Catch a Gliding Kayak by Stever Jermanok

Pulling my paddle out of the water, I sat upright in my kayak, no doubt looking like some Greek mythological figure: half-man, half boat. My legs were hidden inside the hatch, comfortably stretched along the sides, where I could push on two pedals to steer left or right. For the moment, I stopped navigating to view a clamorous cormorant colony perched high atop rocky cliffs. Their squawks reached a crescendo when two bald eagles flew overhead, perhaps searching for eggs. Soon I was paddling propeller style in the waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, searching for another deserted beach on which to have lunch. As I coasted onto the pink sands, a school of seals swam alongside, popping their heads out of the water like periscopes to gawk at this modern-day minotaur.

It was day two of a four-day inn-to-inn sea-kayaking tour of Canada’s Prince Edward Island, just northeast of Nova Scotia on the Atlantic seaboard. The second-fastest-growing sport in America behind snowboarding, sea kayaking has become more than just a leisure activity; it has also spawned a whole new category of water-borne travel. While paddlers have been taking overnight trips for years, they’ve lugged their own gear and toughed it out in tents along the shores of lakes and bays. More recently, though, outfitters have created trips for the more genteel masses: multi-night jaunts that afford solace at sea during the day and lodgings and gourmet meals at luxury inns and small hotels. Guides, boats, and other gear are provided, along with support crews who transport luggage to prearranged overnight stops while paddlers spend much of the day on the water.

Such trips are proliferating across North America because people are discovering that sea kayaks offer active travelers an important advantage: These long, stringbean-shaped boats can get you to places you often can’t experience any other way- by bike or car, on foot, even in larger seafaring vessels. That’s what got me hooked on the sport in the first place. When my wife and I were vacationing in Maine’s Acadia National Park in 1995, we quickly tired of Bar Harbor’s oppressive traffic. To escape the midtown-Manhattanesque congestion, we ditched the car for an afternoon of kayaking around the phalanx of small islands lining Frenchman Bay on the park’s outskirts. Within minutes, we were gliding casually along the water, the highest mountains on the Atlantic north of Brazil as our backdrop.

In the three years that followed, I went on a handful of other half-day paddles. But I still felt apprehensive when I signed on for this much-longer journey along the shores of Prince Edward Island. It did not help that on the first morning of the trip, the air was thick with fog and the swells rose a good two feet. I was somewhat relieved to discover that Bill and Kim, a North Carolina couple with whom I’d paddle the next four days, had never set foot into a kayak before. We were joined by an experienced local paddler, Katherine, and Andrew, the guide supplied by Outside Expeditions, the local outfitter who organized our trip.

Our orientation was brief: Andrew introduced us to spray skirts, disks of nylon with doughnut holes that fit snugly around your waist and, once you’re seated in your boat, stretch over the mouth to seal you in and water out, Tupperware-style. Then he showed us the basic kayak stroke: Holding your two-headed paddle with both hands, you create a churning motion by pushing one end of the paddle through the air while pulling the other through the water. Adequately prepped and with life jackets on, we settled into our boats and pushed off.

My spray skirt kept water from flooding into the hold, despite the choppy seas, but it couldn’t keep panic from seeping in. I had visions of tipping over into the cool ocean waters and washing up onto the shore, a blue Popsicle. But the sun beckoned from behind a cloud, the fog started to dissipate, and I quickly found my balance and my stroke.

We edged along the cliffs that would be by our side for the better part of the trip. For lunch, we coasted onto an uninhabited island and dined on smoked salmon and oysters. Then we crossed several more bays to our resting spot for the evening., a small inn called The Ark that juts out on a spit of land into the Gulf. All in all, we had paddled four to five hours for a total of eight miles- just enough to invigorate, not exhaust, and to stoke our appetites. The Ark did not disappoint. I had my first taste of the island’s silver-dollar-size blue mussels, along with a lobster roll that was bulging with meat.

After being on the water for most of the day, I could still feel the rhythmic bobbing of the kayak from my king-size bed. I awoke the next morning expecting my arms to be sore, but they were raring to go. In fact, the whole group was eager to get back on the water, which, in contrast to the previous morning, was glassy-calm and inviting. The next three days were a blissful blur as the continuum of time seemed to flow with the current out to sea. We would kayak seven to eight miles each day along the northeastern shores of the island, past wild coastline with broad estuaries that cut into the red cliffs to form finger-like bays and miles of empty beach. While daily sightings of cormorants, eagles, and seals were common, Homo sapiens were not seen or heard until we ventured out of our boats in the late afternoon to shower and dine. Suspended halfway in the ocean, my head inches from the water line, my stroke became fluid, graceful. I would drift into my own thoughts ad then be drawn back into the group, usually by one of Bill’s jokes.

The sense of adventure, plying the ocean waters where few have gone before, brought us closer. One late morning, the sky suddenly darkened and looked ready to burst. Just as it started to pour, we ferried onto the shores of a rocky beach, helping each other out of our bucking kayaks. Andrew took four paddles and planted them in the sand to form a square. He produced a large sheet of canvas from the belly of his kayak and tied it atop the paddles, and soon we were enjoying another gourmet lunch under a makeshift tent as the rain dimpled the sand around us.

By the time we reached our put-out point at a popular local beach, we’d become good friends who didn’t want to say goodbye. So that night, instead of going our separate ways, we went to Katherine’s house for a home-cooked meal consisting solely of potatoes grown in the island’s rich burgundy soil. We talked of where the sea would take us next: perhaps Baja, Nova Scotia, or Washington’s San Juan Islands. With water covering three-fourths of the globe, paddlers have plenty of places to explore.