I started adding a page to my website about books I would recommend for people to read - with an adventurous theme, and asked for suggestions. I got a suggestion for a book that I had partly read, and put down with disgust halfway through. It wasn’t a book I had any intention of listing, but I have had a rethink on my reasoning.

The book was COLD OCEANS, by Jon Turk. My impression of the whole book was that he got harebrained ideas to do things - and just went off and did them with totally inadequate preparation - in my opinion. He decided to kayak round Cape Horn and just got a kayak and went off to attempt it - and failed. He decided to row the full length of the North West Passage in one season, and failed totally to do so. He didn’t fail because of tidal waves, or earthquakes, or any conditions beyond his control - he just seemed to me to be under-prepared.

I don’t have a lot of time for people who go off like this and attempt exploits with so little preparation. There have been some instances of this in Tasmania over the years, and it causes an outburst from the public and media - all calling for restrictions to be placed on responsible adventurers. I believe that in many countries in Europe there are severe restrictions on how far sea kayakers can venture off-shore - and that’s the last thing we want introduced in Australia.

One incident was two young inland canoeists who decided to paddle across Bass Strait. They had NO experience of sea kayaking whatsoever. They built sea kayaks one week, and the next week set off to paddle across Banks Strait. 12 hours later they were the subject of a search & rescue, having set off an EPIRB. They were rescued, kms apart, just a few minutes before it got too dark to search any further. Another 20 minutes and they would have been dead men.

In my opinion these two were not adventurous, but totally irresponsible.

Another incident was an attempt to row across Bass Strait. This person had the romantic idea of rowing round the world, and spreading the word of peace. He could not afford to get a proper boat built like the ones they row across the Atlantic - so got a half sized one (8’ long) built, and was going to do a row across Bass Strait to get publicity and hopefully sponsorship for a full size boat. Unfortunately the waves in Bass Strait don’t get half sized. The Maatsuyker Canoe Club were doing a trip in Bass Strait that same day, and were gathered together listening to the weather forecast early Saturday morning. We got that, and then heard on the news that this adventurer had set off on his row across Bass Strait. We looked at each other in amazement - the weather was totally unsuitable for the route he had to travel. 24 hours later he was still less than 10 km offshore, and radioed for help as he was in serious trouble. There was not a gale blowing, it was just normal windy Bass Strait weather as far as we were concerned. Two commercial fishing boats went out to his aid. The adventurer was already dead by the time they arrived in his area, and while manoeuvring to pick up the body and boat, one of the fishing boats capsized on a big wave, and the skipper went down with the boat. This was a tragic loss of life of the young skipper, and devastated the fishing community he came from - all because of a seriously under-prepared adventure.

It is incidents like this that give me a very low opinion of fools.

Now that is not to say that people don’t lose their lives attempting adventurous activities - climbers lose their lives on Mt Everest nearly every year - but they are usually beaten by extreme weather conditions, or illness, but usually not through lack of preparation and training.

Just because people fail to achieve what they set out to do doesn’t necessarily mean they are fool hardy. If that was the case then you would have to claim that Robert Scott was foolhardy - he failed to be first to the South Pole, and died on the return trip. The difference in my opinion is that these sort of people were venturing into unknown and uncharted territory. The same with people like Bourke & Wills, who also died on a return trip to remote areas of Australia. But they were taking on the vast unknown, and doing it with gear and equipment that these days would be considered totally inadequate - even though it was the best they had in those days. These men pitted themselves against all that nature could throw at them, with the belief that they could win through. A lot of them did - like Shackleton - and a lot of them didn’t.

So when I received the suggestion that COLD OCEANS would be a suitable addition for me to recommend my first thought was immediate rejection - he didn’t seem to fit the mould. These days you can get up-to-date information for practically anywhere on this globe - and can plan trips in remote areas with all you need to know. But even with this knowledge, I guess that when you are sitting in a small tent while a blizzard howls outside - it is still and adventurous activity - just being there.

Therefore I have had a rethink, and am placing this as a book you might like to read - even if my own personal opinion is that his preparations and planning were totally inadequate.

There are different levels of adventure for different people. I like the quote from Neville Shute (my favourite author), who lived in a time when there was still a little bit of real adventure to be had.

He said, “If I have learned one thing in my 54 years, it is that it is very good for the character to engage in sports which put your life in danger from time to time. It breeds a saneness in dealing with day to day trivialities which probably cannot be got in any other way, and a habit of quick decisions.”

I totally agree, and in some of my canoeing trips there have been times when I’ve weighed up the situation, and ended up taking a calculated risk. If I got it wrong then I wouldn’t be here today. Paddling for 27 hours across Bass Strait overnight, with a fresh SW change forecast was a calculated risk - I didn’t know if I could survive that long, or how bad the conditions might get - I just thought I could do it.

Which makes me dissatisfied with the performance of the club I recently belonged to. They make noises about being adventurous, but it doesn’t seem to be backed up by actions. Just paddling to Flinders Island is not necessarily adventurous - it was first done by a middle aged mum over 20 years ago in a kayak she made herself, without a rudder or a sail or electric pump - it didn’t even have bulkheads and hatches. You had to take your footrest out and poke your gear (in plastic bags) up into the bow, and have much smaller packages to squeeze past the seat into the rear of the kayak. If you happened to capsize and come out of your kayak, then you had a kayak full of water.

We had a chance to paddle across Banks Strait at night a couple of years ago - but didn’t. The conditions were actually quite benign for that area, and it would have given the whole party a bit of a buzz to get home and tell their friends they had done Banks Strait at night - because it has a fearful reputation and most alleged sea kayakers don’t even contemplate paddling to Flinders Island because they have to cross Banks Strait first.

On the same trip there was a paddler who had to come home a few days earlier than the rest. Did he choose to paddle back - oh no - he got the ferry - a less than adventurous option in my opinion.

It seems to me that these days people are not going to put their life in danger from time to time, despite Neville Shute thinking it a good thing to do. And if you are not doing so - then you are not being adventurous.