After a French-American resident of Larkspur helped row a small boat from Monterey to Hawaii in 2016, he vowed he’d never undertake such a journey again.
But Cyril Derreumaux spoke too soon. “My imagination took off, and I started dreaming about doing the same trip again in a kayak,” he says.
Now, after several years of planning, Derreumaux is getting ready to embark. He plans to leave Monterey Bay in a custom-made kayak with no companions in late May and, moving between 40 and 60 miles each day, arrive at the Waikiki Yacht Club in Honolulu ten weeks later.
Or maybe nine. While Derreumaux says he is more interested in the sheer adventure of the voyage than in setting records, he cannot help but think about being the first and the fastest. Specifically, if he finishes the trip in less than 64 days, he’ll have the quickest California-Hawaii kayak crossing under his belt, and the first unassisted.
Cyril Derreumaux. Photo: Teresa O’Brien
Derreumaux’s sea voyaging resume is already stacked with achievements. In the past decade he has participated in a number of mid-size races and had a few old-fashioned adventures, including a solo boat-camping trip down the entire length of the lower Sacramento River. But his greatest and arguably most thrilling trip was five years ago, when he and three teammates rowed a small skiff from Monterey to Oahu in 39 days, 9 hours, and 56 minutes, winning them first place in a race against seven other teams as well as a Guinness World Record.
“I said, ‘Never again’ after crossing the ocean the first time,” Derreumaux, now 44, recalls. But his thirst for pushing the limits quickly returned. He aimed to one-up himself and, notably, legendary waterman Ed Gillet, who kayaked from California to Maui in 1987. “Compared to Ed who used a kite sometimes during his crossing, I will only be using human power,” Derreumaux says.
As the first step in his planned trip, Derreumaux commissioned a boat builder in England to construct a kayak. Rob Feloy, along with partner Ginge Murphy, began work on the craft in November 2019 and finished four months later. The result was a sleek 22-foot-long vessel with space for sleeping and a sealable chamber where Derreumaux may, if necessary, take shelter during nasty weather. The boat weighs about 140 pounds unmanned and unloaded and can be powered with a pedal-drive system as well a conventional paddle. Its hull consists of two layers of carbon fiber sandwiched over one of natural cork, making the boat essentially unsinkable. (Slide show below)
Building a light hull of carbon fiber and cork.
Boat builder Ginge Murphy
Robin Feloy surveys interior fittings, which added a lot of weight.
Cyril’s cabin and bed
Shop in England where the kayak was built.
Kayak being loaded into a container for shipping across the Atlantic. All slides courtesy Robin Feloy & Ginge Murphy.
English boat builders Rob Feloy and Ginge Murphy built the boat in four months in a large, drafty boat repair shed. Within the shed they also erected a temporary polythene tent with bubble wrap so they could get the temperature up to cure the resins and paint. The boat’s carbon fiber structure without any fittings weighs around 45 kilos.
When occupied and fully loaded, the rig will weigh about 900 pounds – an assemblage Derreumaux guesses he will be able to move at an average of about two miles per hour. He’ll be paddling as well as pedaling – an alternating arrangement he hopes will help him avoid injury and prevent atrophy of his leg muscles. (When Gillet finished his kayak voyage in 1987, he found himself unable to walk once he landed on the beach, so diminished was the strength of his lower quarters.)
“I’d like to maintain the health and integrity of my whole body,” Derreumaux says. “I’ll see how it goes, but most likely I’ll do two hours paddling, two hours pedaling, two hours paddling, two hours pedaling.”
As for sustenance, a solar-powered desalination kit will produce Derreumaux’s water, and he has a manual system as a backup. He’ll bring some fishing gear, he says, but that’s just for emergency purposes. His main sustenance will come from energy bars and freeze-dried meals, of which he plans to eat about 6,000 calories per day. Still, he expects the rigors of the trip to strip 25 pounds from his already athletic frame.
Testing the craft in the waters of San Francisco Bay. Photo: Teresa O’Brien
While both boat and athlete are as seaworthy as can be, Derreumaux is prepared for the worst, and should anything go seriously wrong, he will resort to technology. He’ll be carrying an emergency position indicating radio beacon fixed to the boat, a personal locator beacon on himself, two GPS devices, a Garmin tracker, a satellite phone, and a satellite internet connection. He’ll also keep himself tethered to the kayak at all times.
Derreumaux says his fixation on extreme travel is partly about testing his own limits, but it also has much to do with the unique appeal of returning home again.
“Everything we’re familiar with on land is so beautiful, and it has so much value – whether you’re just going for a walk, or hugging a child, smelling the trees,” he says. “These adventures help me recreate and appreciate these feelings.”
Top Photo: The new vessel and its captain in Sausalito. Photo: Teresa O’Brien.
Editor’s Note: This story came to ESTUARY News all the way from Totnes, Devon, England, where editor Ariel Rubissow Okamoto spent her teen years getting into all kinds of outdoor fun and trouble with the boat builders. When Ariel graduated from college in Connecticut and went West, Ginge Murphy joined her for the cross-country road trip. Crossing continents and oceans, friendships surely go full circle. Miss you all in England!
A resident of Sonoma County, Alastair Bland is a freelance journalist who writes about water policy in California, rivers and salmon, marine conservation, and climate change. His work has appeared at CalMatters, NPR.org, Smithsonian.com, Yale Environment 360, and the East Bay Express, among many other outlets. When he isn't writing, Alastair can often be found riding a bicycle, pulling weeds from his garden, and holding his breath underwater.
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Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.