Sure, you can do it alone.
Especially under the conditions you mentioned as long as your gear and swimming abilities are in good shape. Paddling with an experienced group will reduce the learning curve by a long shot and that beats the hell winding up with pulled and strained muscles and torn ligaments from the trial-and-error methods of learning by your lonesome.
Even with a group you can be alone…
The first time I went out with a NorCal group I had just joined I was told to “stick with a group”. You know the harder I tried to comply with those instructions the aloner I got. 50 boats on SF Bay and every one took a different route. I finally settled for keeping someone relatively close.
Mind you - this was the first time since I started kayaking I had gone with a group.
My point is - just because you are paddling with a group doesn’t mean you can’t end up paddling alone!
It is more
dangerous to drive the car to the river or ocean than to paddle alone. If you follow the advise from some of the people above you will be fine. It is something about the water that makes a lot of people terrified. It is very dangerous of course to capsize if you don’t know what to do. Skill is nescessary.
Paul
you’re going to die anyway
so why not enjoy life to it’s fullest? For every paddler you add to your party, the complexity goes up by the square of the number of participants. File the paddle plan for the retrieval crews, that is a good idea. I paddle alone at least 80 percent of the time. When alone, I don’t do my most challenging stunts or go the most dangerous places. But if I had to wait for other’s to hunt, fish, boat, bike, blah blah, I would still be on the couch like the rest of my happless associates.
I understand drowning is easy. And freezing and drowning even more so. So what is all the fuss about? Enjoy every stroke, take a little extra caution, don’t deliberately tempt your fate when you have a choice, and just go with the flow. And if the unthinkable should happen? Hey, you were having a great time, not watching some machine bleep out every last heartbeat in some isolation room.
I agree
Now I don’t feel so bad
I’m a noob to this too and have had the same question in the back of my mind since I’ve only been out on the water alone. Thanks for the boost of self confidence everyone!
Almost always
have sex…oops different subject… paddle alone.
ghost writer
As long as that self confidence is…
… balanced with appropriate knowledge and skills… This can be pretty basic simple stuff for casual paddling - but when paddling alone you need to attend to your environment and personal abilities more than your feelings.
Paddling without humans
– Last Updated: Jun-08-07 9:10 PM EST –
Dear fellow kayaker: Your never alone: The Kayaking King has His eye on You. By all means paddle without humans. I call it life...I call it living. Life is not safe. It is dangerous, it is scary. And I thank the One who throws the thunderbolts that it is. This earth is a wild place and the one who made it He must be one wild Dude. Have you ever read any adventure stories? There are dragons to be slain, treasure to be found, and deep dark forests to find our way through. What would life be if we stay on our safe little couch watching T.V. What is a sailboat if it cant get out into the wind and the waves. Sure the ocean is scary...it's not safe. But you can trust the one who feeds the seagulls day after day after day. You can trust the One who makes ebb and flow, sunset and sunrise. I can assure you His eye is on you. And he cares for you like a Dad loves his child. BUT/ and I repeat.......This one who has his eye on you has equipped you for paddling.........with a brain .....so you can paddle in these knarly wild places. If you do not use that brain its like not using your paddles, It's like going out paddling on Lake Ponchartrain when Katrina is bearing down full force. Here are some tips to put in that brain from Godskayakman: I kayaked solo from olympia washington to Juneau alaska. Just about everywhere alone in the Puget Sound. Circumnavigated Lake Mead in the winter. Ive kayaked the Big sur coast and have learned these lessons: 1.) Pride the biggest killer: Thinking your better than you are: Be totally honest with yourself for if you cross that invisible line you can get killed. Challenge yourself but have a safety net. If paddling alone stay close to shore, untill you are equiped with the knowledge of the dangers of crossings and thus you can PROTECT your self. Huge rips and waves that would scare the holy crap out of you can magically appear out of nowhere. If your close to shore odds are reduced dramatically if you should capsize and be carried out into freezing cold water. Which brings me to hypothermia....if you make crossings shit can happen..A whale could come up from underneath you. It happened to me twice. Once a sixtyfoot humpback off owens beach in Tacoma washington wanted to play....I got pictures. Once J pod passed right under my boat at active pass in the gulf islands. It scared me so bad a huge bull the leader of the pack made me almost capzise....I got pictures to prove it. Anything can happen. I almost died paddling next to shore at point defiance. A rip presented itself. I was a newbie thought i could go along shore it swept me under a tree capsizing me and swept me half a mile out into the narrows toward Gig Harbor. I had on levis...got damn cold... almost lost my beautiful cedar strip kayak I made. It almost sunk. I didnt die....but one helluva adventure...thats living. It couild have been avoided had I been more knowledgable. Anyway I wrote too much already maybe tommorrow Ill preach less and give more pointers. I got some real good ones. Ill tell you the one I learned while going through seymor narrows......Anyway...peace Godskayakman
Hi Carney2
I sure appreciate all the excellent answers from fellow kayakers on paddlenet. And carney2 thanks for the outstanding question about paddling alone. A lot of people would be too prideful macho etc to ask such a question…and I would be one of them. Your question could be something thatpointers and answers from fellow kayakers…could increase safety for everyone.Therefore I’d like to say thanks Brent for making these forums possible for sharing information…you did a good thing Brent…congrats. When kayaking along a cliffy shore and there is a strong current perhaps from the ebb and flow of the tides. Be careful not to catch your paddle on the cliff or a branch or something and thus throw you out of balance. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. My kayak is very high performance so kinda tippy so keeping my “Mass over my ASS” is quite critical. In otherwords stay centered over your kayak. So give your self some space from the cliffs or at least just remember they are there. When padling if your paddle hits a big piece of kelp or a submerged log or something it can kind of fling you off balance also. Once I was kayaking from anacortes across to cypress Island and as usual a rip just offshore from cypress. I was kind of a newbie so everything seemed cool on the crossing until I got close to cypress and I could see the rip which was not visible from the distance. I thought I could paddle around it and avoid. Dah you cant beat mother nature best thing is paddle downstream or with it tell it fazes out. I thought I could paddle around in front of it. Well so much for that idea, it was so strong that it sucked me right into the beginning of its ugly mouth. It was a monster. By the grace of God the idea came into my mind…go with the flow ride across it like a whitewater kayaker and just do your best to stay centered and dont over react thus getting yourself off balance. Well thats what i did I pointed my kayak downstream with the rip and kind of worked across it gradually, but with it. Hey, I rode that baby no problem, a little scary but more exzelerating. And IM like hey that wasnt so bad, thats the ticket. Dont fight them flow with them like a whitewater kayaker works his way downstream. Im telling you that rip was like class IV it had some big standing waves. It must have been a big minus tide going out to produce it.So I got across the rip to cypress and was jazed…Got to go for now…Peace…Godskayakman
experience
Who came up with that saying: “Good judgement comes from experience. Good experience comes from… BAD judgements”?
I admit paddling alone in my earlier kayaking days and flipped in water a lot colder than I expected!
But it wasn’t cold enough, so I managed to swam ashore. In hindsight, I was close to shore ON PURPOSE, because I wasn’t sure of my skill. So I did take a calculated risk and it worked out, because I survived to write this…
Now, I know more about what to look for when going out alone. I have more skill, more equipement. And the best part, better experience to make better judgement when NOT to go out, alone or otherwise.
So, go out, be careful. Life is to be lived.
carney2 - Where in PA?
Carney2 - you mentioned a state lake in Eastern PA. Which one were you referring to?