On this Tuesday while the sun is still shining and Indian Arm is quiet again after the ravages of the summer crowds, it seems appropriate to go back to a great day of filming in the peacefulness of the top of Indian Arm. Once in a while you get asked to participate in something where the answer is an unequivocal YES! Taking part in the filming of the film we made with Epic Kayaks was one of them, so I thought I’d share how it felt to be involved. If you haven’t seen the video yet, you can see it here.
Epic Kayaks is very well known in the surfski world; their boats are consistently in demand and we sell out of many of our models through the store. What a lot of people don’t know about is the sea touring kayaks that they produce too, the 16X and 18X, the numbers designating how long the boats are. To try and get the word out, we decided to make a film with our #1 filmmaker, David O’Brien!
The top of the Indian Arm fjord is about 20km from our rental location in Deep Cove, a spectacular paddle that many people venture on, taking between 4 and 6 hours depending on conditions and your paddling speed and the Epic boats really make such a paddle feel effortless as they glide so well and cut through the water so well. On this occasion though we tied the boats to the motorboat and drove up. I hadn’t quite appreciated how cold it would be at 8am on the water, travelling at 15 knots sat at the prow of our Boston Whaler, but despite the chill I couldn’t take the grin off my face as we sped towards our destination.
Indian Arm is undeniably beautiful. In trying to describe it, you run out of superlatives because it defies vocabulary; even if you’ve just paddled in Deep Cove, you know that it is somewhere special. We were lucky enough that we were at the mouth of Indian River early in the day and early in the spring so there was no-one else around. Utterly serene, we even had a seal pop out right by the boats as David was taking some initial shots.
David has shot a lot of our films and we love his work – he used to work for us so totally gets what we want to portray from his knowledge of the company. His creativity is boundless, and it works really well within our philosophy of ‘Get Outside, Get Fit, and Have Fun.’ Using his helicopter drone, he followed us in the motor boat – it was somewhat unnerving hearing the buzz coming closer until it flew over us, sounding like a swarm of bees that were targeting us, but we kept it together and resisted the urge to paddle faster to try and get away!
Our second location was at Granite Falls, a stunning waterfall close to the mouth of Indian River. The cold clear mountain water tumbles down 165 ft, and we stopped to take some beach shots and packing shots at the campsite there. Even though we weren’t actually camping, the boats are ideal for such activities because they have ample storage – Freya Hoffmeister used the 18X to travel around Australia for 9 months in 2009 so to say they have great cargo capacity is an understatement! Here’s a photo of Freya showing exactly how much gear she could fit into her boat.
As we finished up filming and headed back to the Cove, I was reminded how incredibly lucky we are to have such pristine waters to paddle in. Let’s hope that they continue to be this clear for generations to come.
