Have Wheels, Will Paddle

December 2002 - January 2003

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Vadim Kin

My take-apart wheelchair. Photo by Vadim Kin

It was a cold, wet, gray, spring day here in Seattle when my friend George offered to take me out in his recently built Pygmy double. I grabbed a paddle and got into the front cockpit. George got in back, another friend shoved us off, and I was finally paddling a kayak again after a 22 year hiatus. One sniff of the moist coastal air, two strokes of the paddle, and the old addiction was back.

I grew up in Moscow, Russia, where every summer my parents took me on a month-long kayak trip down one of the many placid, flat, and very remote Russian rivers. The kayak was our ticket into the back country and otherwise inaccessible forests full of mushrooms and berries, rivers and lakes swarming with fish. That all changed when I was 13, when I sustained a spinal cord injury that left me paralyzed from the chest down. I had not kayaked since.

The love of wildernessThe love of wilderness never left me though, and every chance I got, I spent outdoors. By now I had moved to the US, where I took my wheelchair on the roughest trails possible. Where the chair did not work, I eventually used a Jeep. Although the strategy was a huge improvement over the urban jungle,there were still problems. The roughest wheelchair trails did not take me very far from the car; I could not carry very much; and the noise of civilization was constantly with me. The Jeep took me much further, and would also carry my camping gear, but then I was generating my own noise.

A wide, accommodating cockpit. Photo by Vadim Kin

Therefore, sitting in George's kayak, all I could think of was a 300km, month-long paddle, away from roads, cars, jeeps, motors of any kind. Overcome by the memories, I dreamed of being 12 years old again. I had to get a kayak. But what kind? Where could I get something that would work for me? Being in the front of my friend's double felt great, but he had a wife and two small sons - already enough to transport. And what about the wheelchair? I really wanted to be fully independent and be in charge of my own craft. And then another thing happened during my second paddle with George. Her name was Martine, and she paddled a white and turquoise Tesla.

In search of a solution, I went to the TAPS Kayak Symposium - a trade show and get-together held annually in Port Townsend, Washington. I pushed my wheelchair through the deep sand for the length of the beach, stopping every ten yards or so to look at, or touch, another type of kayak. There were singles, doubles, triples, plastic, fiberglass,wooden, canvas, rigid, folding! I tried a few of them on the water. The larger ones - doubles and triples - had the advantage of the additional cockpit for the wheelchair, but they were slow and heavy. I knew that I could not keep up with Martine in one of those.

I nearly flipped the first single I tried. I have control only of my upper body and some back muscles, while the lower back, abdominal muscles and hips are paralyzed. Balance is a big issue, so the 24" beam of the single made me uncomfortable. And all the kayaks there had foot-operated rudders. I needed a stable, well tracking single, and I had to figure out a way to get the wheelchair aboard.

The '5-minute' hatch behind my seat. Photo by Vadim Kin

The blisters on my hands - the result of 200 yards of pushing the wheelchair in loose sand - told the story of my search. I had covered the ground, I had seen everything available, and nothing fit the bill. I decided that I had to make my own. I did try one boat that I knew could probably work, and I was going to start with that one. The boat was the Pygmy Queen Charlotte XL.

The QC-XL is a big boat of the Old Greenland type. It is 17.5' long and 25.5" wide, resulting in excellent initial stability. Another advantage is the hull's cargo capacity. I had only to modify it to somehow swallow my wheelchair. As with all adult-sized Pygmys, this one has the larger 33" x 17" cockpit - still too small for my smallest wheelchair. A trip to a wheelchair shop resulted in a smaller wheelchair with quick-release wheels, casters, footrests, armrests and back support. I knew this one would fit into the cockpit, and I did not let much time pass before two huge boxes, filled with plywood panels, fiberglass and epoxy, were sitting on the floor of my garage.

Some six months later, the boat was launched for its inaugural paddle. I immediately realized that I still had work to do. Following the excellent Pygmy instructions, I built the kayak without the rudder, bulkheads, or hatches. Most of the wheelchair did indeed fit under the deck behind the seat, and I had only the wheels to put on the deck. However, I still had a 300 km paddle in mind, and that meant a lot of stuff besides the wheelchair, and most of it would have to fit under the deck as well. I needed hatches. I also had an opportunity to observe a rescue session involving an overturned kayak that did not have a front bulkhead. I knew I needed bulkheads, too.

I soon discovered that the Greenland hull has some interesting tracking characteristics. I found that if the boat started to turn one way, it wanted to continue to turn that way, no matter how I adjusted my stroke. One way to deal with it, of course, is to shift your body position and lean away from the direction in which you want to turn. But I cannot lean very well while maintaining my balance, so I had another problem to solve - the rudder.

Ready to roll.
Photo by Vadim Kin

First I did the obvious - standard bulkheads and hatches from the Pygmy catalog. I cut the rear bulkhead down, so it could be installed deeper into the stern, about two feet behind the cockpit, leaving enough room for the wheelchair. I also added the standard rudder, but did not hook it up to the foot pedals. While at a sailing equipment store to get some rope for a bow line, I came across a device called the "tiller tamer." It's normally used on a sailboat tiller to fix it in a given position. I picked one up, and installed it on the deck of my kayak, in front of the cockpit. I then routed the rudder cable sleeves on top of the deck, and attached the cables to the tiller tamer ropes. Now, the rudder could stay fixed in one position, and I could adjust it with minimal interruption to my paddling. I finally had an expedition kayak!

Or so I thought. I then paid a visit to Lee Moyer, the owner/manager of Pacific Water Sports (near Seattle), and a renowned kayak designer. Lee did not think much of the two foot long compartment behind the cockpit, and as for the rudder cables - "people will just want to grab them to lift the boat" (which I had already observed to be true).

The boat went back into the garage for one final set of modifications. The rudder cables were routed under the deck, and as for the wheelchair compartment - I applied Lee's theory of the "five minute hatch." Normally you want the deck hatches to be watertight. But I needed a third bulkhead, right behind the cockpit, and a hatch in that bulkhead. This hatch needs to hold water only if I capsize, and if my boat is capsized for more than five minutes or so, a bit of water in the wheelchair compartment is probably not my biggest problem. Additionally, to help keep an unwanted immersion into our frigid northwestern waters to less than five minutes, I installed a modified paddle float rigging - a variation on another one of Lee's inventions. Despite two-thirds of my body representing dead weight in a self-rescue situation, the rigging passed the five minute test with flying colours.

As for my expeditions? How do two weeks in the Gulf Islands, two 120 mile trips down the Green River of Utah, and plenty of shorter paddles near Seattle, sound? And I'm just getting started.

And as for building your own boat - George warned me, and now I am warning you - you will not be satisfied with just one. Or two. Or any finite number. Martine will tell you. She now has to park her car in the driveway, because there are two Pygmy Cohos under construction in our carport.

Ed. note: We'll have more from Vadim on his paddlefloat rigging and the Tiller Tamer in our 'How To...' issue next spring.