SEDA Products had been making whitewater racing kayaks and canoes since 1969 and came out with his first sea kayak, the Vagabond, in 1975. Licht remains a key promoter of kayaking in the American Southwest. Other specialty kayak shops across the continent were not far behind Ecomarine, Ocean River Sports and Sea Trek.
The meeting in Werner’s rumpus room The sea kayaking industry as we know it did not happen by
accident. Sometime in 1981 or 1982, a group of would-be career kayakers met in Werner Furrer’s basement in Seattle and delib- erately created it. John Dowd organized the meeting. Attending were Tom Derrer of Eddyline Kayaks, John Abbenhouse of Northwest Kayaks, Lee Moyer of Pacific Water Sports, Brian Henry of Ocean River Sports and others. They formed the Trade Association of Sea Kayaking
(TASK)—now the Trade Association of Paddlesports (TAPS)— and studied the successes and failures of other outdoor indus- tries to put together a plan for theirs. “That was when we realized that we could be an industry
rather than a bunch of guys in their backyards,” said Henry. “Everybody was in it because it was their favourite hobby,”
recalled Moyer. “I think TASK did a pretty good job of helping a bunch of amateur businesspeople act a little more professional.” One of TASK’s most important discoveries was of the need
for boat pricing that would include a healthy profit margin for builders, retailers and, eventually, distributors. “The biggest single thing that happened in our industry to
make it become what it is was to get the pricing right,” said Dowd. “So suddenly everybody was able to make a living at it.”
The East Coast catches up Things got off to a slow start in the East. There were a few
early builders, including Bart Hathaway who in 1975 licensed a fibreglass touring design to Old Town Canoe. Ken Fink was distributing British boats through his Poseidon Kayak Imports from 1978 on. But there were no prominent kayak builders until Tieken Kayaks. Harrie Tieken started building flatwater racing kayaks and
Derek Hutchinson sea kayaks in Holland in the early 1970s. His business trajectory paralleled that of the West Coast companies, with sales taking off in the early 1980s. Fast forward to 1987: Tieken brings his business to North
America, settling in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia. There were “absolutely no more than 10 people” paddling open water in the East at the time, he guesses. “People said the ocean is too dangerous for a kayak. People were laughing at me basi- cally.”
Eventually Tieken provided boats for Scott Cunningham of the Nova Scotia outfitting company Coastal Adventures, which
became a key educator and promoter for sea kayaking, and Tieken’s designs, on the East Coast. Like the other manufacturers, Tieken saw the need for a dis-
tinct North American design that was beginner-friendly, so he came up with his flagship, the Sealution, introduced at the L.L. Bean’s Maine symposium in 1988. Andy Zimmerman of Wilderness Systems (a North Carolina whitewater boat company founded in 1986) purchased rights to produce the Sealution for the U.S. market and went on to make the boat’s plastic version one of the world’s bestselling kayaks.
Big Brother is kayaking If you had to pick one year for the start of the modern sea
kayak industry, you’d have to shortlist 1984. It was the year that two of TASK’s key promotional visions were realized: a magazine and a symposium. John Dowd founded Sea Kayaker in 1984, supported by the advertising revenue of a growing industry. And TASK hosted the first annual West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium in Port Townsend, Washington—modelled after the highly successful Maine Sea Kayak Symposium start- ed in 1982 by Ken Fink with the support of retailer L.L. Bean and Canoe magazine. The economy had pulled out of the early ‘80s recession and
entrepreneurs who had been struggling along since the ‘70s found themselves with viable businesses. Companies like Current Designs began to reap the support of the big-box U.S. outdoor stores like L.L. Bean in the East and REI in the West. And kayaks entered mainstream media and mainstream con- sciousness. Nineteen eighty-four was also the year that plastic kayaks
came out, with the introduction of the Aquaterra Chinook, made by whitewater boat giant Perception. Plastic kayaks cut boat prices in half. Where fibreglass moulding took at least a day, plastic mould could produce a kayak in about two hours. “Tupperware boats” propelled the industry into the 1990s decade of double-digit annual growth. Many of the original manufacturers—Necky, Current
Designs, Tieken—sold to larger American companies. But oth- ers, like Steve Schleicher and Tom Derrer, are still at the helm of the businesses they started three decades ago. Now it’s a heck of a lot simpler to get a sea kayak and the
road to Tofino is much smoother than it was in the days of the hippie squatters, but the down-to-earth soul of kayaking is as real as it was back in the day. “The goal was always to have a really neat way to travel in
the wilderness, self-propelled,” said Schleicher, reflecting on where his early vision has led him. “And that seems to be what most of our boats are actually geared to doing.” Peace out.
Tim Shuff loves to think that it all began on his birthday in 1972, but he’s still trying to get his facts straight. He can be reached at
tim@adventurekayakmag.ca.
34 Summer 2004
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