Tag: Kayak

Updated » Cyril Derreumaux has been rescued from his 4,450 km solo kayak to Hawaii

Cyril Derreumaux and his custom-made kayak named Valentine

Cyril Derreumaux and his custom-made kayak named Valentine

Updated 2021.06.11 »

After more than four days of holding in place and waiting for things to get better, Derreumeux made the difficult decision to call the U.S. Coast Guard for a rescue.

A helicopter was dispatched in the night to retrieve the ocean kayaker, who was airlifted off the water and flown back to shore. Once on land however, it didn’t take him long to start thinking about resuming the journey.

Updated 2021.06.07 »

After just a week, Cyril Derreumaux has abandoned his attempt to kayak alone to Hawaii. He set off on May 31, and although the first few days went smoothly, conditions deteriorated over the last 72 hours. He eventually called for rescue.

Derreumaux had not moved since June 4. Because of the rough weather, he deployed his sea anchor and stayed inside the cabin.

Yesterday, winds reached 55-65kph with gusts over 80kph. The waves towered to 4.5m. He also had an issue with his sea anchor but couldn’t try to fix it in such weather.

Earlier…

Rebecca McPhee for Explorersweb »

On May 31, Cyril Derreumaux dipped his paddle in the Pacific and began his 4,450km solo kayak from San Francisco to Hawaii. The 44-year-old hopes to complete the journey in 70 days.

His custom-made kayak Valentine — named after his sister –- includes an enlarged watertight aft cockpit for sleeping and storage of some of his 140 kilograms of equipment and supplies. This makes his experience quite different from the iconic paddle that Ed Gillet did in 1987, using an off-the-shelf sea kayak. Gillet, the only person to kayak from the U.S. to Hawaii, was the inspiration for Derreumaux’s project.

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Oskar Speck, the man who paddled a kayak from Germany to Australia starting in 1932, and Sandy Robson, the woman who recreated the adventure some 80 years later

Justin Housman, writing in The Adventure Journal »

In a span of seven years, he paddled a series of 15-foot kayaks more than 30,000 miles from the Danube River in Europe to the tropical shores of far northern Australia. Even better, when he first set out, he was “merely” planning to paddle to Cyprus for work, with no intention of traveling by kayak to the other side of the world. But the paddling proved irresistible and Speck did not stop once he reached Cyprus.

[…]

Speck was 25 years old when he set out on his incredible journey. He was an unemployed electrician living in Hamburg. Work was scarce and prospects were dim after the 1929 stock market crash ripped through Germany, so Speck decided to seek work in the copper mines of Cyprus. With no other means to get there, and as a proud member of a kayaking club since his youth, Speck decided to paddle his way to, hopefully, a job.

In May, 1932, Speck shoved off from banks of the Danube in a collapsible and very much not seaworthy 15-foot kayak, and began paddling south. He arrived in the Balkans several weeks later and, lulled to boredom by the languid waters of the Danube, Speck made for the Vardar River, where soon fierce rapids dashed his boat nearly to splinters. While awaiting repairs, winter set in and the Vardar froze over, locking Speck in place for months.

Read the whole article in The Adventure Journal »

In November 2016, Western Australian woman Sandy Robson (aged 48), recreated Speck’s adventure, completed in some 5 years, having visited 20 countries and paddled some 23,000 kilometres.

Watch: Rediscovering Glen Canyon’s Lost Wonders by Kayak

From National Geographic:

Filmmaker Taylor Graham and his team embark on a mission to document what remains of Arizona’s submerged Glen Canyon by kayak. Watch their 350-mile through-paddle unfold as part of a National Geographic Society-supported project focused on water management challenges in the Colorado River Basin. Activists, archeologists, scientists, government officials and members of the Navajo Nation all weigh in on the far-reaching effects of the dam that flooded Glen Canyon to create Lake Powell in 1963.

Watch: Travelling the World With a 71-Year Old Kayaker

Great Big Story via YouTube:

At the age of 34, Aleksander Doba paddled his first kayak. From there began a love affair with the sea that continues nearly four decades later. Driven by a fearless curiosity, Aleksander took to exploring the world from the seat of a kayak. In 2017, at the age of 70, he kayaked across the Atlantic for the third time, spending 110 days solo at sea. His entire journey from New Jersey to Brittany, France, took him 5,039 miles across the ocean, battling tropical storms and treacherous waves. For some, his expeditions seem impossible, but with every new adventure, Aleksander discovers a new, beautiful way to see the world.