Kayaking to Catalina Island - Postponement

After months of training, a postponement is disappointing. But it isn't a cancellation. The UCLA Marina Aquatic Center kayakers will use the extra days to get over their colds, hope for good weather, review their course, and think about the twenty-six miles that separate them from their goal: Catalina Island. 

"Everyone will alternate as 'lead boat,'" says lead instructor, Brendan Nelson. That's the kayak that maintains the course heading, using compass and transit navigation techniques they've practiced all summer. "My first crossing was four years ago," he adds. "That time we went to and from Catalina. This one-way paddle will be easier."

That doesn't mean it will be easy. But the participants aren't worried. 

John De Rago: "Much of the training in any endurance sport is mental as well as physical. After achieving a personal best that was difficult to accomplish, I look at every aspect of my life and ask, 'What else can I do? What's next?'"

Evelyn Nguyen: "Instead of mountain-biking on Saturdays, this summer I have been kayaking. Hang-gliding is next!"

Wanderley Reis: "One practice, we spotted a pod of sea lions. As they approached us, they went under water. A few seconds later, they resurfaced so close to our boats that we could almost touch them."

You don't experience that sitting on your couch. 

The kayakers know that they will be paddling in the wake of many who came before them.

Like the "Catalina Kid," Canadian George Young, an Olympic swimmer who in 1927 was the first to swim the channel.

Like the luxurious SS Catalina, "The Great White Steamship" that provided passenger service for so many years, but is now nothing but scrap in a Mexican junkyard.

Like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, and other Hollywood stars who found Catalina to be the ideal getaway destination and anchorage for their yachts and sailboats.

Like the nearly forgotten Tongva Indians, who transited the channel for centuries. Their exact pre-contact population will never be known, and their culture disintegrated with the arrival of the Spanish colonists and Mission system of the 18th century and the frenzied Gold Rush of the mid-19th century.

As Major Horace Bell, an American who arrived at the then-tiny Los Angeles pueblo circa 1850, reflected a few decades later in his autobiography, Reminiscences of a Ranger: "Thirty years seems too short a period of time to annihilate a great population extending over more than a thousand miles extent of country ... They are gone! all gone! It is sad to contemplate."

In the post-transit installments, we'll hear from Brendan and the other kayakers and learn what they experienced and what they discovered from their outdoor adventure, crossing the San Pedro Channel from Cabrillo Beach to Avalon. 

Previous installments: , , , , and .