PART 1: Learning how to sea kayak (2.5 years)
Our first foray into sea kayaking started with one day of sea kayak training with Blue Holic, just west of Otaru City, not far from Sapporo City. I wrote about that here. It was a solid day of forward paddling, turn strokes, and self-rescue techniques.
The training with Blue Holic was on the very last day of their paddling season in mid-October 2021. We still didn’t have our own sea kayaks, so we resigned to the fact that we’d unlikely get any more paddling in until the following season.
That was until Kato-san from Blue Holic mentioned where he was going for winter.
“I go to Okinawa each winter,” he said. “That way, I can carry on paddling all winter!”
Haidee and I quickly did an Internet search and found a few operators in Okinawa that offered kayak skills courses. We could only get down there over the New Year break, however, and most were not offering courses over that time. Only one place agreed to help us out – Drifter. So, we booked a few days of kayak skills training in the first week of January 2022, including a goal to learn how to roll.
Those few days ended up being more relaxing paddling than training, but we did both get the basics of a roll down.
PART 2: Buying kayaks (not easy in Japan)
Our short week or so on Zamami Island in Okinawa came and went too soon.
It was now time to get ourselves some sea kayaks so that we’d be ready to go and hit the ground running once spring came around in Hokkaido in April 2022.
Buying a sea kayak in Japan, however, particularly Hokkaido, is more difficult than it might sound. The second-hand market is not very active. The new-kayak market can be expensive. After keeping my eyes on the online auction market, however, I did finally find something worth driving (and ferrying) down to Honshu for.
In the end, we found two second-hand kayaks being sold online by the same person in Tokyo. I was keen on a P&H Scorpio, one of which I knew was being sold on discount by the Biwa-ko Canoe Center down near Kyoto. So, the second-hand kayak seller agreed to meet us at Lake Biwa, and we headed down on the ferry to pick up the three kayaks.
In the end, we came back with four kayaks, including Kermit, Haidee’s very nice fibreglass/diolen layup Valley Avocet. Full story here.
The idea behind getting four kayaks (or, more specifically, getting HokkaidoWilds.org to pay for two of the kayaks) was so that we could paddle with friends too. Luckily Palm Equipment came to the party and hooked us up with four full sets of paddling equipment: drysuits, PFDs, booties, the whole hog.
It was still mid-winter in Hokkaido.
PART 3: Gaining experience and confidence
The next two years were a blur of weekend sea kayak missions, peppered here and there with sea kayak training sessions.
Stand-out sea kayak training sessions included a day with John Kirk-Anderson in New Zealand in August 2022. About half of the session was spent on land, getting our heads around the important basics of boat control.
Also stand-out was five days of sea kayaking with Sea Kayak Oban in Scotland in August 2023. This was supposed to be mostly rough water paddling skills focussed but ended up being only one day of lumpy conditions plus lots of windy paddling and some tidal paddling.
The goal had always been to paddle around Shiretoko in 2024. And so here we were. Finally feeling confident to contribute well to being part of a paddling team, making the right decisions during a paddle around Japan’s most remote coastline.
PART 4: The Crew
Part of the prep of our paddle around Shiretoko was getting a crew together. In the end, we paddled around Shiretoko in a team of six paddlers. Prior to the trip, Haidee and I had paddled with everyone on the final team at least once, but never as a full group of six. We didn’t anticipate any clashes of personality, but depending on how stressful or stretched out the trip ended up being, time would tell how everyone got on.
Chris a.k.a. KamoshikaKiwi
When it comes to the paddling section of HokkaidoWilds.org, Chris was, from the beginning, somewhat of an enabler. He is a keen whitewater kayaker, so as soon as he got wind of Haidee and I wanting to get into river canoeing in 2019, he wanted in on it. He was also one of the first people I mentioned Shiretoko Peninsula to, back in 2021 when we were getting into sea kayaking. “Let’s just do it next year,” he said at the time, chomping at the bit. As the man with objectively the most solid technical paddling skills on the team, he’d likely be the least of our worries on the trip, despite his relative lack of time on the ocean.
On that point, we’d only paddled on the sea with him once. That one time had revealed Chris’s penchant for speed. For getting the distance done. Haidee and I anticipated this would be the main point of negotiation with Chris on the trip. Speed around the peninsula (and making the most of weather windows) versus soaking in all the sights, bays, and campsites along the way.
Timbah a.k.a. Beauty Noted
Barry Crump, a famous (infamous?) New Zealand bushman and author wrote one of New Zealand’s most popular books of all time, titled A Good Keen Man. A good keen man is one who, particularly in the outdoors, just knuckles down, gets things done, is indefatigable, and perhaps most characteristically, doesn’t mind sleeping rough. That’s Timbah. But he’s more than that. He has led expeditions, dragged students into the great outdoors, and has a good nose for both adventure potential and risk management. Adventure and a keeness to deepen community and relationships in the outdoors are in his blood. We hit the jackpot when Timbah came into our lives in the spring of 2022. By the time this Shiretoko trip had come around, we’d paddled with him numerous times on the sea. Hands down, he’d be the most expedition and sea-experienced member of the team on this trip, having grown up sailing and kayaking on the ocean in the US.
Mick a.k.a. Asobi Master
Mick is a long-time Japan resident, but recent newcomer to Hokkaido. As such, he’s the team member we’ve spent the least amount of time on the water with – only once on the sea, and once on a river. We didn’t think this to be an issue though. He’s an instructor and guide, drowning in outdoor qualifications (see them here) and has spent a good amount of time on the water.
“All of my paddling has been guiding first-timers in very sheltered waters,” he warned us though.
We had no doubts regarding his outdoor skills – he is a master tarpsman and outdoors maverick – but it would remain to be seen how he fared in proper sea conditions on the exposed coast of Shiretoko.
Ben a.k.a. Ben
Ben was a very late-stage addition to the team, and the biggest wildcard. Haidee and I had talked about keeping the team a tight crew of experienced paddlers and outdoors people, so when Timbah suggested we extend an invite, there was a bit of hesitation. The last time we did an overnight kayak trip with him (his first time in a sea kayak), he capsized twice. Since that eventful start in his sea kayaking career, we had paddled with him a number of times on the sea, but leading up to the Shiretoko trip, he hadn’t been in a sea kayak for a while. All that said, Haidee and I had paddled with him on a five day canoe trip, he’s as fit and strong as an ox, a quick learner, and solidly worthy of the good keen man badge. His ability to be relatively unfazed in the face of adversity meant that I felt like he was unlikely to be a liability. Haidee and I hoped we were right. Ben would be travelling from his home in Australia for the trip.
PART 5: The leadup
On the team’s group chat leading up to the trip, there was a fair bit of chatter about food for the trip. We were all busy with our day jobs leading up to the trip. In the end, we forewent the coordination of making shared meals and decided everyone would sort out their own food.
Haidee and I had some good success with making dehydrated meals for the eight-day Daisetsuzan Grand Traverse hike, so we decided that would be our strategy for this trip too.
We dragged the long-neglected dehydrator out of the cupboard, and set it to work.
About one week out from the trip, it was last-minute adjustments and prep time. For Timbah, this meant getting Grisha’s kayak ready. Grisha, a.k.a. Sakhkayak, was originally going to join us on the trip. But, last-minute changes of plans meant he had to miss it this time around. He kindly lent Timbah his kayak though, which needed some re-glueing of foam in the cockpit.
PART 6: The day before departure
It was a whirlwind few weeks before the trip, getting loose ends tied up at work. But before we knew it, we were making the six-hour drive east from Sapporo to the put-in.
TIMING
As a team, we’d set aside a two-week window within which to spend up to seven days paddling around the peninsula. Those seven days consisted of five extremely leisurely paddling days of no further than around 15km of paddling, and two spare days if we got wind bound. We took eight days of food with us, however, just to be extra safe. We were very keen to make sure we completed the circumnavigation, so were happy to commit plenty of time to it. In the end, we were able to start on the first day of our planned two-week window, on the 11th of August.
This 11th August start was not without its dramas though. Early in the morning on the 10th of August, Ben messaged that his flight from Australia had been delayed, which would mean he wouldn’t make it to Aidomari until early morning on the 11th. I really hoped he wouldn’t have any more delays…we were all chomping at the bit to get going as planned.
DIRECTION OF TRAVEL
Up to about three days before departure, we’d assumed we would paddle clockwise around the peninsula, from Utoro to Aidomari, as per my map below. That’s the direction that veteran guide Shinya-san usually paddles (see his guidebook here). In the end, however, we decided to paddle counter clockwise from the Rausu side (from Aidomari) to Utoro. The reason was simply due to the prevailing southeast winds on the Rausu side. If we paddled from Utoro, clockwise around the peninsula, we’d have the strong probability of headwinds at the end of the trip. If we started on the Aidomari side, we figured, we’d have tailwinds at the start of the trip, which would, in theory, be easier going. Time would tell if we were right.
PUT-IN
We assumed we would put in at Aidomari, at the end of Route 87. The idea was that we would drop the kayaks off the night before (on Saturday the 10th of August) on the beach, and have them ready to go for an early start on Sunday. Fisheries operations was a wrench in that idea, however.
It just so happened that Shinya-san was at Aidomari that very Saturday night, having finished a guided kayak trip that day. Among the clients on that trip was Justin Jeffrey, a Brit who had previously lived in Hokkaido, but now lives in Brunei. “Amazing trip,” he beamed. “Probably best you guys are starting here,” he continued. “The scenery will only get more and more mind-blowing as you paddle – the best scenery is at the first half of or so of the Utoro side.”
We asked Shinya-san about leaving the kayaks at the Aidomari beach overnight. “Probably no issue,” he said.
It just so happened, however that Ishida-san, an independent kayak guide, was also there, helping Shinya-san with the evening meal. Ishida-san lives in the Aidomari area.
“I’m not so sure,” Ishida-san chimed in. “The fishermen are cleaning their nets at the moment. They use high-pressure waterjets to spray the nets, and all the dead fish and sea matter gets splattered all over that beach.”
Ishida-san was sure that if we left the boats on the beach that night, we’d end up arriving the next day with them covered in fish guts.
With this information in hand, we resigned to having to spend a bit more time tomorrow to offload and pack the boats, rather than using the remaining daylight hours today.
Timbah, however, was not giving up so easily. “Let’s just keep our eyes and minds open to putting in somewhere else along this coast,” he suggested.
With most of the coast south of Aidomari completely lined with private ramps and fishing huts, I was sceptical.
About 1.5km south of Aidomari, however, we spotted a potential put-in. It was a large grassy area, clearly disused, next to Seseki Onsen – a tidal hotspring, popular with the tourists.
The small plot of land was clearly not used much any more. With all the talk of fishery operations being ambivalent at best towards recreational sea kayakers around the Shiretoko Peninsula (see p. 22 of Shinya-san’s guidebook), however, I didn’t feel comfortable just starting to drop our gear there.
I walked over to the fishing hut just above Seseki Onsen, and gingerly introduced myself, and asked if we might be OK leaving our kayaks on the grassy embankment overnight on the neighbouring plot of land.
“It’s not our land,” the woman, perhaps in her late 50’s, said. “But I’m sure it would be OK.”
She called out to a younger woman across the yard.
“Hey! Do you think they’d mind if these guys put their kayaks on their land?” she yelled.
“If they put them closer to our end, probably not!” was the reply.
The older woman explained that the daughter of the owner of the land lives a few kilometers down the road. “If it’s just overnight, I’m sure you’re fine,” she said.
This was great news. This put in would add 1.5km to the first-day distance, but that was a fair price to pay for such a nice put in. So we got to work, unloading the van and kayaks. This would allow us to focus on the 3hr-return shuttle we’d have to do the next day to drop the van off at Utoro.
About 30 minutes into our unpacking, the woman from Seseki Onsen waved me down.
“We talked to the land owner on the phone,” she said. “He said no problem! Take your time!”
Once we were all finished with the boats, we drove back to Rausu. On the way, we passed Rusa Field House, which we had dropped into earlier to get some last-minute information and to fill up our water sacks. This information center is a goldmine of information, with some very helpful staff.
By the time we got to the Rausu Campground, just over the road from the Kuma-no-yu Onsen, Chris and Mick had arrived. It was somewhat of a party atmosphere, lined with nervous anticipation of what was in store for us over the next week.
2 thoughts on “Shiretoko Peninsula Kayak Circumnavigation Preparation”
I’ve been looking forward to this! You guys have an amazing outfit and are doing great things. Respect! I love the pictures, writing and commitment to your project. May I join you for a repeat next year?!
Hi Justin, we’ve been enjoying your Instagram updates from your trip around the peninsula. Such a great place! Next year’s mission might have to be Rishiri/Rebun! That area is still high on the list 🙂