Trying To CirCumnAvigATe
the people and the rich taste of Guinness ale.
He covered the 1,085-mile circumnavigation
The fAlklAnd islAnds and iCelAnd in one seAson
of Ireland in 42 days—a record for a solo pad-
By Joe GlickMan dler—and was hungry for more.
Last June he arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland.
But just one day after that fisherman fixed
it was an inauspicious start to a doomed cold and rainy October morning. His instruc-
his boat, Demuth paddled into trouble. After
trip. A day out of Reykjavik, Marcus De- tor was Eric Stiller, the hyperkinetic owner of
spending the night on an uninhabited island
muth encountered violent offshore winds that MKC and author of Keep Australia on Your
halfway across a bay, he was out at sea when
threatened to blow him out to sea. On day six, Left, which chronicles his attempt to circum-
the barometric pressure plunged. In minutes
a breaking wave slammed him on the rocky navigate Oz. Under the sway of Stiller’s enthu-
offshore winds gusting to 60 knots turned the
shore, leaving seven holes and a foot-long siasm, Demuth found his first paddle “electri-
frigid water into a frothy cauldron. For three
crack in the hull. He lost his spare paddle and fying.” When Stiller mentioned an upcoming
panic-stricken hours he fought toward the
pager, which meant he could no longer receive 32-mile jaunt around Manhattan on Hallow-
next island, which stubbornly refused to get
the weather forecasts he’d relied on each day. een night, Demuth signed on. The midnight
closer until finally, he was there.
He was told that a fisherman 50 miles up ramblers finished at 6 a.m., got sloppy drunk
Buffeted by the wind and spray from break-
the coast might be able to repair his boat. and, before you could say “watch out for the
ing waves on his treeless refuge, Demuth wait-
Forced to stop every 10 minutes to pump, he Staten Island Ferry,” Demuth had purchased
ed for four days. “It took the life out of me,”
arrived in Hellisandur two days later physi- a plastic kayak. Though he had no drysuit and
he says. On June 18, just two weeks after he’d
cally ill, his confidence shaken. could not roll, he paddled alone all winter.
begun, he paddled back to shore, caught a bus
The kindly boat-builder shored up his craft
to Reykjavik and flew home to New York.
and provided food, lodging and moral support
five yeas ago, demuth But, to borrow a quote on Demuth’s web-
to boot—all for a bottle of whisky. Such acts of
random generosity are easily bestowed on this
had never sat in a kayak,
site, “The roots of the tree grow deepest when
the wind blows hardest.” After bashing around
gentle, wry, wide-eyed 39-year-old, who only
never been athletic and
Ireland in record time, Demuth had figured
discovered kayaking five years ago and is now
quietly building a paddling resume of note.
had smoked for a decade.
he’d do the same around Iceland. “I hit my
limits and it was very humbling,” he says. “But
Born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany,
it provided an excellent platform to grow and
the son of two architects, at age 16 Demuth
become a better paddler.”
became obsessed with drumming. “That’s all I
Demuth plans to return to Iceland this
did,” he says. A decade later, he left Germany In the fall of 2005, Demuth and two friends
summer. But first, as of January, he’s off to the
for the U.S., hoping to make it in music. did a two-week trip in Nova Scotia. The fol-
Falkland Islands, a stunning archipelago 300
He hustled in New York for a year, but when lowing February he headed off alone to Chile.
miles off the coast of Argentina in the South
he ran out of money he went home and found He’d never done any travelling alone and kept
Atlantic. If he completes the planned six-week,
a job at a drum shop. But he had fallen in love telling himself that the upcoming trip was “just
800-mile solo around all 776 islands, he will be
with New York and in 2001 he returned to an experiment.” Paddling through the fjords and
the first to do so. As a child, Demuth thought
open his own drum shop in Brooklyn. islands of the surreal Patagonian landscape and
of these remote islands as “an exotic land at the
Five years ago, at a trade show on the west interacting with farmers and fishermen who ate
end of the world.” As he talks about the seals,
side of Manhattan, he was smoking a cigarette and laughed and danced and drank and sang
penguins and orcas he expects to see, an infec-
outside and staring at the Hudson River when with him was “so flavourful…so very intense!”
tious, unbridled enthusiasm infuses his voice
a kayaker cruised by. Demuth had never sat in The experiment created a paddling mon-
and makes it impossible not to root for the
a kayak, never been athletic and had smoked ster. Demuth returned home inspired by the
charming musician to succeed.
for more than a decade, but he was so bored “amazing encounters” he experienced travelling
Follow Marcus Demuth’s Falkland Islands and
at the show that he vowed to treat himself to a by kayak. He sold his drum shop so that he
Iceland journeys at www.marcusdemuth.com.
session in a kayak once it ended. would be free to head out again.
brooklyn, n.y., freelance writer Joe GliCkman is an
He was the only person to show up to pad- In January 2007 he arrived in Perth for a
internationally ranked ocean kayak racer and the
dle at the Manhattan Kayak Company on that 400-mile paddle on the south and west coasts author of The Kayak Companion (storey books).
www.adventurekayakmag.com 37
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