Island Kayaking

Our trip to the Virgin Islands presented me with my first opportunity to adventure with my foldable Feathercraft in a far-off land. While on St. John one day, I decided to paddle out of Maho Bay on the northern shore of the island. Maho Bay is east of the more popular areas, Trunk Bay and Cinnamon Bay. I wanted to launch there and head farther east to land on even more remote regions of the island.

Given this was my second time assembling the kayak, and the first in-the-field assembly, I had no expectations of getting underway quickly after parking the car. Once I had the pieces laid out, I hit the start button on my stop watch to measure my proficiency. Feathercraft claims it should take one about 25 minutes to put it together once proficient.

My progress was good early on. I shook out the bow and stern sections, snapped in the supports and slid them into the skin fairly quickly. I slowed down when I had to place the remaining poles in the center and tension them. Tensioning the poles is a bit of a cumbersome process that uses two poles inserted later to lengthen the center poles and tension the frame. After much work and sweat, I got the frame in order and inserted the final pieces including the seat and sea sock that keeps water out of the kayak.

All told it took me about an hour from start to finish to put it together. To be fair this included several conversations with curious onlookers that wanted to learn more about the kayak.

With the kayak assembled, I scrambled to get on the water, putting gear in the boat and sunscreen on my skin to avoid cooking out there. My initial launch was a false start after realizing the seat was misaligned and my Camelbak was sliding off the deck into the water. With a quick trip back to shore, this was fixed and I was off.

In short order, I began wrestling with my nemesis: the wind. I'd never paddled the Feathercraft in a 20 kt wind before. To my dismay, she was weathercocking pretty hard into the wind. Early on, I tried to compensate by changing my stroke. This became a real struggle that I could not sustain. It was putting real pressure on my left rotator cuff. Not fun.

Eventually I got the boat reoriented and on-track. The shoulder pain went away and I could focus on enjoying the trip. And begin to consider how badly I was going to get pounded by the wind upon exiting the bay. My plan was to head out around the corner and head upwind. Straight into the wind would not be bad, assuming I could make forward progress.

Sure enough I was in for some excitement. The sea state picked up dramatically around the corner. Here's when I regretted not putting on the spray skirt, although thankfully I was smart enough to bring it with me. The waves were in the 3-4 ft range generally coming from the direction of the prevailing wind. In some spots, there were wave reflections coming back out from shore, creating all sorts of crazy chop. Through it all the kayak felt very stable. My only issue was that I was taking on water.

I considered my options, none of which were good. Pumping out the boat was impossible on the water. I needed to keep engaged with paddling to avoid going in the drink. Going to shore was not a pleasant thought either given the rocky coastline, making landing dicey and launching even more so. After thinking about the rate at which I was taking on water relative to my forward progress, I decided that the situation was far from troublesome. So I kept on paddling.



About an hour and a half later, after what seemed like a very slow slog, I finally reached the far shore of the next bay. I decided to bring the kayak in on one end of the beach, have a bite to eat and take a little swim before returning. The schedule I sketched out in my mind allowed for some time to chill here which was great.

Once I hit shore, I ended up chatting with a couple there about the kayak. Partway into the conversation, we discovered that we were both from the greater Washington area. Too funny.



After emptying out about 30 lbs of water from the boat and taking a nice swim, I prepared for the return. I expected to be back in no time, assuming the wind had not performed a switcheroo on me, which has certainly happened before to me. I bid farewell to the couple and headed on my way.

Heading back was fast and a little precarious. When the waves get to a certain size, your stern gets lifted dramatically as each wave front passes by. When they are coming from directly behind you, the wave may kick you around as the wave passes your center of gravity. So you need to pay attention and be prepared. Only one time did I almost lose it.

As I rounded the corner back into Maho Bay, I felt pretty good about timing. I was only slightly behind schedule and so I pushed to make up the time in the final leg to shore.

When I finally got near to where I thought I launched from, I was confused and then worried by the features on land that I didn't recognize. This area did not look right at all! What the...

Before launching, I had the presence of mind to actually mark a GPS waypoint. So after a bit more paddling, I scrambled to shore to get a fix.

I was shocked to discover the GPS reporting that I was 0.9 miles away from my launch point. The bearing it gave was all wrong, but I realized the bogus reading was likely due to my lack of movement. Sure enough, once on the water, I realized I needed to slog back upwind and fast. I was behind schedule and did not want to be the cause of my family missing the last ferry off the island. Not the end of the world, but still...

So I paddled my heart out. It was so tough. I was counting out strokes in groups of 10 and pushing, pushing, pushing. About halfway back, I realized that in my paddling daze, I was dragging my Camelbak in the water, which was slowing me down. Once I got that back on deck fully, I blitzed across the water. I had no idea how I was going to sustain the pace, but adrenaline came through.

Upon hitting the shore, I did a quick partial disassembly, shoving pieces into the trunk of the car. I was soaked. Somehow I managed to get everything in the car and make my family pickup only 10 minutes behind schedule. They found my weathered, shirtless driving look amusing.

Modulo the navigational hiccup, all went well. I look forward to the next opportunity to undertake another kayaking adventure somewhere far from here!