“Oh look, oatmeal!”
Room with a view
No bathroom breaks
photos clockwise from left: Wildflowers at Selardur, in the Western Fiords. // Shawna and Chris on Shawna’s birthday: “We woke up and she had candles in her oatmeal, and then we paddled around the southernmost tip of Iceland…. I promised her when we got into Vik that day I would buy her a hamburger and a beer and a latte.” // Basalt columns on the East Coast: “The whole Western Fiords and lots of the East Coast the mountains essentially are cut off by the sea, thousand-foot cliffs going straight up.”
cook in, a source of fuel and—actually you don’t even need that!
What would you say to someone considering doing an expedition themselves? Don’t wait until you have enough money.
Don’t wait until your kids grow up, until you graduate high school, whatever. If an opportunity like this steps into your lap, take it. Things like this you can’t pass up in your life. It’s too important. It has too great of an impact on who you are to let it go by.
Leon’s Top Five FAQs 5. What language do Icelanders speak?
They speak Icelandic. It’s really a very hard language to speak. But luckily close to everybody in Iceland over a certain age speaks really good English.
4. How cold was it?
A lot of people think Iceland is really “icy” and very cold. But for us on the [North American] West Coast it’s a lot like our spring and fall. It was 40s to 60s oftentimes and sometimes really nice days in the 70s. [In Celcius that’s about 10 degrees to low 20s.]
3. How did you get five months off work to go paddling?
People are always asking us how we get the time off. And for both Shawna and I it’s just how we arrange our lives and live our lives, not to have so many bills and things that we have to pay for.
2. Did you have land support? No. We were completely self-supported.
1. How did you go to the bathroom on the water?
I have to release the spray deck and unzip my relief zipper and then I have a pee bottle in the boat. If it’s not too rough I can usually do that on my own, but when Shawna has to go we have to raft up. She has a big relief zipper in the back which is much more difficult and she actually has to be on her feet squatting over the edge. When it’s rough it’s very unpleasant.
ADVENTUREkayakmag.com 35
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