An avid kayaker for 25 years, Martin began going on sea kayaking expeditions 15 years ago as a way to better understand the cultures of Alaska's coastal communities. These expeditions have evolved into a lifestyle. For him, a kayak is an affirmation of the traditional technology of the Alaskan native peoples. He has paddled the majority of Alaska's open ocean coast, the Bering Strait, the Russian Far East and Canada's northern shores, covering some 10,000 miles and passing through seventy-five villages and hundreds of traditional camps. But what is more interesting than how far he traveled is how he did it.
Martin started conceptualizing a high-speed expedition kayak to provide the edge he needed to make the most of the short Arctic summer paddling season. When I met Martin in Hawaii in 1992, he was looking for a racing kayak to modify for expedition use. Three years earlier, he had worked with the late Steve Sinclair (SK Aug. '96) to develop two surf skis for a trip across the Bering Strait. The surf ski had a fast, low displacement hull and enough storage capacity for the kind of travel Martin envisioned. Martin had paddled the surf ski with a large international group in an exchange with Russian Eskimos to promote visa-free travel for locals after the fall of the Ice Curtain. "We encountered some storm conditions on the first portion of the crossing, and I found myself in the middle of the Chukchi Sea surrounded by fog on a very narrow, 19-foot-long wash-deck kayak. After 20 hours of paddling against strong winds and current with the kayak surfing the ocean swell, I remember thinking, 'This has real potential.'"