In 1975, Ken Fink, an oceanographer in Maine, started pad-


dling his whitewater slalom boat on the Atlantic Ocean—a not- uncommon way for whitewater kayakers of the day to discover touring. Fink kept at it until he saw an ad for the Nordkapp by Valley Kayaks in 1978. He contacted Frank Goodman to order two boats—one for himself and one for Maine’s attorney gener- al—and received an invitation to become the North American distributor. Fink became a self-described evangelist for his new low-


impact sport. Well into the ‘80s, if Fink saw a kayak on the highway it was probably one he’d sold. Passing a car with a kayak on top, he’d always look at the boat first to find out who was driving. “And if we saw each other on the interstate in enough time, we’d stop…run over to the median strip and talk.” If he parked, he’d invariably return to his car to find someone waiting for him or a note on his windshield from a potential buyer. As if the Pacific Northwest didn’t already have its share of the action, a few other Seattle companies entered the business


water didn’t. The companies were up and running with viable boat designs, and looking for somewhere to grow.


Inventing the kayak store There were no exclusively sea kayaking shops until John


Dowd opened Ecomarine in 1980 on Vancouver’s artsy Granville Island. Dowd brought in folding kayaks from Europe and sold many of the new North American designs including Eddyline’s Orca, Pacific Water Sports’ Sea Otter, and Nimbus’ kayaks. Dowd is also credited with coining the term “sea kayaking”


with the publication of his book of that title in 1981. “It wasn’t called sea kayaking until my book came out,” he said. “It was called kayak touring or sea canoeing or canoe touring, blue- water paddling, coastal paddling, all those things.” Over on Vancouver Island, Brian Henry was a sheet metal


mechanic working long overtime during mill shutdowns so he could have maximum time off for skiing and whitewater paddling. Around 1979, he went on a month-long paddling trip to the


“’You go out in the ocean in a kayak?’ They thought that was a big daredevil stunt.”–Lee Moyer


in the early ‘80s. Brothers Matt and Cam Broze started Mariner Kayaks in their basement in 1980. And Dan Ruuska of Natural Designs and John Abbenhouse of Northwest Kayaks crossed over from whitewater and began building touring kayaks. “I can recall in 1980 or ‘81 going up to Vancouver Island…and counting 100 windsurfers on cars to one kayak,” said Matt Broze. “I thought, ‘We started building the wrong kind of boats.’” The industry was still in its infancy, but compa- nies saw that touring had a potential mass appeal that white-


Queen Charlottes, a rare thing at the time. “I decided when I came back I wasn’t going to be a con- struction worker anymore. I was going to be in the kayak business,” he said. Henry opened Ocean River Sports in Victoria in November 1981. “I just wanted to have a little kayak


store that I could run for a few months of the year and I could paddle and I could ski. I used to put a little notice on my door—‘Gone product testing’—and we’d go to the river.” Henry started designing boats, beginning with a large hatch-


less sea kayak called the Pisces, which he took to Mike Neckar to get built. After about a year he started his own production of Current Designs kayaks on Vancouver Island. In 1982, Bob Licht followed the Ecomarine example and


opened Sea Trek Ocean Kayak Center in Sausalito, California. The Southwest had its own kayak builder too: Josef Sedivec at


below: Harrie Tieken in the mid-‘70s outside his first workshop in Holland, a 110-foot clipper canal ship built in 1906. right: Tieken in his Chezzetcook, Nova Scotia, shop with one of the first production Sealutions, 1988. photos Harry Teiken collection.


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