About 15 instructors, 60 students gathered for Carolina Kayak Club (CKC) Symposium for training, camping and fun at Vista Point, Jordan Lake, in June.
PHOTO BY GINGER TRAVIS
Ginger Travis
It’s August, it’s muggy. Don’t you want to go paddling? Have you got a kayak stashed in the garage that hasn’t gotten wet in way too long? Do you need a nudge?
If you said yes, I say don’t wait. I can offer a couple of concrete suggestions to help get you to the water: exactly where to paddle and who with. And why: life is short. Carpe diem.
In North Carolina we live in a paddler’s paradise, whitewater in the mountains, mostly flatwater over the rest of the state, surf and saltwater at the coast.
We also are rich in paddling groups of all kinds—for whitewater paddlers, flatwater paddlers and paddlers with physical disabilities. If you’re a whitewater fan, you’ve probably already found your way online to the Carolina Canoe Club (mostly kayakers despite the name (carolinacanoeclub.org).
If you’re a would-be paddler with physical disabilities or are able-bodied and want to work with adaptive paddlers, check out Bridge II Sports (bridge2sports.org). It offers clinics and can point you to paddling opportunities. (Lake Crabtree installed special accessible docks to make launching easier for adaptive paddlers.)
And at least two local adaptive paddlers have raced in para-paddling events in the U.S. and Europe. One, Carol Rogers, is also president of the Carolina Kayak Club. The other, Ashley Thomas, is executive director of Bridge II Sports, and a CKC member.
Flatwater is what I paddle. My favorite water lies east of the Triangle in the coastal plain’s cypress swamps and saltmarshes. But we do have, right here in the Triangle, many miles of water to explore, on big lakes and small. (To give you an idea, the shoreline of Jordan Lake alone totals 180 miles.).
The most beautiful local water, to my eye, is along the rivers with long flatwater stretches interspersed between whitewater sections; these flat sections usually are the pools immediately upstream of old hydro dams. The Haw, the Deep, and the Cape Fear all have wild-looking, rocky, forested flatwater sections that are accessible to paddlers like me.
So we have lots of nearby venues. How are you going to find these places yourself and get out there to experience them? The easiest way is to find people to go with-like the meetup group, Simply Kayaking (free; meetup.com/ Simply-Kayaking/), or the Carolina Kayak Club (annual dues $20; carolinakayakclub.org). These are well established, active groups that usually have at least one paddle trip or training weekly.
Both groups take safety seriously; both require participants to wear (not simply carry) lifevests while on the water. The main difference is that Carolina Kayak Club has several certified instructors among its members and offers training events in addition to paddling trips, plus monthly meetings with speakers.
Informal training event (rescues) 8/4 for CKC paddlers: “Go Jump in a Lake!.” No one had a problem jumping in—or laughing about it after. PHOTO BY GINGER TRAVIS
As for paddling day trips, both CKC and Simply Kayaking rely heavily on Jordan and Falls. But they do branch out too. In August and September CKC will have events at Bogue Inlet, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, Corolla on the Currituck Sound, and (joining forces with a Florida-based meetup group) Merritt Island, Fla.
Simply Kayaking had a Perseid meteor shower viewing Aug. 11, a trip to a Wake Co. mini cypress swamp and a birthday celebration with cake, kayaks and water guns later in August.
Birding trips, camping trips, geocaching, slow, fast, exercise, brunch, full moons and dark nights—all kinds of paddles are offered by both groups.
CKC has held seven training events so far this season, with one more to go: a two-day coastal class on navigating tides and currents at Bogue Inlet. CKC’s biggest event is its annual Symposium, usually held the first or second weekend in June with camping at Vista Point, Jordan Lake. There’s instruction for paddlers at all levels from beginner through advanced. Fun, too. I threw a replica of a Greenland harpoon at an imaginary seal in June.
Early-morning July paddle on the Deep River, a tributary of the Cape Fear, from Deep River Park and Camelback Bridge in Chatham near Lee County line. At low flows paddlers can easily go upstream, then back down. This group, going up, is carrying around a stony bar. PHOTO BY GINGER TRAVIS
Not surprisingly, a number of paddlers belong to both CKC and SK to maximize their opportunities to get on the water. And in the last week as I was working on this story, another meetup group popped into existence: Durham Kayaking Meetup (meetup.com/Durham-Kayaking-Meetup).
Even if, like me, you enjoy solitude and often prefer getting away from other people, you may also find yourself glad to join fellow paddlers at times. There are advantages. You’ll learn new places to go, you’ll find a measure of safety in numbers and you may begin to discover “your people,” the paddlers who share your interests on the water and are easy to spend time with.
Plus, adding your name to the list for a paddle could be just the thing to overcome inertia.
There are roughly three months left in the 2018 paddling season. Get that kayak wet!