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Bore Boating

Like a fine wine, French tidal bore gets better with age

When you surf a river, the water moves while the wave stands still. When you surf the ocean, the wave moves while the water stands still. In France, there’s a place you can surf where both water and wave move.

No, it’s not French wine causing hallucinations. But among the Bordeaux area’s finest vineyards occurs a mascaret, or tidal bore, that rushes upstream from the mouth of the Gironde River. When the tides and river levels are right, it produces a river—no, ocean—wave that paddlers, board surfers and even boogie boarders can ride for up to 20 minutes and four continuous miles. "It never ends," says frequent bore boater Isabelle Godicheau. "Sometimes it looks like it’s going to take you right into a mountain, but you just pass it by, surfing the whole time."

Where it does take you is into perhaps the best, and most unusual, wave ride of your life. The Gironde estuary actually splits into two rivers, the Dordogne and Garonne, both of which produce tidal bores. The coastal hamlet of St. Pardon near the Vayres castle is the most popular place to catch these breaking waves. Kayakers have been surfing this mascaret ever since Roger Marcel first caught the wave in the late 1970s.

As the bore approaches, the current intensifies dramatically, then reverses violently when the wave passes. At the right time of year when the river is low (usually between June and October) the bore wave appears about every 12 hours, as soon as the tide’s coefficient exceeds 90 (based on a percentage of maximum tide range from 20 to 120). Wind speed and direction also play a factor, with northwesterlies increasing the wave’s size and speeding its arrival.

When the tide level is low the wave slows down and arrives late. But those in the know simply grab a croissant and wait, realizing the river will soon be home to sensational surf. With wind, channel depth, water and tide levels all controlling the wave’s size and arrival, you never know quite what you’re going to get. Like a billiard ball, the wave rebounds off each bank and coils unpredictably through the river bends. One day it might break on the right and the next day the left.

Despite this unpredictability, one thing remains sure: It’s guaranteed to dish up surf du jour. In August and September it isn’t unusual to see 100 people at a time trying to surf the phenomenon in kayaks, wave-skis, long boards and even body boards. About half won’t catch it, while the other half form an incredible human surfing chain, with the average ride lasting about 10 minutes. And everyone has just as good a time afterward, when riverside pubs—specializing in bore-tide Bordeaux—welcome without distinction those who have fallen off or ridden the wave to its completion. —Antony Colas

Moscow or Bust

Veteran explorers row across Bering Sea

In September 2004, Canadians Colin Angus and Tim Harvey arrived exhausted at the Siberian coastline after becoming the first people ever to row across the Bering Sea, which separates Alaska from Asia. "Overall it has been a pretty hairy journey," Angus said from Siberia via satellite phone. The pair battled unseasonably stormy weather for nearly a month before finally completing the historic crossing.

Angus and Harvey set out from the Yukon River delta on August 4 expecting calm weather, but within a day faced gale-force winds and 12-foot waves. They endured the storm in survival suits as waves pummeled their vessel, an 18-foot sailboat Angus found on eBay and converted into a seagoing rowboat. Changing winds eventually pushed them north toward Nome, Alaska, which they reached after rowing 230 miles through the Bering Sea. "We are now farther away from our destination than we were a week ago," Angus e-mailed from Nome in August. "We’re going the scenic route, anyway." After receiving a similar e-mail, Angus’ mom bought an EPIRB—a device that summons rescuers by satellite—and donated it to the expedition.

The team’s second attempt brought them within 25 miles of the Siberian coast before another storm pushed them back to St. Lawrence Island in the middle of the Bering Sea, where they waited more than a week for decent weather. At last they were able to row the remaining 45 miles to Siberia, though they nearly missed the vast Russian region because strong winds and currents pushed them south, toward the Pacific Ocean. The Bering Sea crossing is just one leg of an 11-month, 11,000-mile, human-powered journey from Vancouver, B.C., to Moscow. Angus and Harvey planned to bike to Fairbanks, Alaska, from Vancouver before getting into their seagoing rowboat, but wildfires raging in the Yukon’s boreal forests forced the government to close the roads, so Angus and Harvey hit the water early.

"We bought a canoe with a grapefruit-sized hole in it," Angus said. They patched it, loaded the canoe with 400 pounds of gear, including the bikes they’d need again in Siberia, and paddled the unstable craft down the Yukon River to Fairbanks. They learned later that the river was also off-limits, but no one stopped them as they paddled through thick smoky air. The pair is now bicycling along frozen waterways toward Moscow. They expect to arrive in May.

—Katie Showalter

Adrift Under Hartford

Outfitter plumbs the depths of Connecticut with tunnel canoe tours

If you’ve ever canoed blindly into a rapid without scouting you’ll be right at home on a new canoe tour in Connecticut. About 10 years ago, John Kulick, owner of Hartford, Conn.-based Huck Finn Adventures, noticed that the city’s Park River disappeared into a massive underground tunnel. "I was curious about where the river went, so I started exploring," says the ponytailed 53-year-old. He found a series of huge concrete pipes buried under the city’s buildings, parks and major roads, all large enough to accommodate canoes. Next came the idea light bulb about paddling the dark passageways. "I thought it would be a great place to guide paying adventurers," he adds.

Kulick learned that after hurricanes in the 1930s nearly drove the city underwater, civic leaders looked to prevent the tidal Connecticut River and its offshoot, the Park, from overflowing in the future. Two phases of construction—in the ’40s and ’70s—encased three miles of river in concrete. Kulick eventually obtained permits to bring customers, at $65 apiece, on a rustic "tunnel of love" ride dozens of feet beneath the seat of America’s insurance industry. The only such guided tour in the country takes people through dark tubes that vary in width from 6 to 20 feet.

Of course, you’re not actually boating blind. Though most of the trip takes place in darkness, the eerie glow of paddlers’ headlamps turns the tubes’ walls into a nest of shiny-eyed aliens. Or so it seems as we follow Kulick’s canoe into the bowels of a working city, where whiffs of sewage (thankfully from lower tunnels) and the subtle vibration of traffic overhead remind us of the outside world.

During the three-hour tour, Kulick plays with sound and light by asking his clients to turn off their headlamps and smack their paddles on the gunwales, creating a bizarre reverberation in total darkness. He also shows his ideological side, lecturing the group on the implications of sewer overflows and America’s throwaway society. After two hours in the dark, the tunnel spits us out into the broad Connecticut River. On a sunny day, the optic contrast is startling. When our eyes adjust, Hartford glitters to the left and hundreds of trees sheltering waterside picnickers fill the view. It feels as if you’ve just been beamed back to earth after visiting another planet. Info: (860) 693-0385, www.huckfinnadventures.com. —Malerie Yolen-Cohen