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July 6, 2002
On the Water: Sea cruise by kayakBy G. PATRICK PAWLINGYou know it's been a good day On The Water when the first thing you do when you get home is eat two aspirin, and the second thing is drink heavily. Water, that is. Meet Joe Link and Bill McArthur, two guys from Lower Township who offered to show me what sea kayaking is like. I've kayaked in the waves occasionally and liked it but had seldom cruised on flat water. I had this idea that it would be like laid-back bicycle touring, the kind where you stop a lot, eat a lot and take some pictures. It can be like that, but in this case I had the wrong idea. Link and McArthur have different definitions for leisurely. Link, a social worker for the state department of corrections, has run 29 marathons, finishing 18 in less than three hours, with a personal best of 2 hours, 44 minutes. Pain? Ha! He makes pain scream like a little boy, as my 6-year-old daughter likes to say. He's one of those people who don't use Novocain when he's getting teeth drilled. And McArthur? Here's a guy who used to take multiple aerobic step classes a day and has since cut down to five a week. He's been known to kayak in 30-degree water and thinks paddling around icebergs is pretty cool. "I enjoy being uncomfortable," Link said not long after we started paddling. Great, I thought. I've got some greenheads I can send your way. But Link and McArthur are as irrepressible as weeds - stubborn, undeterrable and able to thrive in places that aren't comfortable. They've crossed the Delaware Bay multiple times. They've paddled around Manhattan Island. They're mad dogs, and there I was in a borrowed kayak next to them, trying to keep up. The sad part is they really did take it easy. On themselves, not necessarily on me. We left from McArthur's house on the Delaware Bay, near huge dunes laden with bayberry, juniper, poison ivy, beach plum and jack oak. I got my one-minute lesson from Link (paddle with your body, using your big muscles, not just your arms) and then we were off. I thought they were kidding about paddling five miles south to the concrete ship at Sunset Beach. In fact when we got to the ship, they kept going, paddling through its decaying belly past a few more jetties so we could get a look at that area called "The Rips," a series of shallows off Cape May Point where rogue waves occasionally terrorize unsuspecting boaters. If I hadn't requested a landing at Sunset Beach I think they'd still be out there heading south. I really appreciated that McArthur and Link were paddling slow. I also appreciated seeing dolphins - dozens, many so close we could hear them blowing air when they surfaced. And I learned something about dolphins, thanks to Link and McArthur - that they're very sexually active. Which, naturally, is why they always look like they are smiling. Kayakers seem to smile a lot, too. Coincidence, I suppose. Lots of people kayak now, but back when Link and McArthur started, it was mostly just them, which makes them pioneers in these parts. McArthur remembers having a bad hankering to cross the bay, but not by himself, so occasionally he'd go up to people on the beach and say, in effect, "Hey, want to paddle across the bay?" Yes, he got some looks. So why? Why are they so crazy about this stuff? Kayaking is about exercise, the outdoors, hanging with good people and the satisfaction of knowing you've done something challenging. It's not just physical. Kayakers better know their tides, and it doesn't hurt to be good with a compass and a GPS. Link and McArthur have been lost in a maze of mosquito ditches, bit by countless greenheads and mosquitoes ("I think I needed transfusion one time," Link said) nearly run over by boats and dumped in very cold water. "It's been a lot of fun," said McArthur. To them, our 10-mile paddle was a warmup. My reaction was that if we had gone much farther my right bicep would have been screaming like a little boy. "Joe and I can do a nonstop 20-miler without a problem," said McArthur, a retired college professor who now does computer database programming, Web design and computer consulting. "This isn't really any big deal. It's similar to cycling. Twenty miles on a kayak is similar to about 50 miles on a bike. You wouldn't do it without any training, but with practice anybody's grandmother could do it." Sea kayaks are usually longer than surf kayaks, anywhere from 14 to 19 feet. They sacrifice maneuverability for the ability to track straight. They can be the self-bailing sit-on-top type or the sit-inside kind, where you wear a "skirt" to keep the water out. Link likes sit-insides. McArthur likes sit-on-tops, though he admits most "serious" kayakers sneer. "I'm such a hack," McArthur said. Not really, He's fast and strong. "Most of what I do would be considered (he held his hands up, making quote marks with his fingers, 'recreational.' But I think the idea is to have fun." "It's all about who has the best heart, and how many hours you put on the water," Link said. Amen, brother. And how many hours you sleep after you get home. This is On The Water - a summertime column about the bays, ocean, rivers and lakes of southern New Jersey and the people who enjoy them. To reach Pat Pawling, call (609) 398-6593 or e-mail: onthewater@pawling.net Want to get started? Kayaking is so popular now that it's easy to find a good eco-tour or dealers who will be glad to pass on their knowledge if you're interested in buying. At T.I. Kayaks, which has stores in Sea Isle City and Ocean City, single-person sit-on-tops might run from about $500 to more than $800. Doubles may run from about $600 to more than $1,000 with a rudder, which helps when it's windy or when you're working against the tide. When T.I. Kayaks sells its rentals after the summer, the prices drop to as low as $280 for a single and $400 for doubles. Other dealers offer new and used kayaks as well, so it's advisable to shop around. "We have a lot of people changing over from jet skis into kayaks - less maintenance and less hassle," said Keith Butler, co-owner of T.I. (for Townsend's Inlet) Kayaks. "And it is a family sport. Usually the wife or the girlfriend is standing there in the store with them when they're buying and they're saying, 'Yeah just what we need, another toy.' And then when they come back they've got the best stories about what fun it is." Resources: Jersey Shore Sea Kayaking Association message board: www.goldcar.com/kayak/board Local information, thanks to Link and McArthur: www.CapeMayBeach.com/kayaking.html |
