The Baja Paddle

THE IDEA

Two men, father and son – 1800km down the Baja Peninsula

The idea to paddle down the coast of the Baja Peninsula and doing the north-south traverse of the Sea of Cortez was born many years ago. It has been a dream of mine since first coming to northern Baja. I started actively making the dream a reality in January of 2009 when I bought the materials to build the kayak with which the trip was going to be done. A few months later my son, Martijn, decided to join me.

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The Baja Paddle – Map in a larger map

EQUIPMENT & CLOTHING

Both boats are equipped with safety sponsons, which, when deployed will give a lot of additional buoyancy and stability.

Each carries a spare set of paddles, signaling mirror, flares, hand compass and a small emergency bag with some food, water and a first aid kit.

We sleep in tents, or in the open, depending on the conditions.

Our clothes are a mix between warm things for the cold nights and light clothing for the hot days with long sleeved shirts and pants against the sun.

SAFETY

There will be stretches which will be totally devoid of people, or settlements. Some of those stretches of coastline can be quite tricky with rocky shores, strong currents and unpredictable winds. Although we are quite prepared for those conditions, anything unexpected may happen to cause an injury or illness. To be well prepared for these eventualities, Martijn and I took an intensive 10-day “wilderness first responder” first aid course in December.

We learned a great deal of new skills and as a result our first aid kit has grown substantially.

Not a First Aid item but still an important safety item is a PLB (Personal Locator Beacon), which, when activated sends signals to the various satellites orbiting the earth, which relay those to the Coast Guard to tell them to get going and rescue us from whatever major problem we are in. This is our last resort back up; we each carry our own unit.

FOOD and WATER

We will be carrying approx. 20 gallons of fresh water, which should last us for about one week, and can be stretched to 10 -12 days if necessary.

The food supply is made up of large quantities of dehydrated fruits, vegetables, pasta, soups, tomato sauce, etc. Most of that will be vacuum packed. Complementing this are dried milk, potato buds, rice, pancake mix and a whole host of condiments and spices. We will start with approx. 3-4 weeks of supplies and expect to be able to replenish this along the way with as much fresh fruit and vegetables as we can get.

Martijn will bring some fishing equipment so that we can supplement our diet with fresh fish.

The food will be packed in airtight/watertight buckets to prevent it from being squashed and to help preserve the dehydrated food better.

We carry one week’s supply of emergency rations.

ELECTRONICS

The electronics we carry are for communication, safety and navigation. In addition we carry a small radio to pick up the occasional news cast and hope that we will be able to decipher the Spanish. It is by no means certain that our ears will be able to keep up with the high speed of speaking some announcers have.

Since we want to be as environmentally friendly as possible, we do not carry a load of batteries, but instead invested in a solar panel and battery chargers. This has become quite a hodgepodge of cables , adapters and attachments, but we are now able to keep all equipment going by the light of the sun.

In addition to the solar panel, we carry a small battery which can hold 20 volts of power and which will be charged from the panel during sunlight hours. From this battery we charge the other equipment such as cell phones, Ipod, cameras, VHF radio, walkie talkies, torches and GPS’s, netbook and rechargeable batteries at night.

Each of us carries a PLB (Personal Locator Beacon), which we hope never to use.