I’m 40, retired, and don’t yet know anyone local that kayaks and has free time to paddle, much less go on extended paddling adventures. I’m new to it, but pretty much down for living in my kayak and traveling the southern coast where its warm and would be 100% content if I never paddle any whitewater. Or even rapids for that matter… LOL (might be the newbie mindset) I live between Columbia and Aiken South Carolina and am looking for an adventure pal that also loves paddling enough to set off and paddle camp an easy river long distance. Maybe even to the ocean, or to Florida, or to Brazil… ok ok, I’m getting carried away dreaming. Lol But the thought is so exciting!
The back story…
The year before last, I started cycling, then discovered bikepacking, started via fat bike, then a fat recumbent trike and loved it so much I decided to travel via recumbent trike to Florida or further. I “trained” every day and got up to about 40+ miles every day, 7 days a week unless it was raining. I had my kit pretty perfect and with years of primitive camping/bushcraft experience, I was ready to start traveling and like many others, let the “pandemic” chaos put a halt on those plans.
While waiting out the chaos of the world around me, I learned about navigable waterways, that they are everywhere and realized that I could literally travel via water and paddle instead of pedaling. (My knees singing praises to this idea haha Bad knees/ankle would be my most likely downfall with cycling.)
I started getting little boats and learned some valuable titling/registration lessons, was trying to get fancy and bigger which meant motors had to be involved Yada Yada. Before long, I was searching for a fixer upper sailboat to liveaboard full-time because I could accomplish that for the same price I was having to spend. Sigh… I decided to start over and keep it simple like I originally planned. Purchased the cheapest SOT Kayak I could find and its perfect! (Maybe get a sailboat one day but I can dream of that while having my adventures right now instead of just dreaming and going nowhere, getting older.)
So here I am. Maybe its a midlife crisis or maybe I’m just crazy. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that I’m ready for a traveling adventure and it would be so awesome to share that experience with someone along the way. I’m going regardless and will be documenting the adventure as I go, but man… Sitting by the is so much better when you’re not alone.
This world is just going to keep getting crazier and crazier and I don’t want to keep letting that stop me from having the time of my life enjoying this beautiful creation thats just waiting to be explored.
I better stop typing, might have already bored some to death. Lol