You know, kayaking can be a real drag sometimes. From the packing, to the planning, to the weather watching, I usually end up spending more time thinking about it than actually doing it. But once you get out on that water—oh, yeah. The downtime, the preparation and the wait are all worth it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get that feeling whenever and wherever you wanted?
Below, you’ll find a list of books listed chronologically by most recent printing that, in my opinion, help you do just that. These are adventure stories, travel essays and assorted explorations from the sea kayaker’s perspective. From paddling the Arctic Circle to exploring the interior of New Guinea, you’re sure to find something here to stir the explorer in you. And in the hands of talented paddlers/writers like Paul Theroux, Chris Duff and Don Starkel, you’re getting more than just an entertaining yarn; this is a whole new breed of high-quality, exciting, sea kayaking literature. As of press time, all of these books were in print and easy to obtain through local bookstores or online shops.

Paddling My Own Canoe
by Audrey Sutherland
(University of Hawaii Press, 1980)
Once Sutherland moved to Hawaii in 1952, it didn’t take long before the rugged coastline of Molokai Island lured her out to explore. What started as an after-work pastime eventually grew into a lifelong obsession that has taken Sutherland all over the world in her inflatable kayak, and today the 83-year-old is considered the authority on Hawaiian kayaking. She has written some well-received books on Hawaii, but this one, which focuses on her first years in the cockpit, really hits home with its descriptions of the land and the author’s newfound love of the sport.

The Starship and the Canoe
by Kenneth Brower
(HarperCollins, 1983)
By far the most unusual book on this list, The Starship and the Canoe is an intriguing double biography of a father and son: one a renowned astrophysicist with dreams of a homemade spaceship, the other a tree-dwelling genius out to build the world’s greatest ocean kayak. It’s an unusual premise, but Kenneth Brower makes it work by exposing the force in our lives that drives us to explore the unknown: What one man finds in the heavens, another finds in the world around his kayak. Is it a travel book? Not really. A guidebook? No. Worth reading? I say yes.

The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific
by Paul Theroux
(Ballantine Books; reissue edition, 1993)
In the wake of the dissolution of his marriage, Paul Theroux headed for the islands of the Pacific Ocean. His meandering 1992 travelogue, The Happy Isles of Oceania, reads like the voyage of exploration that it is. As “the green islands shimmered into view,” he writes, “it was another experience of the Pacific being like the night sky, like outer space, and of island-hopping in that ocean being something like interplanetary travel.” Theroux spent 18 months poking around Australia, New Guinea, the Soloman Islands, Samoa, Tahiti and other locations in his trusty folding kayak, encountering people and places that, to the vast majority of his readers, seem very “otherworldly” indeed.

Wind, Water, Sun: A Solo Kayak Journey Along Baja California’s Desert Coastline
by Ed Darack
(Poudre Canyon Press, 1998)
The Baja California Peninsula is a truly unique place: naked peaks stabbing at the skyline, hardscrabble cactus dotting the horizon and a piercing silence that comes with 700 miles of empty desert. But photographer/author Ed Darack brings this region to life in this trip down the Sea of Cortez coast. “This part of the globe was a desolate, worthless swath of hopelessness in the eyes of the Spaniards,” he writes. “A sea in the heart of a desert.” Dense with history and local lore, Darack’s pages explode with incredible photographs and detailed maps.