Steve Sinclair remembered

I just came across this post about Sinclair. For those that attended any of the Elk rockfish fiestas you'll recognize the water in the pics, and the references to "the hill" that was part of Sinclair's training regimen. I remember staring at the hand notated map in Force 10's shop the first year I went to Elk.
A cool look back at one of the greats in open coast paddling.
http://tsunamirangers.com/2012/10/01/steve-sinclair-sea-kayaker/

I pulled this from the comments. Some pretty cool chit! Thanks for posting Sean.

"Andy Taylor October 2, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    Hey, Will!

    Thanks for the great article! Steve was a tremendous athlete, a wildly fun guy, a great friend, and as a paddler was truly in a class of his own.

    When he invited me up to visit and check out his scene in Elk in the late winter of ’82, ocean paddling was my life, and I had it in my mind that I was a pretty good paddler. I’d read and reread the available books (only two! Hutchinson and Dowd); I’d paddled out to two of the Channel Islands, and I’d just finished paddling the entire West coast of Baja, mostly solo. I’d been out in what I’d considered bad weather, and survived, and I’d spent a lot of time in the surfzone.

    But when Steve and I went out with for a paddle on what he considered a moderate day off the coast of Elk, through tricky passes, caves & tunnels, washovers, extensive rock gardens with breaking surf everywhere; then out to sea to surf the open-ocean swells amid the whitecaps, I was blown away. He was relaxed; just playing around…and he had these detailed analyses of every situation, with techniques he’d come up with to deal with them. I suddenly felt like I knew nothing!

    I realized that I had to learn what he knew, and in early Fall I came to Elk, intending to stay for two or three months. That was thirty years ago, and a lot of water under the bridge, and I still live in Elk. As I worked and played in the water with Steve, especially during those first two winters of “Storm Sea Skiing”, ocean paddling became for me completely redefined, and the prevailing industry paradigm was turned on its head.

    I became a Force Ten guide, along with Dave McCutcheon, Charlie Acker, Steve Acker and Connie Sinclair. We took people out regularly on tours, often in conditions that would be considered difficult, and with all kinds of people. Some gung-ho kayakers came, but, in fact, most of our customers were not water people of any kind, but rather tourists sent to us by local bed and breakfast inns. A small but consistent percentage had NEVER SEEN THE OCEAN BEFORE! We took out nonswimmwers, the elderly, small children, parapalegics, quadrapalegics—pretty much anybody who wanted to go. And every tour went in and out through the breaking surf at Greenwood Beach, and usually through the breaking rock gardens, caves and tunnels, all of it! Five miles of open coastline every tour.

    And yes, as Will said, Force Ten had a perfect safety record with over 2000 tours (although I do recall more than 9 capsizes…). This was all Steve. He figured out, in precise and unrelenting detail, how to negotiate every section of the tour, in all conditions in which we’d do tours. Then he trained us guides to be able to negotiate every area not just in those conditions, but also on our Oddysea Skiis in the extreme conditions of winter storms, so that the tours, by contrast, felt pretty pedestrian; i.e., we felt completely confident on our tour. We had communication, alternate routes, rescue plans for every zone, definate paddling patterns for multiple boats, lengthy(!) debreifings after any close calls, on and on. Meanwhile all the customers percieved was smiles and cheery banter, and a great experience on the ocean.

    I wanted to put this out there because Steve is usually remembered as a wild man, and Force Ten as a bunch of crazy guys doing crazy stuff. But Steve always said that the thing that he was most proud of, and most wanted to be remembered for, was all those F-10 tours without a single mishap.

    Andy"

yeah, I loved reading that comment! 
I have had the privilege of paddling with some of those folks (not in anything extreme, but during the days I worked for CCK, around 1996) so it is cool to see their current adventures on that site. There is some crazy paddling on the tsunami rangers site.