In May 2023 our team will embark on a 2000km unsupported kayak expedition of The Inside Passage from Olympia in Washington State along the Fjordlands of Western British Columbia to Skagway in Alaska, estimated to take 90-100 days from 1 May to the beginning of August 2023.
We are an 8 man team comprising two able bodied civilians and six veterans with a variety of injuries such as head/abdomen gunshot wounds, bilateral above knee amputations, viral induced paralysis and PTSD, chronologically from The Falklands conflict to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The team have been together for 4 years, our original plan was to kayak the Amazon River back in 2020 and we all know how 2020 went. The logistics and training have been challenging to say the least. Setting out to achieve a once in a lifetime challenge was never going to be easy, a global pandemic being thrown in and all of the complications that brought in has made it that much harder.
Although the location has changed, the team have remained totally focused on the adventure ahead. The repeated delays have been fully utilised. The team have travelled as far as Sweden to hone their kayaking, camp routine and navigational skills. The team’s ideology is predominantly focused around safety, for each other and individually. Kayaking has not been the only subject on the syllabus. Knowledge of the operational area has been absorbed, medical plans and standard operating procedures put in place, resupplies and potential campsites recce’d. Throughout the duration of this spectacular, but potentially dangerous adventure, it is this hard work that will pay off! Train hard, fight easy.
The team is aligned to raising funds for ‘The Not Forgotten’ a military charity, founded in 1920, which has been supporting ex-service personnel with disabilities through the provision of leisure & recreational activities, travel, holidays and outings. Members of our team are testament to the success of these objectives, having benefited personally from the services of The Not Forgotten in their early stages of rehabilitation, progressing to volunteering for them to encourage those in a different stage of their recovery.
We hope that the successful completion of this expedition would be a strong source of encouragement to other veterans to aim for their personal goals in daily life regardless of their visible or hidden trauma.
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