T H E A U T H O R PA D D L I N G H I S J A C K S O N F U N O N T H E OCOEE RIVER IN TENNESSEE. PHOTO BY CURTIS AHLERS
EVERY KAYAK I EVER PADDLED Tracing a lifetime of adventures on the water in 25 boats
BY MIKE BEZEMEK
THE FIRST TIME I EVER WANTED TO TRY
kayaking was during a guided raft trip with the Boy Scouts. We were on the class III Gorge section of the South Fork American River in California, and I was around 14 years old. As our raft plowed through fun rapids, I watched skillful kayakers dipping their blades, swiveling their torsos, and expertly maneuvering sleek boats through crashing hydraulics. I want to do this, I thought. Learn to kayak, be a raft guide. So, I asked the late-20s guide about it. “Much harder than it looks,” he said, launching into a dispiriting lecture about how difficult it is to become a raft guide and, even more challenging, a kayaker. Being an impressionable kid, I accepted the guide’s dismissive claims. Somehow, this mythical figure could sniff out whitewater potential, and I clearly had none. Discouraged, I let the dream float away. Later that summer, my aunt’s boyfriend invited me to go kayaking. I eagerly agreed, hoping it might involve
easy whitewater. But the kayaks were clearly flatwater rec boats, and our destination was a mellow section of the Lower American. Still, I was excited to finally paddle any kind of kayak. I hopped inside a big yellow boat and off we went. Three of us paddled upstream for several miles until the turnaround point, a riffle too swift to ascend. As the others turned downstream, I kept paddling into the current, trying to reach the rapids. Eventually, the others were out of sight, so I gave up and chased after them. The second kayak I ever paddled was for whitewater—a massive red Perception Corsica. This 11-foot boat was manufactured from rotomolded plastic in the mid-1990s, but it wasn’t until 2001 when I paddled it into the current. By now, I was a first-year raft guide on the Gorge section of the South Fork American. While paddling whitewater was challenging and did carry risks, it wasn’t nearly as impossible as the cocky guide had declared six years before.
Though my new rafting friends and I had no idea how to kayak, we careened down the Gorge rapids anyway. We smacked boulders and holes broadside, flipped over, wet exited. After hardknock swimming with our yaks to shore, we drained them, laughed it off, tried again. We were nothing like the skillful kayakers I’d witnessed as a boy. But we were clearly having fun, so why stop? The third kayak I paddled was an inflatable ducky. A group of us guides took them on a trip across Northern California to rivers like the McCloud, Trinity, and Klamath. With each mile, we were getting the hang of reading water and navigating rapids. The fourth kayak I paddled was a Wave Sport Godzilla. This whitewater boat was cutting edge at the time, but my hardshell kayaking still wasn’t. By now, I’d learned how to paddle full speed ahead through rapids, which worked 80 percent of the time. But lacking the ability to consistently roll upright, I still swam plenty of rapids.
The fifth kayak was a Pyranha Inazone. I was too tall for this whitewater demo, but I stubbornly crammed inside anyway and spent the whole day hurting. I jealously watched my new girlfriend comfortably demo a Dagger RPM—which later became the sixth kayak I paddled. Late that summer, my girlfriend and I tried our first sea kayaks (#7) on the Sea of Cortez in Baja. We paddled out toward a curious flock of birds floating on the water. Then we paddled swiftly away when we realized these were actually the raised flippers of sea lions. The herd scattered, with several charging toward us. One even slapped against my hull, but eventually they all broke away. As we paddled back to our cabana, a massive sea turtle broke the surface. It must have been disturbed by the chaos because it gave us an annoyed look like, do you even know how to kayak? The turtle exhaled in a huff and dove beneath the waves. While descending a volcano that fall, I ruptured a disc in my spine. I discovered
JUNE 2022 | BLUERIDGEOUTDOORS.COM
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