Marin kayaker embarks on risky journey to Hawaii

The vessel for his Hawaii vacation is a slender, 23-foot-prolonged carbon fiber shell, a evenly armored arrow of a craft custom made-fitted to Derreumaux’s body and specifically designed for the endeavor. Its blue-white-and-crimson-striped exterior is an homage to the French flag. He will spend most of the journey seated in its 2-foot-wide cockpit about a pencil’s size earlier mentioned the h2o line, his system entirely exposed to the salt, sunlight and sea.

“If a wave arrives, it’s gonna crash appropriate about and swamp me,” Derreumaux claimed.

The boat is self-righting, generating a capsize not likely. But Derreumaux’s very best protection against surface area chop is an elastic kayaking skirt and two triangle-formed canvas cloths that hook onto the hull to shield his upper body. At his ft is a removable hatch where Derreumaux can slot in a pair of pedal-driven flippers to propel him when his arms get weary.

“In terms of comfort — hah! — I never consider it is actually an adjective that need to be used when you are chatting about this boat,” mentioned Rob Feloy, the British boat master who built and designed the vessel.

Even the cabin is tiny, just significant adequate for Derreumaux to lie down or sit up together with his radio, water desalinators and electronics. His foodstuff materials, a mix of freeze-dried foods, higher-calorie bars and smoothie powders, will be packed tightly inside of the boat’s pointed bow.

In rough temperature, nonetheless, Derreumaux will have to climb inside the cabin and hunker down like a hermit crab rather than energy through. In individuals moments, the cabin is intended to function, Feloy mentioned, like “a completely sealed survival pod.”

If he succeeds, Derreumaux will sign up for a tiny lineage of courageous kayakers who have crossed oceans. Some pursued environment information, but Derreumaux is drawn more by the prospect of a after-in-a-lifetime journey.

“There’s very little I’ve done like this,” he explained. “This is truly pushing the boundaries for me.”

Only 1 man or woman, the famous seafarer Ed Gillet, is known to have kayaked by itself across this portion of the Pacific. He did it in 1987 in miraculous fashion, paddling an off-the-shelf kayak with the support of a kite to propel him.

Rowers, whose boats involve oars and are much brawnier than kayaks, have attempted the California-Hawaii crossing in new yrs with varying levels of success. Lia Ditton, a rower from Stage Richmond, done the route final year right after a harrowing 86-day odyssey.

Rowing generates more power for every stroke than paddling, and rowboats are substantially much more secure and spacious than kayaks.

“Kayaks are so considerably smaller sized that it tends to make every little thing a great deal additional challenging,” Feloy stated.

Derreumaux took up paddling in 2009 soon after he moved to the North Bay. He began racing outrigger canoes, collaborating in competitions in Hawaii and then completing a 444-mile race on the Yukon River in 2012.

In 2016, he signed up for the second Fantastic Pacific Race, a specialized niche opposition in which crews of two to four rowers electric power their way from San Francisco to Hawaii. His group arrived in Waikiki in first put in just 39 days.

“It was a massive learning curve for him,” claimed Carlo Facchino, a 46-12 months-previous paddler from Fremont who rowed with Derreumaux in the race.

Facchino has been coaching Derreumaux and describes him as unceasingly upbeat and iron-willed on the water.

“He’ll undertake a little something that he could possibly not fully realize, but he’ll thoroughly immerse himself and set the get the job done in to make it occur.”

That’s how the new experience came about.

Two points about Derreumaux’s program stand out as opportunity liabilities to expert very long-length paddlers and rowers: His one-of-a-type boat hasn’t been struggle examined on an ocean voyage, and he has under no circumstances long gone out by itself. The peak of Derreumaux’s solo kayaking working experience is a 9-working day paddle down the Sacramento River very last year, a leisurely cruise as opposed to what he’ll deal with on the fierce Pacific.

“There are some unknowns that Cyril won’t obtain out about until he leaves,” Facchino mentioned.

A further of Derreumaux’s paddling buddies, Carter Johnson, who holds Guinness Planet Data for lengthy-length paddling, place it this way: “He’s stepping off into the abyss.”

Derreumaux is conscious of these worries but continues to be undaunted.

“People think you have to have carried out something like this right before to do it for the first time,” he mentioned. “It will be a really massive obstacle for me, but I’ll handle.”