Beyond the Plateau

April-May 2001

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by John Dowd

After completing various sea kayaking courses and some local trips, many people find themselves on a long plateau on the learning curve. You may have noticed, if you're on it, that it's well populated. Keeping you company there are instructors and guides as well as weekend paddlers who do the occasional week long trip to Desolation Sound or the Gulf Islands. This plateau is a product of missing information and an attitude unequal to the conditions found at sea.

Neither the missing information, nor a safe attitude can readily be learned in your standard sea kayaking class. You can read about it, but the lessons must be experienced to be absorbed.

The skills you learned in pool and harbour classes may have earned you an "A" on your report card, yet you quickly realize that means little 'out there'. There is so much yet to learn. This awareness may prevent you from attempting the sort of ambitious trip that drew you to sea kayaking in the first place. Your paddling becomes confined to the familiar, where the main challenges come from forgetfulness or quirks of weather and tide.

If you're a guide or instructor, you probably do most of your sea kayaking within the level of your clients or students and seldom challenge your own comfort zone. You are up against one of those proverbial glass ceilings and it is going to take something special for you to break through.

Kayak schools, as is the nature of schools, tend to emphasize those subjects they can most readily teach and measure. Considerable emphasis is therefore put on technique, particularly the forward stroke, bracing and rescues, including the roll. Most of it can be learned in a few weekends. And after it has been learned, it does not seem to matter a lot whether you were taught to paddle forward with a high stroke or a low.

After paddling for ten solid days, most people, if they are paddling with similar equipment, will have developed a similar, comfortable and relatively efficient style. (There are of course exceptions to this. I once did a trip of over a thousand miles with someone who never paddled effectively despite having "learned the proper" way.) Most of us ultimately learn from experience and therein lies the key.

Among the things that are not so easily taught in your weekend courses-or your longer 'advanced' courses-are what you might call the 'soft skills' of sea kayaking. To learn soft skills from experience is frequently hazardous for they include subtle things such as the ability to make sound judgements in marginal conditions. (Good judgement they say comes from bad judgement, but it also comes from making the right choices while being fully aware of the consequences of alternatives).

Risk-real risk, not apparent risk-is essential in this process since it is part of the development of judgement to understand the difference between the two. Unless you are a compulsive risk taker, you will probably be unwilling to make these marginal calls on a trial and error basis. You would rightly categorize such a process as "bad risk"; welcome back to the plateau.

Soft skills also include elements of emotional intelligence such as assessment of group weaknesses and strengths as well as knowing your own strengths and something of your motivation. This knowledge of attitude becomes crucial when the conditions are marginal, since poor calls as to a companion's ability or physical/emotional condition can result is a fiasco at sea, in which the lives of the entire group are placed at risk. Staying on the beach at the right time is often the most difficult kayaking call of the day. But how can you learn to tell if it is the right move or if you can safely manage the anticipated building or diminishing seas? Such is the material of the glass ceiling.

Unless you are one of those individuals who is thoroughly in touch with that all too uncommon sense we call 'common sense', you will find that the only way you will pick up this knowledge is from making these calls under the watchful eye of someone who will allow you to make the mistakes while protecting you from the most dire of consequences. Guardian angels are difficult to call up when you need them, so you might try the next best thing-taking an advanced paddling course with expert paddlers in wilderness conditions.

John Dowd is the eminent author of Sea Kayaking and has paddled in many countries. He now lives in Canada.