Lake Erie SUP Crossing - Possibly A World's First!

The other day I had an awesome adventure with my good friend Jonah Logan. The two of us crossed Lake Erie on stand up paddle boards (SUP Boards). It was Jonah’s crackerjack idea but I usually go along with such things. He was the one who recently got me into SUPing and many other things now that I think back on it. He has a truly adventurous spirit and values adventure and a life well lived above most other things. A spectacular guy and a great friend for around 12 years now. Wow, how time flies!

Ever since Jonah and I first met we could smell this spirit of adventure on each other and we got along straight away. Over the years we have done everything from live performance stunt shows to adventure off road motorcycling, ice climbing to slack lining and pyrotechnics and most things in between (somehow we haven’t scrapped together the money for base jumping yet). He dabbled in kite boarding and I have been doing a lot of technical scuba diving lately but out of all of the adventurous pursuits those are the only two things we have not got into together. Yes, it would be safe to say that my life is better and full of much more adventure thanks to Jonah Logan.

The funny thing about this particular adventure isI really haven’t been SUPing for very long. I have, however, gotten REALLY into the sport in a relatively short period of time. Like most things in my life I either do them A LOT or don’t do them at all. It’s just the way I roll.

I have to admit that even my seasoned sense of adventure was a tad trepidacious when Jonah brought this plan to my attention. Isn’t Lake Erie one of the “Great Lakes?” The one with the reputation for going from calm, quiet seas to overpowering storms capable of sinking the most seaworthy vessels and striking icy fear into sailors hearts? And Long Point, our planned start point, isn’t that considered the Bermuda Triangle of the north as there are so many ship wrecks there from all the wicked storms? Hum…

As my friend Ben would say “what’s the second worst thing that could happen..?”

We are both in good shape but Jonah has a lot more paddling experience than I do as he works for an outfitters in Paris, Ontario on the weekends. He has spent a lot of time on the water and has been paddle boarding for a couple of years now. Most of my time on the water has, in fact, been under the water breathing through a regulator which is not particularly conducive to marathon physical feats such as this one. My job is sometimes physical but then I have long tracts of time where I am stuck behind a computer too. Luckily I know how to work out and I have a terrific coach/girlfriend who knows how to push me.

Another factor that may play into this story may be that I turned 40 this past year and I know Jonah turns the big 4-0 in a month or so. Personally I know that I often have these “I better start to do this kind of stuff nowish if I am going to do it at all” thoughts. You can say this is a negative thought but it is also positive in the sense that it is a motivator in getting me out there and actually doing stuff. I know I have LOTS of time left but that just means more time for more adventures. The great thing about SUP is that compared with many other sports, age doesn’t seem to be much of a factor. The top SUP racer in Canada right now is Larry Cain. He is almost 50 and no one seems to be able to keep up with him!

Back to Erie: We decided to try for the crossing this year before the weather window closed for the season. We figured that if we could pull it off then it may possibly even be a world’s first. We were both feeling strong having paddled a whole lot lately and we had the time. Now we just needed to pick the day. We wanted a day with a decent tail wind but something not too powerful either. We saw on intellicast that Monday Sept 10th was supposed to have a nice steady 4-6km/h northerly wind and the thinking was that would blow us nicely from our start in Long Point , Ontario towards our destination in Erie, PA.

We made our pack list (see below) and tried to think of everything we would need for all that could come up on a water borne expedition such as this. I madly raced around and sourced GPSs, VHF marine radios, deck compasses, flashing LED lights and dry bags. There is nothing like an expedition for a good excuse to gear up! We stocked up on Cliff bars, gels, shot blocks, jerky and any other high calorie food items that we figured might give us the fuel we would need for the crossing. We practiced navigating blind with the GPS and did lots of longer paddles as warm ups.

Sunday September 9th we drove to Jonah’s family cottage on Long Point with his wife and child. We had a sunset paddle and went to bed early. Unfortunately Jonah’s daughter Rosie didn’t think we should sleep much that night but that’s OK as we planned for an early start anyway. Up at 5am - scarf down some oatmeal then we got the boards loaded up on the beach. We double checked that we had everything and before we could really think much about it we were off paddling southeast at 6:20am with headlamps on in the pre dawn light. Beautiful!

Things went really well that morning. Warm breeze at our backs and just the quiet splish, splash of our paddles breaking the water. It was dark enough that we could make out the lights of Erie, PA. We had a good, solid compass bearing and the two GPSs all pointed the same direction (not always the case). Sunrise was spectacular and the water felt warm on our feet when it occasionally splashed up on the deck. A perfect moment in time!

Not long into the journey we realized that it was going to be a oneway trip. Even by the 10k mark with the tailwind it would have probably been a longer, harder paddle back to Canada then to our planned destination in the US. We were well and truly “all in!” The first few ships we saw were large fishing boats capitalizing on an early morning catch. These circled around in seemingly random directions and were a little confusing.

We knew in advance where the main shipping lanes were in the lake and had plotted them onto our route in the Navionics iPhone app. The East to West shipping lane was around 18kms out from Longpoint so we started keeping a super keen lookout for lakers starting at 15k. Don’t get me wrong, we were looking for ships and other watercraft obstacles the whole time. However, it was easy to get zenned out with the steady meditative paddling and I am sure many five minute blocks of time flew past where I forgot to scan the horizon. A lot can happen on the water in five minutes!

Sure enough, before long a giant laker appeared on the horizon. Do we try to cross in front? Behind? Just how fast is that thing going anyway? They are so big that it is hard to really grasp how fast they move. Believe me, they go a lot faster than you think! We ended up seeing six lakers that day, four of which crossed our paths in front of us. We didn’t pass in front of any of them as the other two were well behind us before we even spotted them. A good note here is to occasionally look directly behind you on the water as ships and other potential threats can appear from any direction! Depending on the wind you often don’t hear them. Did any of these lakers see us? Who knows! No comment on VHF channel 16, that’s for sure. Unfortunately I have no photos of these great ships as we were too busy dodging them. Most photos were taken on breaks and for some reason we didn’t feel like taking a break with these giant pieces of metal bearing down on us…

It was around 20k out from Long Point that the waves picked up in scale noticeably. The 1.5-2’ swells increased slightly to 3 - 4’ I’d say though I don’t feel that I am a very good judge of such things. What I do know is this small increase in size was enough to make the “stand up” part of stand up paddle boarding a lot more work. I remember hearing Jonah fall in the water for the first time. Falling in is no big deal and happens all the time and this day the water was nice and warm still. “Whoops” I said as we continued on. Sploosh - he fell in again and I began to notice how tired my legs and feet were feeling. Every couple of paddle strokes I was forced to use a “bracing” stroke with the paddle on the water surface to avoid falling myself. This was coupled with my right side starting to get tired as the releantless NNE wind forced us to paddle almost exclusively on that side. Ten paddle strokes on the right, then maybe two on the left, then back to the right. Sploosh - Jonah is in again and then I go in too. Hum… We paddled on our knees for a while to give our internal “gyroscopes” and small balance leg muscles a break. Stop for a rest, bob around, try to eat something and then back at it. We then paddled from a sitting position for a while - ouch, that is hard on the back! Maybe kayaks aren’t such a bad idea after all.

Hum… are we in trouble? Up until this point I was confident in my ability to cross this great lake and, worst case scenario I always figured Jonah could save me. Am I strong enough to get the two of us out of here if he falls and cracks his head or ribs on his board? To tell the truth - I’m not so sure. Just keep paddling, don’t think too much and try not to fall.

Out of the blue I feel that sickly saliva taste in my mouth and a second later I am puking off the side of my board. Wow, that was a first! Sure, I have been sea sick before but I have never puked out of the blue like that. Usually it follows a long period of feeling not well, then worse, then downright horrible. This was just a quick puke and then I felt almost immediately OK again. Weird. Awesome, something else to worry about. Keeping the fluids and calories up on a trip like this is vital and if I couldn’t keep them in my stomach I would be finished for sure. I had thought of seasickness as a potential threat prior to leaving and tried to find some pills for it but had no luck. Mental note to self - pack sea sickness pills next time.

That middle section of the journey is a blur in my memory. A couple more lakers passed. I was seasick one more time. I experienced my first “sea dump” but I won’t go into detail on this other than to say I feel that I have a much better understanding of the benefits of water child birthing now. I am a big fan!

Finally after many hours we made it to the halfway point (or what we thought was the halfway point) and we celebrated. It still felt like we had an infinite amount of water to cross between us and out destination but it also felt like a good milestone to cross. Long Point was no longer visible at all and the Erie side still appeared like a distant line of clouds on the far horizon that didn’t seem to be getting gang closer. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere and there was just water everywhere. Kind of spooky and peaceful all at the same time.

By now my body was starting to really get tired. I felt strained both mentally and physically and Jonah and I were not even talking much anymore. Thankfully the waves subsided just a tiny little bit and it made it possible to paddle efficiently without falling constantly. At the start of the trip we agreed to take little breaks every hour. Maybe five or seven minutes out of each hour and that was what we did. At the half way point we started working more toward milestones. If we had rested when we felt like it we probably would have rested too much. We wanted to arrive well before the cold, dangerous dark after all.

20k to Erie was our next big milestone and here we took a longer break. We both lay back on our boards and relaxed. When I closed my eyes I could imagine that I was on the warm water somewhere and that was really enjoyable. I opened my eyes and it WAS a warm day, I WAS on the water and I WAS in fact ENJOYING MYSELF! I was with my good friend Jonah and we were having a grand adventure together. I took a bunch of pictures and ate more than I had all day. It was around here that we saw our first butterfly floating on the breeze just off the water. We knew that we were getting closer! Buildings started to take shape on the far shore.

After that break at 20k to Erie we both got our second wind. The easterly wind settled and, for the first time all day, we could finally paddle a little on the left side. This made it feel like I had a brand new body, on that one side at least, and we made better time. We rested briefly at 15k and then shot through to 10k.

Now Erie was very easy to see and we had to start figuring out this last portion of the journey. “Hey, we might just make it through this… We should tell the newspapers,” I told Jonah. I put in a quick call to Taryn, my assistant at my office in Canada and told her to put together a press release. “How do I do that,” she said. “I don’t know… google it…” Before long a reporter from the Erie Times was calling asking me where we were going to land as he wanted to cover our story. We replotted our course for the marina as we were told there was some new fangled video phone there where we could clear customs by remote. Boats started appearing all over the place. Time to pay attention again. Yes, we were headed to the Lampe Bay Marina. We had our definite ending waypoint plotted. We envisioned a waterside patio, pitchers of beer and juicy cheeseburgers.

As we pulled in to that last opening it was obvious that Lampe Bay wasn’t much of a marina. No restaurant and just a few boats, but it was the long awaited end of our paddling journey so it was just fine. We pulled in just as the guy from the Erie Times arrived in his car. When I stepped onto the dock I had a hard time standing properly and my feet hurt like crazy. I felt like I just wanted to crawl into a corner and sleep or cry or something but I felt joyful too. Probably because I didn’t have to paddle anymore.

We gave a pretty bad interview and then Jonah’s Mom was there with Charlotte to pick us up. It took a while but we finally found and figured out how to use the customs video phone just before the storm trooper from Homeland Security showed up. I think he probably would have dragged us straight off to Guantanamo Bay if we hadn’t been well into our clearing customs via the video phone when he arrived. Phew! All of a sudden the journey was over and it was really busy and it was hard to stand up as we were still on auto wobble to compensate for the waves. I imagined what it must be like for someone lost at sea for weeks who is finally rescued and how incredibly un-relatable the world would seem to them. A part of me just wanted to get back out on the water just as fast as I could. Instead we drove home and slept like the dead that night. What an awesome journey it was.

Links to News Coverage:

http://www.goerie.com/article/20120911/NEWS02/309119956/Two-Canadian-men-paddle-across-Lake-Erie

http://www.simcoereformer.ca/2012/09/13/paddle-boarders-cross-lake-erie

Our Pack List:

Unless noted one of each item per board.

Board Stuff

Boards – Boardworks Raven 12’ 6”
Paddle – Quickblade Magic 100 – nice and light!
Spare 2pc kayak paddle (1)
Leash
Static deck strapping (4mm)
Large dry bag

Food and Hydration

1L Camel Back
Water filter system
4L water
Shot Blocks X 12
Cliff bars X 10
Salmon Jerky

Navigation

GPS – Garmin 60CSX
Spare batteries
Route programmed
GPS Wristwatch - Suunto Ambit
Route programmed
Tracking ON
Deck Compass

Survival

Headlamp with strobe feature
Small backup HL
Deck mount strobe light
Hand held flare unit with 10 flares
VHF radio
Spare batteries
iPhone in Lifeproof case (waterproof)
Intellicast & Navionnics Apps
First Aid Kit (1)
Aspirin
Sun Screen
Zinc
SPF lip balm
Hat
Small belt style PFD (worn at all times)
Vest PFD strapped to deck
Buoyant heaving line
Knife X 2
Multitool – Mini Leatherman
Tools & Repair Stuff
Tie wraps
E-tape
Duct tape
Shorty multi screw driver
Wire
Nuts, bolts, screws, pipe clamps, L-brackets…
Parachute cord
Whistle
Wind/waterproof lighter
Waterproof matches & fire starter material
Survival blanket
Strobe on PFD
Toilet Paper
Alcohol Wipes
Raft materials (to raft boards together)
Straps X 2
Foam X 2

Clothing

Long sleeved white shirt
Long shorts
Sun glasses
Floating sports hat
Gloves
Long Merino underwear top and bottom
Water shoes

Other

Passport
Customs info sheet – Detailed directions as to where the video phone kiosks are in Erie PA
Customs phone number
Go Pro
Spare battery
Deck, paddle & head mounts
lanyard

Things We Should Have Brought But Didn’t

Sea sick pills
3mm wet suits
Spare sunglasses
Shell jacket?
Tech material beanie hat – warm
Bandana
Spare hat
2nd and possibly 3rd GoPro
GoPro wrist remote??