Getting knocked out of your boat and back in by yourself is hard enough, but once back in you have to hand pump all the water out, or do you? Having a reliable electric bilge pump to pump that water out will keep both of your hands on your paddle allowing you to brace in the conditions that knocked you over in the first place. It is also a handy toy that you can use to douse your unsuspecting friends with a cold blast of water.

An electric pump is a great piece of safety equipment especially if you find yourself paddling in dynamic waters but just like any other piece of equipment it can fail, so you should not get rid of your hand pump just yet or stop practicing your rolls. Training and practice should continue to be a part the central part of your paddling safety plan.

There are several good electric bilge pump plans published on the internet, the one I found most useful was at Gnarly Dog’s Blog. I started with this basic design and refined it to fit my NDK Romany Excel and to make it as simple and reliable as I could. This has taken several attempts and changes to attain these goals.

If you do not want to get your hands dirty or do not have the time, Blue Water Kayak Works sells the Freedom 500 Electric Bilge Pump Kit. The kit includes everything you need to install it yourself or if you live in the Puget Sound area you can have Rhonda Schwab at Kayakers Go Coastal install it professionally for you.

This article will hopefully illustrate the steps I took and the considerations I made when installing my pump thus giving you a big head start on your own project.

Myself and 4 friends (Bob, Kim, Maxine, and Cathy) from GonePaddling, a Greater Seattle area kayaking group headed down to this years Sea Kayaking Symposium held in Marin, CA just across the bay from San Francisco. We joined a couple hundred other paddlers from around the country and from around the globe to soak up as much information and new skills we could from some of the best paddle coaches in the industry!

Cathy and I drove down on Thursday while everyone else headed down on Wednesday to break up the drive. I brought along a P&H Delphin 155 on demo from P&H and my NDK Romany Excel. Cathy brought along her Valley Pintail and came back with a NEW Tidrace Xtra!

1. Tsunami Debris FAQs 
2. Downloadable one-pager
( 227kb) 
3. Making Waves podcast

My self and three others made the conscious decision to embark on a journey to become certified by the American Canoe Association (ACA) as Open Water Coastal Kayak Instructors. We did this in the dead of winter enduring snow, rain, freezing temps, frigid waters, flat tires, frozen fingers, and bloody head wounds.