Devotees of Foul Weather Sea Skiing : A Few Daredevil Kayakers Are Taking a New Sport by Storm

Steve Sinclair and a buddy were admiring a winter storm off Mendocino one day.

Sinclair’s pal was sitting in his kayak in shallow water flirting at a safe distance with the breakers--the sort Sinclair calls “ultra-huge”--when the backwash sucked him and his kayak out through a temporary gap in the surf. Then the sea closed in again. There was no sign of the lost kayaker.

Sinclair, a former Pacific Palisades lifeguard, managed to push out through the booming waves in his own kayak. He found his friend unhurt. Since they were already at sea, the two decided to paddle around a little in the tempest.

Having a Blast

It was an odd realization, Sinclair said later. Here they were in fragile kayaks that tend to splinter in rough water; in a monstrous sea that could easily crush them. But they were having a blast.

“The feeling was much more like skiing than kayaking,” Sinclair said. “The sea was like a bunch of wind-swept mountains, but all the mountains were moving.

“Once I figured out how to do it, well, shoot, it seemed like a full-on sport.”

Sinclair and three or four of his friends (“We’re all overdriven former L.A. surf maniacs”) are possibly the world’s only devotees of this new sport called storm sea skiing.

Merv Larson, an aquatic craft designer who lives in Ventura, said he knows of no other kayakers anywhere who intentionally launch themselves into storms.

“What he (Sinclair) is doing is pretty extreme,” Larson said. “He’s pretty much of a maniac. It’s real violent up there (the Northern California coastline). The water is a lot more alive than in Southern California.”

The allure of lively water is just what keeps Sinclair and his wife, Connie, and their two children in the tiny town of Elk, about 10 miles south of Mendocino. The family lives modestly on what Sinclair brings in with his kayak touring business, Force Ten Ocean Whitewater Tours (taking tourists to sea only in non-storm conditions), and his wife’s part-time job in a local bed-and-breakfast establishment.

A blond, fair-skinned former competitive swimmer, Connie Sinclair puts up cheerfully with the occasional hardships and inconveniences of the family’s life style. She said she dated a number of men when she was younger, but settled on Steve for a husband in 1978 because she knew with him she’d never be bored.

Even when they were kids growing up on the same block in Claremont, Connie observed that Steve always seemed to be having more fun than anyone else she knew.

Sinclair said he was “superhyperkinetic” as a young man. “I had a penchant for attacking everything with extreme exuberance.”

This raging energy did not escape the attention of then Claremont High School coach Gene McCarthy, who recruited Sinclair onto his swim and water-polo teams. When he saw how Sinclair took to the water, he gave the young man his first surf-ski, a kind of a cross between a kayak and a surfboard.

Sinclair has been devoted to the ocean--and to Gene McCarthy--ever since. He still frequently refers to his former coach in conversation, and he named his first son, now 3, after the retired mentor.

The coach respects Sinclair as well, McCarthy said in a recent telephone interview. “The kid’s got a lot of heart. He’s a Chuck Yeager in disguise.”

Sinclair moved to Elk in the late ‘70s when his mother settled here with the thought of opening a restaurant. She left town not long after when the plan didn’t work out, but Sinclair stayed, supporting himself by doing odd-jobs.

Sinclair injured his ankle playing baseball one year and couldn’t afford to have it treated. If he couldn’t run, at least he could still use his arms, he said, so he began kayaking in the ocean every day for exercise. He went by himself, in high winds, squalls and full-on storms.

In the long hours alone, he said, he began to think of his kayak as his little appaloosa pony, carrying him anywhere he wished to go in this last great prairie, the sea. There were no boundaries, other than what Sinclair could endure. When it was stormy, Sinclair said he felt like he was riding out to a gunfight. When he won the round, he rode home quietly satisfied.

A Calming Effect

Connie noticed that her husband was calmer when he came back from the sea than at any other time.

A kayaker herself (she sometimes paddles out with Steve when they can find a baby sitter), Connie knows that a lot can go wrong out there. The boat can capsize in a wave and snap violently at its dislodged passenger. Fog can be disorienting and obscure the coast.

Watching From the Cliffs

Connie sometimes crosses Highway 1 from the one-room hut that houses the kayak tour business and stands on the cliff above Greenwood Cove to watch her husband blast off into a storm. In minutes--if it’s severe out--Sinclair’s orange helmet completely disappears among the swells.

Sinclair’s favorite kind of day to go kayaking is when the wind is at Force 8, which means up around 40 or 50 knots. In that kind of wind, you have to lean forward just to stand up straight. (The Force 10 condition for which Sinclair named his business refers to hurricane winds.)

On a recent day, Sinclair was dressed in baggy pants and a loose-fitting shell. His hood was pulled up over his reddish hair, which is always scrambled from the effects of wind and kayak helmets. His eyes and face hold a fierce expression that must come from so many days of facing monster waves.

At 36, Sinclair has weathered into an old man of the sea. In the austere setting of his office, he looked like some religious figure, severe and inaccessible.

But to soften the scene, a country radio station rattled out a Tanya Tucker song, and Sinclair’s two sons darted about the shop bundled in fleecy garments that made them look like bear cubs. Young Eugene played with a kayak paddle hanging on the wall while Sinclair showed a visitor a map of the convoluted coastline.

Almost all of this coast, he said, is generally thought to be unsafe for kayakers. Ordinary kayaks don’t fare well in surf lines and heavy chop.

“I wouldn’t recommend someone going out there in a lightweight kayak,” Sinclair said. “They’d die. Or they’d have to swim home.”

Perched on Top

But Sinclair’s Odyssea surf-ski, a commercially available advanced version of the craft given him by his coach back in Claremont, holds together in conditions where a kayak wouldn’t. He sits on top of it, not inside it like a kayak, and uses a paddle to maneuver.

Sinclair recently entertained the Elk volunteer fire department with a demonstration of storm sea skiing. The technique would be ideal for rescuing swimmers or boaters, he explained, since larger vessels can’t get in close to rocks, arches and cliffs. He likens the maneuverability of the surf-ski to that of a motocross bike.

For purposes of introducing a visitor to the sport, Sinclair rolled his two-seater kayak across Highway 101 on a wheeled carrier. He pulled it past the Elk grocery store where patrons sitting outside nodded at him. Sinclair has become a common sight around here--walking to the sea in all kinds of weather, with holes in his old neoprene booties, his wet suit snug around his muscular chest and shoulders.

Taking in the shoreline from the cliffs, Sinclair studied the pattern of breaking waves. He was estimating how he would enter the water from behind a large rock to take advantage of the calmer water there, thus lessening the chances of turning over in the icy water.

Paddled Furiously

Once they were on the beach, Sinclair seated his passenger in front of the double kayak, then pushed off from shore, yelling last-minute instructions as a wave loomed ahead: “If I say duck, put your head all the way forward against the kayak.”

He paddled furiously to outrun the breaking waves. Once out past the breakers, the sea was chaotic. Sinclair called it typical spring “chop,” but by Southern California standards, this was storm sea skiing. Waves hit constantly from odd angles, slapping the riders with freezing water.

Sinclair was on the lookout for runaway logs washed down to sea by the rivers. He and his friends have seen the logs smash up kayaks, and have taken to calling them “the drunken drivers of the sea.”

Sinclair gave a running commentary about what he was doing with his paddle and the sights to be seen along the cliffs. His booming voice and overpowering energy suddenly seemed in scale out here.

For Sinclair, the 45-minute ride was hardly long enough. When a storm sea skier is out at sea, he said, “You always kind of have a hope that you could just keep on going.”