Lost Hatch Covers

So, you are out on beautiful multi-day paddle, boat loaded with gear, just enjoying the good life.  After a wonderful night of camping you begin the loading process only to realize that you have either lost your hatch cover or the water/ocean has reached up and stolen it, leaving your precious boat with a big  open exposed hole.  What do you do now, how will you recover, what is your plan?

I had thought of this occurrence many times and kept meaning to add a spare hatch cover to my gear list.  Unfortunately, procrastination and what not got the best of me and I never got that spare.  Three days ago as I was  loading my boat in a fairly benign surf zone, the ocean reached up and grabbed my rear hatch cover and ripped it off it's tether.  The hatch disappeared into the green and blue spray, never to be seen again.  Arghh, oh no, what now!

For me, I had at least thought of this moment happening and was mentally prepared for dealing with it.  Even though I did not have a spare hatch cover, it was a simple task of getting the XL size freezer zip bag and placing it over the rear hatch and then using cord to secure it in place.  This patch was good enough to keep the casual spray and low waves from inundating  my boat with water, but certainly not anywhere near enough to deal with a roll.  Care and caution was the order of the day.

So, what can you do?  Make sure you have some plastic, either those XL freezer bags or the heavy duty green trash bags in your kit.  Either one of these can be  cut to the right size and then with something like 1.5mm - 2mm cord you can fashion a very tight emergency seal.  I have read somewhere that there are soft emergency covers and these would be ideal to add to your kit.  The ultimate is to acquire a spare cover, duct tape it into your boat and just have it ready for that moment when you really need it.

The lesson from this, you need to be prepared and ready for the incident that you think might never occur.  A lost hatch cover that can't be properly cared for is a real show stopper in a kayak on a long or even short distance trek.

Water Purification, Chemicals or Filter?

This is a question that any backcountry paddler is faced with.  As we leave the confines of civilization we are confronted with one of the key challenges of long distance paddling.  That is, how am I going to get my water and how am I going to make it safe to drink.  We can live without lots of things, but safe drinking water is not one of them.

For my 1700 mile solo trip through the San Juan Islands, British Columbia and SE Alaska I was confronted with these exact questions.  For my trip, after much research I opted to go with the filtration method as my primary purification technique and then Aquapure tablets and boiling as my backup methods.  Before I describe my experience with filters, let me just say that in the future, I will use chemicals, so read on to learn more.

After all my research it appeared that filtration was the best, safest, and most reliable way of purifying water.  I acquired a MSR Gravity Filter and must say that it performed admirably (read my review).  In 147 days I only once had a clog that required back washing, so my overall experience was very good with filtration.  I was able to safely acquire and drink all the water that I needed, never experiencing any issues or bad tasting water.  You might then ask, if you had no problems, then why change?

Well, the issues become more of logistics and ease than with the actual filtration technique.  You see, to use a filter you on a long distance kayak trip you must deal with a number of issues, some of which can be quite complex.  The first issue is that quite often you will not be in a location where you can afford to sit and filter the water at the exact source where you acquire it.  This means that you must then wait to arrive at camp before going through the filtration process.  While the gravity filter worked great, it did require you to have an object high enough to hang everything.  This was quite often a very difficult process, especially in the rocky, tree less environment of Glacier Bay.  So this was another obstacle to getting your water to a drinking state.  Lastly, while I only had one backup of my filter, it was enough of an issue to cause me to re-think how I would deal with a broken or damaged filter.

Even though the gravity filter worked as described, the ability to have drinking water available in the most efficient and timely manner became my overriding goal.  Thus, the move to chemicals solves a great deal of these problems.  First, you can simply acquire your water strait into your Dromedary bags.  I carried three bags, 2/6/10 litre bags that I used for different purposes.  The 2 litre bag was filled on a daily basis with water that was to be used for cooking, thus using boiling as my purification technique.  The 6 & 10 litre bags were used interchangeably based on the frequency of water sources. That is if I was in an environment where water was readily available, I would use the 6 litre bag.  If water was getting scarce, I would use the 10 litre bag.  The move to chemicals meant that at the source, 90% of the time I could simply grab my water, quickly apply chemicals, and then get back into the boat and move on.  Within the allotted amount of time, the water was ready and I was good to go.  By the time you arrived at camp, there was no filtration to be done, and your daily supply of cooking water was simply ready to use, thus not taking from your precious drinking supply.

The chemicals I used were the Aqua Pure tablets, which I cannot recommend at all.  They left a disturbing taste in the water, and if boiled, caused a strange foaming to occur.  However, I was able to use the chemical called Pristine (sold in Canada, the US version is Aquamira) and it worked fantastic.  I was privlidged to paddle with some Canadian guides who shared this with me and their experiences with it were 100% positive over a number of years of use.  Due to this experience, I will be swithching to 100% chemical purification and leaving my filter at home.  This has the added benefit of not only freeing up space but also of removing one more  peice of gear that could potentially break.

To recap, this is my preferred approach:

1. Carry multiple size Dromedary bags. They fold up nice and small when not in use
2. Use a 2 Litre  bag for your daily cooking water
3. Use a larger bag for your drinking water
4. Use Aquamira for your primary purification
5. Use Boilinig for your backup purification

Aquamira Water Treatment