FOREWORD Book 2

by Nigel Foster

I met Freya Hoffmeister in the United States in her early paddling days and later in different European countries, where we attended kayaking events to gain and pass on skills. As a teenager, she had been a competitive gymnast. The spatial awareness and training mentality she brought helped her naturally take to kayak rolling, and she was soon instructing others. She quickly mastered a vast repertoire of kayak rolls. However, one day, when challenged to think up ‘wacky strokes,’ she wriggled headfirst into her cockpit and grabbed the foot braces. Capsizing her kayak, she flailed her legs and rolled back upright again with her legs. The sound of uncontrollable laughter boomed from the echoey depths of her cockpit as her legs jiggled in the air with joy. It was one trick she was unlikely to repeat on demand, but it remains one of the most amusing I have seen.

Using a wing paddle, she joined me for a week’s sea kayak camping trip on Sweden’s west coast in 2005. The focus along the way was to play in the waves in the tight channels between the rocks. It was clear she was impatient to abandon the twisting and dodging. She could happily skip the precision turning control and was unenthusiastic about getting the timing exactly right for each wave. She would instead open the throttle to enjoy some fast long-distance paddling.

That speed kick got her into the guiding hands of medal-winning athletes Greg Barton and Oscar Chalupsky. However, an excellent racing technique was the means to another end. In 2007 she took off with Greg Stamer to circumnavigate Iceland, which she was eager to complete fast. The same year, she set off around New Zealand, happening to be the first of three women undertaking the same feat. But New Zealand solo was not enough. Multiday sea kayaking trips had become addictive, and she was ready to scale them up in size. Australia became her next target. Only one other, Paul Caffyn, had completed that challenging journey. Freya was determined to finish her trip in a shorter time than his. Making competition for each journey seemed to help her stay motivated, but that fell by the wayside. The magnitude of her trips began breaking new ground when she set off around South America. Now, apart from the elements, she has no competition, real or contrived. Her legacy is established.

The world is a measurably large place. Imagine circling the earth from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again or traveling around the equator. That distance falls short of the miles Freya has kayaked her fully laden sea kayak since I first met her. The little jaunts around Iceland, New Zealand South, and Ireland comprise only a tiny part of that mileage. But you would never guess what she does if you joined her for a glass of wine on the front patio or saw her dressed up to go out. Her achievements are astonishing, yet her skin is no different from yours or mine. No, what is different is her mindset and her ambition to achieve.

At her early presentations, she reeled off statistics: distances, times, speeds, the records she had broken, and the records she had set. In those early talks, she spoke quickly enough to win points from the word count. She had rehearsed the information she wanted to present and the precise allocated delivery time. Freya has since fine-polished her delivery. She was learning from what her audiences ask and the pictures that make them ooh and ahh. She knows the exact details will satisfy their curiosity.

It was a quiet morning at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle, just a small group of people watching Freya glide onto the Puget Sound water. My kayak, and that of Kristin Nelson, my wife, was light and cargo-less, slipping easily downwind. Kristin and I would turn back after an hour. Freya cruised steadily away, laden with all she needed for shelter, cooking, eating, and sleeping. It was time for her to ease in gently and warm up her muscles. She was setting off to circumnavigate the continent of North America, a coastline longer than the world’s circumference.

Since that day, Freya has completed most of America’s west coast in different sections, making the seasons’ best use. In this book, Volume 2, Freya Hoffmeister describes paddling in both hot and cold locations, Mexico and Alaska. It is a chance to consider what differences latitude makes when sea kayaking. Here is the opportunity to learn about an extraordinary person, Freya Hoffmeister.