Landlubbers are always expecting me to come to my senses. After five years of lifting a sleek, 17-foot kayak off my car, dipping its nose into Lake Erie and paddling to where the big boats go, I admit, I'm still a little afraid of the water.So, they ask, why do it?
Because more often it feels like a quiet blessing to be able to skim the top of the lake under your own power. Because sitting on its surface is like dancing cheek-to-cheek with nature - whether waltz or jitterbug. Lastly, because Lake Erie is there, something we Clevelanders mysteriously tend to forget.
And I accept being a little scared. It comes with the territory. Actions that require more risk - such as getting up to speed on a highway or holding a newborn for the first time - force your senses to be more alert. It's safer in that heightened state, and it makes success more joyous.
I did the smart thing, and reduced the risk. I took the classes that showed me how to flip over in my boat, get out, and get back in by myself. There's a system to it, and in reasonably calm waters, it works. As a backup, I always wear my life preserver, bring a waterproof flashlight and flare, and never paddle alone.
That, and bobbing around in a few perfect sunsets should have been fine enough.
Except:
I got talked into joining a group paddling between ice chunks on Lake Erie on a warm New Year's Day. It was like sneaking up on a sleeping winter monster. I bought an insulated wet suit to make the season longer.
I once paddled off Vermilion's public beach on a day when 4-foot waves were predicted. They turned into 8-foot waves. A more experienced kayaker helped talk me through it. I still feel more accomplishment than fear.
I joined a guided group paddling from Kelleys Island to the Ohio mainland, a 3½ mile distance done in less than three hours. I started out paddling for my life, but I grew calm knowing there was a motorized guide boat nearby, the company of a dozen other kayakers, and land always in sight. The trip leader suggested practicing rescue techniques when we were halfway there. I rolled out of my boat like a fish set free.
Now I wonder what it would be like to push off from Marblehead peninsula to cross the lake, hopping from Kelleys to South Bass to Pelee Island and to the Canadian mainland.
Part of me is horrified by the thought of how weather can change in a 12-mile crossing, the longest stretch of water in that 35-mile route. The other part of me thinks it would be a wondrous, confidence-building, life-affirming feat.
In this fearful and exhilarating fantasy, I take a deep breath. Who do I think I am, anyway?
A growing number of kayakers are asking this question and finding the answer. Most don't want big risks. They just do it for fun.
A test of oneself
A rare few intend to set records, pushing themselves to the limits. But all of them, by paddling long boats on the big water, have, for at least fleeting moments, taken a fickle Great Lake by hand and made it theirs.
They are Sunday paddlers, tinkerers, engineers, group leaders and lake crossers. Here are a few of their stories.
No place like home Janet and Rick Nelson wanted lakefront property badly when they moved from Erie, Pa., to Cleveland 24 years ago. They found it in a 1950s East Side ranch with a long glass wall that drinks in every apricot sunset.
Still, it was not close enough.
On nice days when they see Erie behaving, they haul out the 16-foot tandem kayak from the side of the house. They roll it down the front yard on a cart that Rick, a contractor and pipe-organ specialist, made from leftover bicycle parts. At the remains of a concrete dock across the street, the three Nelsons get in the boat.
Ten-year-old Adrienne has a child-size seat that snaps into the 3-foot-wide kayak. Mom and dad, both 49, know she's a good swimmer but make sure she wears her life jacket anyway. Adrienne herself says these rides are pretty calm.
"Once I fell asleep down there," she says, gesturing to the enclosed toe of the boat.
"For us, it's a total geezer sport," says Jan, who runs the Sunbeam Shop, a children's clothing store in Cleveland Heights. "It's just a family ramble."
"It's nice to have a boat with no moving parts," adds Rick. "And it's cheaper than a sailboat."
Not that some hairy things haven't happened. Hearing cries of woe from the water, Rick once grabbed their boat to rescue a young man who capsized a 12-foot kayak.
Turns out, the kayak belonged to his brother's boss and he was afraid to lose it. After towing the hapless paddler to shore, Rick explained how hypothermia, the life threatening lowering of body temperature, can happen even on a summer day if the water is cooler than you are, and you're in it long enough.
"I told him, 'Next time, screw the boat and get your ass to shore.' "
Floating sky While the Nelsons see their oat as a piece of recreational hardware, Pat Rayman of Avon Lake sees her heart in hers.
She made it from a kit containing pre-cut sheets of farm-grown African mahogany plywood, wire, nails and epoxy glue. Her brother, Joe, a muralist from Milwaukee, applied the final touch - a sky panorama on each side, from sun-kissed morning clouds to starry night. She named the boat Matins, a French word for morning prayers.
All this started because Rayman, 42, loves canoeing and volunteers as an instructor for Cleveland Metroparks outdoor education programs. At one sunset float she spotted Peter Pesch, a retired astronomy professor from Case Western Reserve University paddling in his homemade kayak. His oat's reddish-gold wood-grain shimmered like a violin under a flawless coat of varnish.
"The lines of it were beautiful," says Rayman, an immunology research technician at the Cleveland Clinic.
Pesch told her the kit was $750, cheap for a sea kayak. Most ready-made versions cost $600 to $2,500. To Rayman, the price was irrelevant.
"Once I saw it, I wanted it," she says. Bolstered by sewing and furniture-finishing skills, she sent away for the kit. When it arrived, she panicked. The box had been damaged and taped back together "and there were all these parts inside that I've never heard of."
Other things happened. She glued on a piece of wood backward. She struggled six times to apply even coats of epoxy and sand it smooth. She knocked over paint into a pan of small tools. Then came her sister's stinging words.
"Well, does it float? Or is it just a very expensive planter?"
It did float, launched a year ago at Findley Lake State Park, south of Oberlin. Witnessing the ceremony were family members who had lent clamps, bought her a sander for her birthday, and made jokes.
Rayman has paddled the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest, and many regional rivers and streams. Unafraid to use her work of art, she's taking it to Lake Erie next.
"It's already got some pretty nice scratches in it," she says. "But it's either a boat or you just hang it on the wall."
Like chocolate, for water
Rick Englehart once built wooden kayaks by hand, and from scratch. But there's no time for that anymore. His Englehart Products in Euclid can turn out as many as 80 roto-molded plastic kayaks in a day.
In a cavernous industrial building behind Euclid Square Mall, he pours sugarlike plastic grains into a mold, sends it into a 400-degree oven and switches the buttons that twirl the mold, coating the inside with melted plastic.
"It's like making a hollow Easter bunny," Englehart says.
The industrial technology graduate of Kent State University makes more than kayaks. His resume shows he made outdoor play equipment for Rubbermaid and even a crystal-growing tank for the Department of Defense. He felt there was room in the retail market for child-scale kayaks.
Not as mere toys, though. Put children in a kayak too big for them and you can risk injury, says Englehart. "Plus you want to design their boats so they can keep up with the adults." He offers paddling workshops for groups, including the Geauga Parks District. He brings the oats.
"You're not just teaching them to paddle, you're teaching them life skills," he says.
Recreational kayaking has shown tremendous growth over the past three years, and the Midwest is one of the fastest growing markets for sea kayaks, according to Chris Mitchell, executive director of the Trade Association for Paddle Sports, based in Sedro Woolley, Wash.
Englehart hopes to make the oats more affordable, selling adult kayaks from his warehouse retail space for under $600, child-size from $200 to $500.
"They don't have to be priced where they are," he says, referring to other brands.
"More people should be able to kayak, not just an elite few," adds his wife, Sandy Farrell.
All together now Once people get a boat, Marsha Bedford wants them to know they're not alone.
Three years ago, the supervisor in the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission started Bradstreet Kayakers, a loosely organized group of 145 Greater Cleveland sea kayak owners. Once a year, she and the more active participants put together a schedule of group paddles on Lake Erie, as well as some smaller lakes and some rivers.
"No dues. No fees. No officers. No real rules," she says, just a list of names and a Web site: Bradstreet Sea Kayakers. "No one is responsible for your safety but you."
Legally, perhaps. But many participants go no faster than the slowest paddler, and those who fall out of their boats often surface to find several members of the group ready to help them back in. Trips in rough conditions are often followed by a discussion on land about what skills worked best.
"We want to welcome novices," Bedford says.
A certified sea kayak instructor for the American Red Cross, Bedford says a class there can bring important skills and confidence. She doesn't believe good swimming skills are necessary to paddle a sea kayak "as long as you wear the right life jacket."
Bedford has artificial legs because of a birth defect, but has kept athletic with downhill skiing and kayaking. She used to go white-water rafting, but gave it up after taking a spill at home a few years ago, tearing her left shoulder muscles.
"I'm down to one good extremity," she says. "And I'd like to stay active and healthy for a while."
Extreme soloist In 1995 and 1996, Don Diamond of Minneapolis kayaked across every Great Lake at its geographical center. The shortest routes were Lakes Erie and Ontario, each 60 miles. The longest was Superior, 100 miles. It took him 30 hours for that one, popping Vivarin pills, squeezing down tubes of protein gel and chasing it with cans of fruit juice he caulked to the floor of his kayak.
He can tell harrowing tales of foot cramps, paddling with one uninjured arm and shaking from the adrenaline that rushed through his body after a close call at night with a 70-foot boat on Lake Erie.
So why did he do it?
On the phone from home, the 37-year-old medical-lab technician called himself a loner who likes to methodically break personal barriers. He also thinks of sea kayaking as a soulful sport.
"Some people get into it just to be by themselves," he says. "Others do it to enjoy nature in a really quiet way. I look forward to both, the nature and the introspection. You really have to enjoy your own company when you kayak a lot."
Diamond took inspiration from Ed Gillet who kayaked for 60 days from San Diego to Hawaii in 1987, a distance of 2,600 miles. And from Hannes Lindemann from Germany, who crossed the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas in 1956. Lindemann purposely didn't bring enough food, scavenging fish along the way. Both slept in their boats.
"I was intrigued by what this would be like in a smaller way," Diamond says.
Diamond brought his own sustenance. He also brought a global positioning system to keep on course, portable heaters, VHF radio, flare gun, sea anchor, deck compass, bilge pumps, waterproof suit, gloves and fiberglass repair kit.
Sometimes all that mattered was that it was beautiful, he recalled in a story for Sea Kayaker magazine.
"At 2 a.m. (crossing Superior) I noticed a shimmering in the northern sky, and at first thought I might be hallucinating. But it grew in size while it appeared to come closer to me. Aurora borealis. Eventually, I was looking up forty-five degrees into the sky to watch green, purple and white pillars pointing to my destination in Ontario . . . The sky stayed alive for hours as I forged northward, mile after mile."
Diamond is thinking about tackling a Cape Horn crossing next, a short passage at the southern tip of Chile that has been known to kick up 30-foot waves. After that he'd like to try an Atlantic crossing. But he's married now and doesn't plan to do any of these trips without a support vessel.
"Life is just an incredible gift," he says. "And if some people think of me as a cat, I know I have a few of those nine lives left. I want to cherish this gift I have."
Debbi Snook
E-mail: dsnook@plaind.com Phone: 
216-999-4357