Planning a kayaking trip can be easier than you think. If you don’t already have a general geographic area in mind, just look at your world atlas. If time and money are no object, and you own or plan to acquire a folding kayak, then the world is your oyster.
Less ambitious, and less expensive, options are usually much closer to home, especially if you live near the coast or the Great Lakes. Most often, people get their inspiration for kayak destinations from articles, magazine articles, friends, a club newsletter, or perhaps a slide show put on by members of their local paddling club.
How to Plan a Kayak Trip
Check out this article to see the perfect ways to planning for a camping trip with a kayak. We will discuss the considerations, requirements, and essential tips to make you kayaking better.
1. Finding Right Resource for Gathering Knowledges
In this article, we include several listings:
- Periodicals
- Clubs
- Guidebooks
- Map sources
- Fish Finder for Checking Areas
- And parks.
The best sources of all, however, are paddling friends or club members who have taken a trip recently. Plugging yourself into a network of paddlers will keep you abreast of what’s really hot and what’s not. Sometimes, the guide articles, and especially magazine articles that resulted from all-expense-paid junkets for a writer, may not be entirely forthcoming or objective about an area.
From paddlers whom you know you can learn about an area, warts and all. Important information concerning access, launch areas, stress-free landing areas for camping, water sources, and potential problem spots is best obtained from knowledgeable paddlers who have recently visited an area.
On a trip to the Bella Bella area on the central British Columbia coast, our group carried charts with the combined notations of three separate parties who had made the trip during the previous three years. When two persons agreed that Island “X” was a four-star camping spot, we knew we had a winner.
2. The Right Time for Kayaking
When you go is an important consideration. Long weekends around the summer holidays will almost guarantee that you’ll be competing for space on the road and on the water.
The midsummer months bring forth like-minded outdoor travellers, and you’ll have to be extraordinarily smart or lucky to avoid traffic jams in popular areas.
3. Kayaking Trip Places
If you can drive to the launch area on a freeway and launch on a quiet beach, you’ll have plenty of company. There are some great places for kayaking in the USA.
Needless to say, midweek departures, off-season itineraries, and less accessible launch sites will tend to give you more living space if that’s what you seek.
For novice kayak campers, the more popular destinations may provide a comfort or security factor. You may wish to mingle with seafarers who are out there for many of the same reasons you are (solitude not being one of them).
Some of our most enjoyable trips have been in heavily trafficked areas, at high season, where we shared campsites with many neighbors.
That’s part of the planning. Are you looking for a wilderness or semi-wilderness experience, or will you be just as happy sharing the water and the campsites with other like-minded people?
4. Check Your Kayak Mates
So now you’ve identified an area. Your choice of destination will have to take into consideration the amount of time available and the people. With out the right people, the perfect combination of knowledge, good kayaks, and other items will not be very effective.
Planning a solo trip is infinitely more comfortable than organizing a group of six persons. Avoid groups larger than six; coordinating the wishes, wants, physical and emotional capabilities.
Also, the personal chemistry of large groups destroys the real reason for going kayak camping: to get away from it all. Equally important, there are very few coastal areas where you can accommodate large parties without straining the resources and adversely affecting the environment.
At the other extreme, solo voyaging is not recommended for any but the most skilled and self-reliant; such persons should know their capabilities and themselves exceedingly well. For a group, recognizing each person’s capabilities is extremely important.
It’s a gross oversimplification, but planning a trip around the weakest crew member and the longest exposed crossing is an excellent way to increase the fun and stay out of trouble. Consider, as well, the mix of capabilities. One weak paddler in a group of six strong paddlers may be acceptable; two weak paddlers in a group of four could be a drag.
5. Making a Proper Kayak Float Plan
Making a trip planning can be tough without proper guidelines. It can be bit tough to understand the kayak float plan clearly. Here is the float trip plan with kayak to check out. Fill the forms if needed.
When you are planning out for proper paddling with canoes and kayaks, you should consider checking a few things. These items are essential if you are going out alone for a kayak camping trip.
6. How Much, How Far You Are Planning to Go?
Time is even more valuable than money. We’re often lucky to be able to carve out a week’s vacation. Taking an overnight trip or a long weekend is one way we pack some outdoor living into our busy schedules, and such jaunts are probably desirable as shakedown cruises before we embark on a more extended expedition.
Keep in mind, however, that the “fiddle-to-fun” factor can get out of kilter. You’ll need to assemble virtually all of the same boating and camping components for a three-day trip as you would for a month-long expedition.
Only the food quantities change. Large groups take longer to organize and outfit. The itinerary unfolds (except for the most seasoned campers who have functioned together before) at the pace of the slowest member.
Consider, also, how far you wish to drive or fly, or ferry, or walk-relative to your time on the water. Ten hours of driving to make a three-day trip seem like a lousy ratio.
7. Checking the Weather and Distance
It’s easy to look at the state or provincial road map, or even the detailed charts, and visualize an itinerary that gobbles up vast areas of coastline or island archipelagos. Too much time spent on freeways and jet airplanes has warped our sense of human-powered distances.
There’s a simple formula for finding solitude: The harder you work, the more you’ll get. Driving a hundred miles of dirt road, carrying your boat a mile to the water, paddling out through and landing in surf zones, making a two-hour channel crossing—these are some of the ways to put kayak distance between you and the crowd.
So, how to track distance kayaking?
There are few apps you can use with the map, to cover the area you are kayaking. Make the plan with accordance of the map and distance.
Most people will find that ten miles in a kayak is a long day, and that’s assuming that fair weather and fair winds prevail. It’s not uncommon for seasoned expedition to cover distances of twenty, even thirty miles a day.
You must check the weather and environment condition of the place you are planning to kayak. It will help you to make a solid and safe plan.
8. What is an Ideal Condition and Environment?
Still, even under ideal paddling conditions, a major limiting factor is how long you can sit on your butt in a tiny cockpit! Plan on cruising at no more than three knots. Rest stops, adverse winds, a weak paddler-any or all of these factors can quickly reduce progress to two knots.
Consider the difference between these two speeds: At three knots a twelve-mile distance is covered in four hours; at two knots, a fanny-numbing six hours!
On the other hand, a solo paddler, or strong twosome (especially if they’re in a double kayak) might easily plan their trip around a four-knot pace. It’s best to be conservative in the coastal environment.
Seemingly small differences in speed can make a massive difference in the number of hours you’re confined to your boat, which brings us to another significant consideration.
9. Using the Kayak Trip Tracker App
Here is some tracking app for kayaking. Some of them are android and some of them supports both android and iPhone. You can use the most of these apps and make you trip planning better.
- Polaris GPS
- Paddle Logger
- Navionics Boating HD Marine and Lakes
- Tides Near Me
- AccuWeather
- POLARIS GPS
- FishBrain
- RIVER DATA
- RiverApp
- TRIP JOURNAL
- Go Paddling
- Rapid Magazine
- Paddle Ready
10. Planning Accordingly
Audrey Sutherland, a peripatetic kayaker has written widely and often speaks at sea-kayak symposia on the subject of camping. She has made the following unscientific, but probably an accurate, observation.
Setting and breaking Up the Kayak Rules
Kayakers spend an average of two hours to make, and two hours to break, camp. A trip plan that calls for making and breaking camp each day, or even every other day.
Means that as many as four hours will be spent in loading and unloading the kayaks, setting up and taking down the camp.
Food Planning for Long Distance Kayaking
Expeditions and itineraries covering long distances from point to point need to be planned accordingly; you’ll pack for kayak camping. Such as lighter and meals must be arranged to minimise preparation time.
Small, experienced, lightly outfitted groups should be able to cut that average time in half.
When to Go base Camp with Kayak
People looking for a more relaxed mode of kayak touring should consider the base-camp approach, or in the case of a more extended trip, a series of base camps. In view of the inordinate amount of time, and physical effort, that must be devoted to making and breaking camp.
It makes sense to paddle twelve miles in one day (four hours on the water) and spend two or three days at one site, rather than to cover the same distance in two days, and have to set and break two camps.
Tips for Kayaking with Larger Group
Larger groups, and especially ones that include several novice campers, may want to consider a base camp—period. The idea here is to find a pleasant campsite from which you may launch day trips.
The energetic and adventurous members of the party can launch day trips from the base camp, then return each day to a camp that becomes increasingly more comfortable.
Others will wish to stay in camp and read, work on their tans, cook, or go for a hike. The base-camp approach is an excellent way to accommodate a wide variety of skills and energy levels.
Right Equipment
You need to take proper equipment for kayaking. Kayaking involves water areas which can be vulnerable. So having appropriate items such as good kayak paddles, trolling motors, kayaks can come handy to escape bad situations.
Last Few Words on Planning a Kayaking Trip
An article in a generalized publication, such as National Geographic, might inspire you to travel to United States.
Still, you will be more likely to find specific information on paddling opportunities in the USA by reading out the guides or articles on this. Planning a kayaking trip requires guides and tips which we will discuss in this article.
There may be many popular areas where your extended stay at one camp may limit others’ ability to enjoy the same site.
With a perfect preparation, planning a kayaking trip can be really simple. I hope this article will help you to make guidelines in an easy way.
About me: Hi, I’m Alex N. Ferroni, One of the creators of The Safariors blog and former camping trainer at Tripspot Magazine. I wish some other outdoor, hiking, hunting, fishing and camping enthusiasts have made this blog to share our thought. We are learning a lot through each trip, and we want you to learn that too!
Great tips. Especially for the newbies there is a lot of things to learn and to understand. Sometimes, we tend to forget the planning and us things going with the stream is enough. But not all the time.