The Eighty2 at anchor in the Marquesas sees the bay. The kayak in the bay sees the coastline. These are not the same view: the boat’s perspective is the perspective of something large enough to be at a distance from the land it is near, and the coastline from the boat’s deck is the coastline at the distance that the boat’s draught and the anchor scope determine.
The kayak’s perspective is the perspective of something that shares the water level with the surface of the bay and that can approach the coastline to within the arm’s reach of the paddler, which is a different relationship with the specific volcanic cliffs and the black sand beaches and the specific vegetation line of the Marquesas coast than any boat-based perspective provides.
The Naora voyage carries the SUP boards and the kayaks that the tender deploys to the anchorage for the members who want the water-level perspective. Not all anchorages are suitable for kayaking: the swell that makes an anchorage uncomfortable for the boat makes it unsuitable for the kayak, and the passages between islands that the boat can make safely are passages that the kayak cannot.
But the Marquesas anchorages that the Naora route uses are, in the specific conditions that the route’s seasonal timing produces, the anchorages with the specific flatness and the specific protection from the Pacific swell that make the kayak and the SUP available as the afternoon activity that the provisioning morning and the diving programme did not exhaust the members for.
What the Kayak Reveals
The Marquesas coastline at kayak level reveals the specific quality of the volcanic landscape that the boat’s perspective reduces to backdrop. The cliffs of Nuku Hiva and Ua Pou and Fatu Hiva are among the most dramatic coastal geology available on the Naora route: the vertical black basalt that rises directly from the water’s edge in some sections, the specific waterfalls that the Marquesas’ combination of high rainfall and steep topography produces in the wet season, the specific bird colonies that nest on the cliff faces at the heights that the boat can see from below and that the kayak can approach from the water.
The kayak at the base of a Marquesas basalt cliff is not in the anchorage’s scenic backdrop. It is in the cliff. The difference between being in the scenic backdrop and being in the landscape is the difference between the photograph and the experience, and the kayak produces the latter in the form that the boat’s perspective consistently approaches and does not quite reach.
The SUP board provides the same water-level perspective with the additional element of the standing position that gives the paddler the specific elevated view over the surface of the bay that neither the kayak nor the boat provides: the view from one metre above the water’s surface across the flat surface of the anchorage, which is the view through rather than above the surface of the sea and which reveals the specific quality of the Marquesas water’s clarity and colour that the photographs of the Marquesas consistently reach for.
The afternoon on the SUP in a Marquesas anchorage is the afternoon that the photographs of the Marquesas were taken from the approximation of.
