Channel16 COMMUNITY | EDITORIAL | CONTRIBUTORS | WATERLINES COMMUNITY RE: “WHAT KAYAKS ARE ON YOUR WISH LIST?”


“SO MANY BOATS, SO LITTLE MONEY...” From a comment posted on Adventure Kayak’s Facebook page by CHRISTOPHER MANLEY


KILLER TRIPS


IN THE iPAD, ANDROID AND DESKTOP EDITIONS THIS ISSUE


If you’re not reading this on your tablet or at www.rapidmedia.com/0042, here’s what you’re missing:


» Watch our four kayak carts in action (In the Hatch, page 32).


» Exclusive video review of the P&H Hammer and Pakboats Quest 135 (Inside Out, pages 38 and 40).


» Paul Manning-Hunter’s documentary, Kayaking the Great Bear: A Search for Wilderness (“A Better Adventure,” page 48).


Watch for this icon throughout this issue of Adventure Kayak for bonus digital content.


6 ADVENTURE KAYAK | SUMMER/FALL 2013


In the Early Summer 2013 issue, we highlighted seven killer trips that challenge you to cope with extreme heat, lightning, fog, hail, tidal rapids, rough waters and dangerous wildlife (“Survive Anything,” www.rapidmedia.com/0043). Bay State local Phil Warner wrote to warn us about addi- tional hazards on our pick for rough water paddling: Mas- sachusetts’ Monomoy barrier islands. “It is a great area to paddle with many, many seals,” Warner writes, “however, with the abundance of seals comes an abundance of great white sharks. Chatham, just north of Monomoy, had a problem with them in 2012; I expect the same for 2013.” Thanks for the tip, Phil, and for pointing out our goof in


Survivor Story


Amazon Ambush


BY DAVE Y DU PLESSIS


In August 2012, South African adventurer, Davey Du Plessis, 24, was two months into a six-month, solo source- to-sea expedition on the Amazon River when two men ambushed him from the river bank, opening fire with a shotgun as Du Plessis paddled past. Capsizing, Du Ples- sis struggled to swim to shore as the bandits continued to shoot at him. Left for dead—with pellets lodged in his back, leg, arms, neck, face, heart and lung—Du Plessis ran nearly five kilometers to get help from local villagers. After a difficult, all-night evacuation by boat to a hospital in Pucallpa, Peru, he spent a month in and out of surgery and ICU in a Lima clinic before returning to South Africa, where he’s already planning his next adventure.


M


Y JOURNEY had prematurely come to an end. I had failed my first solo attempt to navigate


the Amazon River from its source high in the Andes Mountains to its meeting with the Atlantic Ocean. Recovering in Peru—bound to my hospital bed by IVs and tubes—I remembered every aspect of the ambush. Why did they do it? Why me? What had I done


wrong? My mind wandered the infinite unanswerable questions. My heart rate monitor beeping in the back- ground distracted me from my thoughts. The beeping had increased as my mind centered on the attack. The distrac- tion allowed a temporary peace and a change of thought. I realised I would have to rephrase the questions


I was asking myself. I would never know why those two young men had attacked me, nor would I find any justification for the ambush. Asking questions that revolved around making me the center and cause of the attack would forever hold me as a victim. Departing Peru for South Africa and home, I began


to recall everything I had experienced: the cold beauty of the Peruvian Andes, the majestic towering trees and winding rivers of the Amazon jungle, the diverse and interesting people I had encountered on my travels and the cacophony of creature calls that had kept me awake every night. I reached a turning point when I decided to use the incident as a way to share a story of the will to survive. I could substitute a reason to resent for a reason to live. Forgiveness felt like a form of illusional power. I wouldn’t allow my mind to use the incident as evidence to turn against humanity. Instead, I decided to leave all the questioning and negativity behind and to transform the experience into a positive one.


I had received a taste of the wondrous life in the


Amazon jungle. I felt humbled by my will to survive, and reaffirmed in my beliefs of the incredible capabili- ties of each human. Facing a life or death situation, against all odds, I had chosen life.


52 ADVENTURE KAYAK | EARLY SUMMER 2013 » Killer Trips


WILDLIFE EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK & BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE


FLORID A


These adjacent south Florida wildernesses are home to a disproportionately large num- ber of dangerous creatures—from alligators, crocodiles, 20-foot Burmese pythons and four species of venomous snakes to black bears and 30 percent of Florida’s panther population—but it’s the biting insects that are most fearsome. Swarms of mosquitoes, chiggers and no-see-ums make paddling the maze of mangrove-lined creeks and bays, sawgrass prairies, endless sand beaches and cypress strands on the 99-mile Wilder- ness Waterway or one of the parks’ dozen shorter water trails utterly intolerable—if not deadly—from June to October. www.nps. gov/ever, www.nps.gov/bicy


What if… WHITECAPS


MONOMOY NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE


MAINE


The barrier islands of North and South Monomoy stretch for eight miles off the el- bow of Cape Cod in an ever-changing sand- box of salt and freshwater marshes, shifting dunes, dumping beaches and peripatetic sand bars. Marine charts are of limited value, since Monomoy’s shores and pas- sages—nesting habitat for a dozen species of migratory birds—change with each pass- ing storm, but a marine forecast is essen- tial. The steep berms of the outer coast— popular with gray seals and tourist-packed powerboats—are exposed to the tremen- dous force of rumbling Atlantic swells. On the islands’ west side, prevailing southwest winds drive bulldozing rollers across Nan- tucket Sound and head-high chop sloshes across sprawling offshore sandbars. www. fws.gov/northeast/monomoy/


Healing Rivers


SOGGY MATCHES


Starting a fire with a bow drill or flint and steel is straightforward, but you’d do well to practice at home first. Balsam fir resin, birchbark and small pieces of dry cedar turn a tiny flame into a blazing fire even in wet and windy conditions. Store your fire kit in a Nalgene or empty peanut butter jar so it’s bone dry when you really need it. —Jock Mackay


that issue (see photo)—Monomoy is most definitely in Massachusetts, not Maine.


STRIPPING CIVILIZATION FormerAdventure Kayak editorTim Shuff wrote about the inimitable freedom and rich tradition of skinny dipping in the Spring 2013 issue (www.rapidmedia.com/0044), uncov- ering an enthusiastic following on the magazine’s Facebook page. “Best part of backcountry camping!” writes Tracey Oliver. “Love to skinny dip, in the right locale,” agrees Di- ana DeSpain. “Well, I love swimmin’ naked, but there’s not much ‘skinny’ going on,” admits Dennis Mashue. Virginia’s Jasen Jacobsen goes one step further, “I’ve also been known to paddle…unencumbered.” Of course, baring it all is not without its hazards. “Watch out for those muskies and pike!” cautions Robert Griffin. Still, as Shuff writes, ultimately the best reason for skinny dipping is the “feeling of liberation as you shed your status, pre- tensions and fears.”


WHAT’S UP WITH BY TIM SHUFF Skinny Dipping BARING IT ALL IS THE FINAL STEP IN STRIPPING CIVILIZATION


No wilderness experience is complete without casting off that final thread of civilization: the swimsuit. Reminiscing on the times I’ve skinny dipped takes me back to the


core of my wilderness trips, to the very reasons I went in the first place. Floating naked in Indian Arm on a perfect summer night, surrounded by green phosphorescence, watching seals’ shimmering tracks like un- derwater comets. Or wind-drying on Georgian Bay granite at sunrise, getting goose bumps on body parts that rarely feel the open air. Blame modern civilization for the swimsuit—Victorian England


outlawed naked swimming in 1860. In pre-industrial times everyone skinny dipped. Who would bother getting clothes wet? Especially be- fore the days of fast-drying Lycra. Early swimsuits favored prudishness over practicality. Made from


hideous stiff canvas or flannel, they were cut for maximum concealment. Women’s bathing gowns had lead weights sewn into the hem to keep them from floating (the gowns, not the women, though one wonders how many drownings resulted). A wet swimsuit weighed 30 pounds. Thankfully, by the 1930s, North America had begun turfing its


beach censors, whose job it had been to enforce “neck to knees” coverage. Receding tan lines have since closely followed the flourishing of


liberal democracy. Under Franco, Spain’s fascists shut down nude beaches. At the height of the fight against Hitler, people went bananas for the bikini in America. Scandinavia, that paragon of liberalism, is the world capital of nudism. Naked swimming even transcends the culture wars: Democrat presi- dent Lyndon Johnson once skinny dipped with evangelist Billy Graham.


40 ADVENTURE KAYAK | SPRING 2013 Swimming in the buff continues to gain popularity. In 1981 Pope


John Paul II (who was a kayaker first—see Adventure Kayak V5i3 at www.adventurekayakmag.com/0080) issued a statement about morality and nakedness that effectively gave it the okay. The 2009 television series The Skinny Dip featured young, hot Newfound- lander Eve Kelly getting naked at a remote swimming hole in every episode. And at the end of 2012, a herd of New Zealanders stripped and dipped to break the group skinny dipping record of 413. Yet fully freeing ourselves from the convention to cover up still


requires escape. That’s why every nude beach is a mini wilderness: Vancouver’s legendary Wreck Beach, 473 steps down to the sea at the outer edge of an urban forest. Toronto’s Hanlan’s Point, which only became legal in 1999, separated from downtown by an island. Or San Diego’s Black Beach, a hike below 300-foot cliffs. Myself, I prefer to kayak to more private dipping spots. I hadn’t


considered myself a nudist—that political “ism” associated with the brazenly unclothed—until I learned how much the term’s definition sounds like why I paddle: “becoming one with the natural world” and “a feeling of liberation as you shed your status, pretensions and fears.” For me, the freedom to skinny dip is not just a sign that I’ve gotten


away. It’s the final ritual of getting there, a baptism. A decade ago, former Adventure Kayak editor Tim Shuff revealed more


than just his favorite skinny dipping spot in these pages. Surf the back is- sues at www.adventurekayakmag.com/digital-magazines.html to spot him.


FIND US:


editor@adventurekayakmag.com | www.adventurekayakmag.com | www.facebook.com/ adventurekayakmagazine | www.twitter.com/advkayakmag | www.adventurekayaktv.com


FEELING CHEEKY. PHOTO: VIRGINIA MARSHALL


PHOTO: SCOTT MACGREGOR PHOTO: RICK WISE


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