Over the past thirty years, I’ve done most of my expedition sea kayaking in arctic and sub-arctic oceans. I’m not sure why, perhaps because they’re relatively uninhabited. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been chasing the gnarly factor all these years, and moving ice and polar bears seem to fit the agenda. Well, for the next few years, I’ve shifted focus to the balmy, tropical, South Pacific. Without getting into a senseless and inane discussion of relative gnarly-ed-ness, think of the concept of setting out across the ocean wilderness, in a boat small and light enough to lift with one hand, headed toward an island that is lying below the horizon, knowing that if you get blown off course, there’s a thousand or more miles of open water between you and the nearest continent.

As documented in a recent news report on this website, in August/September, 2007, my girlfriend, Nina Maclean, and I and cut our Prijon Kodiak sea kayaks into three pieces, and built bulkheads into each section. The idea was that we could take the kayaks apart, ship them cheaply on an airplane, then bolt them back together on our island of choice, and set out across the ocean. Various manufacturers have done this with fiberglass and Kevlar boats, but no one has attempted to build a breakdown plastic kayak before.

It was a good idea, but we didn’t get the execution exactly right. We flew to Port Vila, in the Vanuatu chain, bolted the boats together, then patched and fiber-glassed them until they stopped leaking, and set out on a northwesterly course, toward island after island, stretching for hundreds of miles across coral studded seas.

The Vanuatu chain is inhabited by Melanesian farmers who hack simple garden plots out of the tropical forest and subsist on fruits and vegetables, supplemented by a few fish. I remember one day, Nina and I were camped on the beach, watching a teenage boy casting a small hand-thrown seine net. After a while, he gathered up his net and walked past our camp, headed back to his village. He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing a baggy, tattered pair of surfer shorts. I asked him how the fishing was.

He said, “Great!”
I looked and then asked, “And where are your fish?”
He reached into his pocket and held out a half a dozen silvery fish, each slightly larger than a sardine. This was enough protein to keep his family healthy for another day.

It’s a lesson in the meaning of poverty and abundance, a lesson we all need to think about in the crazy economic madness we live in.

This year, I’m headed back to the South Pacific, with a new boat, and new agenda, to make long crossings and visit people living on tiny isolated islands set in a sea of blue. Ocean Kayak (http://www.oceankayak.com), a subsidiary of Johnson Outdoors (http://www.johnsonoutdoors.com) is sponsoring us this time. Look for updates in the fall of 2008.