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From: <rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com> subject: [Paddlewise] Some food for thought on kayaking Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 12:38:31 -0700 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:52 PDT

Hi, All

I was fulfilling some back issue orders for my newsletter when my eyes
feel on the lead story of the May/June 1993 one, an interview with Dr.
Lindemann, who had crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s in a folding kayak.
So I started reading what I had written back then and realized that a
lot of what he says applies to so many of the topics that permeate this
listserver and others as well.

At the risk of getting people annoyed with me (you would be
surprised!!), I am reproducing it here in its entirety.  I think John
Winters of Paddlewise would like it as it seems to jibe with his own
philosophical bent.  It also has some messages for the NYCkayaker crowd
about being prepared and knowing when to quit.  And for the CPAkayaker
crowd, they are preparing for the visit of a Greenlander, Maligiaq
Padilla; this may give them some insights too.

best,

ralph diaz

______________________________
A TALK WITH DR. LINDEMANN:
INSIGHTS ON VOYAGE
How does one approach a near-deity?  I recently had a chance to find out
when I telephoned Dr. Hannes Lindemann to interview him for an article
for the Fall 1993 issue of Sea Kayaker.  For many of us Dr. Lindemann
holds a high position in the pantheon of seafaring in small boats.  His
epic 1956 crossing of the Atlantic is particularly inspiring for us
folding kayakers because it was accomplished in a folding Klepper Aerius
double not appreciably different from the current stock model and
strikingly similar to double Feathercrafts, Folbots and Nautiraids.  You
don’t have to be a Klepper enthusiast to revere Dr. Lindemann and his
achievement.
	Lindemann’s voyage was one of the first things I had heard about when I
first wandered into the realm of folding kayaks.  Indeed, the ability of
his folding kayak to take on the rigors of the Atlantic was a key
selling point that convinced me to buy one (not that I was going to do
anything like it, but it was good to know, just in case).  At that time,
I searched all over New York City to buy a copy of his book, Alone At
Sea, with no success.  A few months later, I found one in an antique
book store in Nashville of all places.  In pristine shape and for just
$7; inlanders just didn’t know the gem they had in their possession. 
Like others of you, I regularly re-read the book each year because it is
a tale worth reliving over and over again.
	So, I was finally going to talk with Dr. Lindemann for an article.  And
I was losing my nerve.  What do you say to someone you and others
idolize and are reminded of every time you touch the soft fabric of your
boat?  You procrastinate.  I cleaned house, did some plumbing and worked
on the car.  My wife was hoping I would drag my feet some more and give
the apartment a much needed coat of paint.  No such luck.
	I’m not the only one willing to confess to some knee shaking when faced
with contacting Dr. Lindemann as I recently learned from Peter
Schwierzke, owner of Klepper West.  Peter is the person who has arranged
for Dr. Lindemann to come to the West Coast Sea Kayaking Symposium in
September and is behind the upcoming, new translation of Alone At Sea. 
Late last year he was driving down a German autobahn toward Dr.
Lindemann’s home for their first face-to-face meeting when it hit him. 
“Oh s*#t, I’m about to see a living legend in the flesh!”  His mouth got
dry during the last hour of the drive as he went into semi-shock at the
prospect.
	Luckily for Peter and for me, Dr. Lindemann, for all of his
accomplishment, is a very accessible, open individual.  He made Peter
feel at home during his visit.  And he put me at ease in our phone
conversation.
	The interview went differently from what I envisioned.  Like any
reporter, I confess that I approached Dr. Lindemann with some
preconceived ideas of what I wanted him to say and was hoping to steer
him into saying them.  Dr. Lindemann didn’t cooperate with my
preconceptions and the interview contained some revealing surprises
about his voyage not published before.
	Below are the key points that I think folding kayakers will find most
useful, some of which will appear in the upcoming Sea Kayaker article.

What It Took
	To the unaware, Dr. Lindemann’s cross-Atlantic voyage in a folding
kayak might seem a foolhardy adventure.  Probably, with a less-prepared
individual at the helm, it would have been.  However, Dr. Lindemann had
some great strengths that reduced the risks.  Understanding these
strengths is the key to the lessons we can draw from his voyage.
	First, he was a small-boater par excellence.  He had several dozen
years of experience in small boats ranging from folding kayaks to
sailing vessels.  Dr. Lindemann had done plenty of paddling in his youth
in Germany prior to WW II and, in the years following, had embarked on
lengthy voyages in various craft.  He not only knew the art of
small-boat handling.  He also was thoroughly grounded in what to expect
on the open sea, not from reading books but from direct contact with
that fickle element.
	Dr. Lindemann attaches great importance to this strength.  In our
interview it came out during a question I asked regarding how he sees
sea kayaking today.  He used the question to focus on the issue of
required skills.  While he is happy to see a resurgence in the sport he
feels that many kayakers venture out unprepared.  “I think people want
to do things with a bang.  They go too fast, rah rah.  They are
suicidal.”  Regarding his own perilous voyage, he said “It is alright to
attempt things when you have the experience.”

	Second, Dr. Lindemann had a clear understanding and control of his
mind.  He possessed some strengths in mental outlook that helped see him
through.
	These came out during the course of our interview in the unexpected
answers he gave to my questions.  When I asked what was the most
important thing he brought with him, he quickly replied,  “My
optimism.”  Ever the Folding Kayaker editor, I was thinking about
equipment, but he clearly was concerned about more important intangible
things.  His positive attitude was key to the success of the voyage
which was marked by severe storms, adverse winds and several capsizes. 
“I never suffered anxiety even in the worst of it.  I was always sure I
would pull through.”
	Dr. Lindemann believes that so much of pulling through is mental and in
the will to press on.  His book frequently discusses the question of
survival using examples dating back to the last century of people cast
adrift by disasters at sea.  Why do some poorly equipped individuals
survive while others better provisioned die within the first few days? 
The latter gave up, the survivors did not.
	Earlier, Dr. Lindemann had crossed the Atlantic in a 23-foot Liberian
dug out canoe and found that he lacked an ability to meditate.  He
indicated during our interview that he had worked for months on learning
how to meditate in preparation for the second crossing.  He meditated
often during the trip and the effort would bring him to what he told me
was a “Buddha-like state.”
	Which leads to another intangible that came out during the interview. 
“I also prayed a lot.  My prayers were not those of any organized
religion.  My belief was in pure religion, a biological religion.  A
belief in what we call ‘a holy spirit’.  It helped me to keep calm.”
	All of this combined to get him into a state of mind in which he was
one with the elements surrounding him.  “During the voyage, particularly
the last three weeks, I sensed I was in flow.  I achieved the state
reached by musicians with their music and instruments.  It was as when
shooting a bow and arrow when everything lines up perfectly: eye,
muscle, arrow, bow and target.”

Most Difficult Moment
	Still, I felt there must have been some problem, some moment of doubt. 
So I asked him what was his most difficult time.  I was thinking he
might respond, for example, by pointing to the night his kayak had
capsized during a vicious storm and he hung on to the upside down boat
freezing and waiting for dawn to come when he would have enough light to
safely right his kayak.  That was a particularly hairy moment in Alone
At Sea when everything seemed to be lost.
	His response?  “Buying the Klepper!  That was my most difficult time. 
I had no money.  I had to pay for it out of my own pockets and they
weren’t deep.”  Now there’s an answer most folding kayak owners can
relate to!

What About The Boat
	I was curious about his thoughts regarding the folding kayak that he
used, a stock Klepper Aerius II which he ordered without fanfare from a
dealer in Germany and had mailed to him in the Canary Islands.  The
Klepper company was not aware of what he planned to do, didn’t even know
he had bought one of its boats.  It was a far cry from today when
getting corporations to fork over gear and equipment is de rigueur.
	Did the boat let him down?  What did he think of it?  “It was a perfect
boat,” he responded.  “Oh, it was an inland sea boat obviously not built
for the open Atlantic.  No small boat is.  I added the outrigger and the
mizzensail for the conditions that would prevail on the Atlantic and did
other modifications to prepare it for the open sea.”  Indeed, throughout
Alone At Sea, Dr. Lindemann writes very fondly about his folding kayak
and its reliability and performance during the voyage.
	One of the reasons why he crossed the Atlantic a second time, after
doing it in the long African dugout canoe was that he wanted to revert
to the folding kayaks of his youth.  Part of this was to also to pay
homage to one of his own heroes, Captain Franz Romer.  Romer had crossed
the Atlantic in 1928 in a custom-built 19 ft. folding kayak.  After
reaching Puerto Rico, the captain and his boat disappeared without a
trace during a hurricane on the way to the US mainland.  Dr. Lindemann
felt that by doing it again in a folding kayak it would be a fitting
reprise to Romer’s earlier effort.
	Indeed, Dr. Lindemann confided something that was never mentioned in
Alone At Sea.  During the second voyage, he felt that Romer was with him
at all times.  “It was a cosmic feeling I had.”

Comment On Aussie Challenge
	Many of readers of this newsletter followed the attempt by Eric Stiller
and Tony Brown to circumnavigate Australia in a folding kayak.  Dr.
Lindemann had learned of the voyage from Peter Schwierzke.  It came up
during the interview.
	Dr. Lindemann asked me how the Aussie Challenge was going.  When I told
him that the voyage had ended after 4,000 miles in Darwin, he seemed
very impressed by their getting that far in what he knew were
treacherous waters.  He asked me what had happened: had they been hurt;
had they given out physically.  I told him no and went into Eric’s
feeling that they had been issued just so many luck tickets at the
beginning of the trip in Sydney and that they had run out of these just
short of Darwin in gigantic overfalls.  “They were right to get off the
water immediately,” he exclaimed.  “If you no longer feel you belong
there, you don’t belong.”   

________________________________________

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