This past winter Sea Kayaker staffers Michael and Joan Collins joined the local sea kayaking Meetup group for Christmas caroling by kayak. Among the 30 paddlers who bundled up for a chilly evening on the water was Melissa Spangler. Melissa had joined the Meetup group that very day and the outing was her first experience in a kayak. She was quite eager to take up kayaking and put it, along with golf, on her list of things she wanted to try.

Like many newcomers to sea kayaking, Melissa has plenty of enthusiasm for kayaking but none of the means to do it. Logging on to MeetUp.com to find the local sea kayaking group was a good first step in tapping into the resources the kayaking community has to offer. She had no paddling gear other than a wetsuit and neoprene gloves that she acquired for scuba diving, but the organizer of the Seattle Meetup group has plenty of kayaks, paddles and PFDs to lend. When it comes to paddling technique Melissa has literally been in the dark: the first several months of her kayaking has been done during winter evenings, so she has been unable to see and emulate the paddling technique of the group leaders.

I joined one of the evening Meetup outings in March and brought along some gear for Melissa to use: a single kayak (the first she’d been in, having paddled only doubles), a PFD designed for women, and a carbon-fiber paddle with adjustable length and feather. Paddling in the single she began to get a feel for the kayak in a way she couldn’t in a double. She had no trouble keeping pace with everyone, but like most of the other novices in the group, she was leaning back on the coaming and driving her paddle with her arms rather than torso rotation. I offered a few tips to coax her toward a more efficient technique, but with only the dim glow of the city lights to go by, she couldn’t see my demonstrations well enough to mimic them.

In the coming months we’ll provide updates on Melissa’s progress as a sea kayaker. She’ll provide the enthusiasm and we’ll see where that will take her. Quite often novice paddlers take years to acquire the skills that would make possible the aspirations that initially brought them into sea kayaking. During the year we follow Melissa we’d like to see how well she progresses in that time frame if we remove some of the obstacles novices usually face and let her advances be determined more by her enthusiasm and determination than by limitations in gear and instruction. Along the way we’ll have Melissa keep a journal for us, and we’ll have updates in the magazine and access to her journal on our website. When appropriate we’ll offer some perspectives and advice from a more experienced vantage point that may be useful to those of you who have recently taken up sea kayaking.

To give some structure to at least part of Melissa’s first year of kayaking, she’ll be taking on The Puget Sound Challenge, a 150-mile journey paddled in manageable 10-mile increments that will take her the length of Puget Sound. She’s eager to give it a try. We hope that Melissa’s story will inspire other newcomers to explore the endless possibilities that lie before them.