Get Psyched #12 Expedition Red Lines.

Your paddle skills are in place, you’re tuned into your lovely touring board and those distant horizons are calling you in. It is time to go on an expedition! But before we strap the boards on the roof and head for the nearest coastline, what does it actually mean to go on ‘expedition?’

- Sian Sykes

Expedition is one of those words that we know the intent of, but perhaps not the specific meaning. A reasonable answer might be, ‘going SUP touring with a few kit bags’. Quite interestingly, expedition comes from the Latin for ‘freeing the feet’: from ex – ‘out’, and ped – ‘foot’. The dictionary definition is ‘to set out with aggressive intent, on a journey with a particular purpose especially that of exploration, research, or war’. Well, standup paddle crafts have been used for all of those through history but we’ll concentrate on the first one: exploration.

We probably also hope our expedition has an element of adventure, and we can easily describe adventure as an outing with risks you cannot overcome by merely waving your credit card at them. So let’s have a look at some of the most common problems that thwart expeditions, and how to avoid them.

Going on an expedition is one of the big appeals for so many paddlers, a journey with excitement and a real sense of adventure. Before you jump onto your board, remember the heuristic trap article I wrote a couple issues back (i.e. we’ve always done it this way, it must be safe), think also about the lemons that we’re always collecting. We want to avoid those as much as possible to allow us to have a good time on the water without having any epics (in a bad way).

Don’t suck it and see