Jeff Fabiszewski

Jeff Fabiszewski is an American Canoe Association Level 3 Coastal Kayaking Instructor, Wilderness First Responder, and expedition paddler based in the Clearwater and Tampa Bay area of Florida’s Gulf Coast. For more than 25 years he has taught ACA-certified coastal kayaking, led multi-day expeditions through Florida’s backcountry waterways, and trained paddlers in wilderness emergency response. In 2027 he and paddling partner Sean Fitzgibbon will attempt the Alaska Inside Passage — a 240-nautical-mile sea kayaking traverse from Ketchikan to Juneau.

Jeff’s paddling life began with a canoe and his father in the Allegheny Mountains in the 1970s, where both were active Boy Scouts. He earned Eagle Scout rank — Scouting’s highest honor — and began a leadership path in the Order of the Arrow that would eventually lead to Vigil Honor membership and service as Lodge Chief, the organization’s highest youth leadership position. In 1994 he relocated to Florida and discovered the Gulf Coast’s extensive network of paddling trails, estuaries, and open water crossings. He made the transition from canoeing to sea kayaking in 2001, and within a few years was instructing and guiding on the same waters he had come to know as an explorer. He has completed expeditions on the Pinellas County Blueways Paddling Trail, the Florida Keys, the Suwannee River, and the Great Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail — a documented record spanning more than two decades of Gulf Coast paddling.

Teaching Philosophy

A class allows for guided discovery and the opportunity to practice skills without causing damage or harm to oneself. When information is freely available from retailers, social media, and the internet, the gap is not access to information — it is the ability to evaluate it. A qualified instructor can help a student distinguish reliable technique from misinformation, and identify gear that fits their actual paddling environment rather than gear that looked persuasive in a sponsored video.

Jeff’s instruction is informed by his WFR training and by more than 25 years of paddling Florida’s coastal waters in conditions that range from flat and calm to genuinely demanding. His students learn not only how to paddle but how to make sound decisions about whether, when, and where to go.

Current Project — Alaska Inside Passage 2028

In June–July 2028, Jeff and Sean Fitzgibbon will paddle the Alaska Inside Passage from Ketchikan to Juneau — approximately 240 nautical miles of remote, tide-driven, bear coast sea kayaking. Both paddlers train on Nigel Foster-designed sea kayaks donated by Nigel Foster. The expedition is the culmination of decades of Gulf Coast paddling, an adaptive training program designed around the physiological demands of the route, and a commitment to documenting the cultural and ecological character of the Inside Passage. Updates, training logs, and expedition preparation resources are published here at Liquid Rhythm Kayaking.

Community

Jeff is an adult leader with Sea Scout Ship 915 in Gulfport, Florida, where he has served for several years alongside his son Tyler, an Eagle Scout and Ship 915’s elected Boatswain. Ship 915 competes annually at the Tampa Bay Sea Scout Regatta and participates in the Greater Tampa Bay Area Council’s Maritime Merit Badge Academy.

He is also a member of the BSA’s Order of the Arrow and holds Vigil Honor — the organization’s highest recognition of service and dedication to Scouting ideals.

Jeff has supported veteran outdoor programming and paddled with adaptive athletes through Team River Runner Tampa & The Extremity Games in Orlando Florida. His writing on coastal kayaking, wilderness first aid, and backcountry cooking has appeared in several publications (Onshore Offshore Magazine — July 2006, Florida Outdoor Adventures Magazine — July 2006, Canoe News — Summer 2011, Paddle.net, Sea Kayaker Magazine — 2011).

Credentials

Jeff holds the following active credentials and certifications:

• American Canoe Association (ACA)
  • Level 3 Coastal Kayaking Instructor
  • Adaptive Paddling Endorsement
  • Kayak Rolling Endorsement
  • Kayak Traditional Skills (Greenland / Qajaq) Endorsement
• Wilderness Medicine
  • Wilderness First Responder (WFR), NOLS Wilderness Medicine Institute
  • Adult/Child CPR, AED, and Airway Management
• Scouting of America
  • Medal of Merit
  • Eagle Scout
  • Order of the Arrow
    • Vigil Honor
    • Retired OA Lodge Chief
  • Unit Commissioner
  • Merit Badge Counselor: Canoeing, Cooking, Kayaking, Orienteering, Search and Rescue, Weather, Wilderness Survival
  • Wood Badge, Eagle Patrol
  • BSA Safe Swim Defense
  • Safety Afloat
  • Youth Protection – Safe Guarding Youth
• Sea Scouting
  • Adult Ship Leader
  • Sea Scout Ship 915 (Clearwater / Gulfport, FL)
  • Cats Point Regatta
  • Merit Badge Maritime Academy, GTBAC
• Academic
  • History
  • American Studies
  • Anthropology

Eagle Scout  •  ACA Level 3 Coastal Kayaking Instructor  •  NOLS Wilderness First Responder •  Outdoor Educator  •  Author  •  Expedition Kayaker  •  Youth Mentor  •  Veterans Advocate  •  Florida  •  liquidrhythmkayaking.com  •  floridaoats.wordpress.com   •  LinkedIn

BIOGRAPHY

Early Life & Formative Years

Jeffrey Fabiszewski’s relationship with the outdoors began in the 1970s in western Pennsylvania, shaped by a father who understood that the best classroom had no walls. Together they canoed the rivers and trekked the trails of the Allegheny Mountains as Boy Scouts, cooking over open fires and sleeping under the Milky Way. Those early years built not only skills but a philosophy: that nature is where character is formed.

Jeffrey advanced to Eagle Scout — the highest rank in Boy Scouts of America — and subsequently earned the Vigil Honor through the Order of the Arrow, the BSA’s national honor camping society. He completed BSA Woodbadge (Eagle Patrol), the most advanced adult leadership training in scouting. These are not sequential achievements; they represent a sustained, decades-long commitment to the principles of outdoor education, service, and mentorship.

His academic foundation is a Bachelor of Arts in History, American Studies, and Anthropology — a discipline that runs as a quiet current beneath all of his subsequent work. It informs how he reads a landscape, how he interprets the cultures that paddled Florida’s waterways before him, and how he frames the wilderness experience within the larger arc of American identity.

Florida & the Transition to Kayaking (1994–2001)

In 1994, Jeffrey relocated to Florida, where the flat, intricate waterways of the Gulf Coast offered a fundamentally different kind of wilderness than the Alleghenies. He transitioned from canoeing to sea kayaking in 2001, discovering a vessel that could access the shallow backcountry of Tampa Bay, the mangrove tunnels of the Ten Thousand Islands, and eventually the open water of the Florida Keys. Florida did not simply become his home — it became his subject.

Liquid Rhythm Kayaking & Florida O.A.T.S. (2007–Present)

In 2007, Jeffrey co-founded Liquid Rhythm Kayaking with partner Sean Fitzgibbon, building what became one of Florida’s most-read paddling and outdoor education platforms. Over nearly two decades the site has accumulated more than 166,000 readers and 500+ posts spanning expedition journals, gear reviews, safety instruction, wilderness cooking, and philosophical reflections on the outdoor life. The blog’s longevity is itself a credential: it is a primary-source archive of Florida paddling culture.

He simultaneously developed Florida O.A.T.S. (Florida’s Outdoor Adventure Trail Secrets), a parallel platform covering the full spectrum of Florida backcountry travel — backpacking, bushcraft, overlanding, first aid, and coastal paddling. Together the two platforms represent a sustained, documented body of original outdoor writing accessible to the public.

Jeffrey’s current writing includes a series titled Rekindling Transcendentalist Wilderness, which positions the outdoor experience within the American philosophical tradition of Thoreau and Emerson — signaling a deliberate evolution from instructional content toward literary and cultural non-fiction.

Expedition Record

Jeffrey’s expeditions are not recreational outings. They are documented, purposeful journeys with defined routes, objectives, and public records. His verified Florida expedition record spans more than 480 miles of coastal and river paddling across four major expeditions:

• 2007 — Pinellas County Circumnavigation: 100 miles in 4 days (May 3–6), averaging 25 miles per day, undertaken as a fundraiser for the Extremity Games. The expedition was covered by O&P News and documented publicly.
• 2008–2009 — Florida Keys: 90 miles across two trips through the backcountry of the Keys.
• 2009 — Suwannee River: 100 miles over five days, New Year’s, from Woods Ferry to Adams Tract, camping at designated wilderness river camps.
• 2011 — Great Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail: 190 miles over two weeks in September, from Caloosahatchee Regional Park through Pine Island Sound, Cayo Costa, J.N. Ding Darling, Estero Bay, and the Imperial River.

A fifth expedition is currently in active planning: a 2028 kayak traverse from Ketchikan to Juneau, Alaska, with Sean Fitzgibbon. This multi-week open-water and coastal expedition in the Inside Passage represents a significant escalation in scale and environment from the Florida expeditions and will be documented as a film project.

Published Writing

Jeffrey’s outdoor writing has appeared in five publications:

• Onshore Offshore Magazine — July 2006
• Florida Outdoor Adventures Magazine — July 2006
• Canoe News — Summer 2011
• Paddle.net
• Sea Kayaker Magazine — 2011

He is currently developing three book manuscripts for publication, targeted at outdoor enthusiasts, families, and general readers with a Florida setting. The works span three distinct genres: backcountry and outdoor cooking, family outdoor education (a how-to guide for parents and children), and literary suspense fiction. All three are set in Florida. Working titles are withheld pending publisher commitment.

Adaptive Paddling & Veterans Service

Jeffrey has contributed sustained time and expertise to adaptive paddling programs for recovering wounded veterans, with 14 documented posts under the Team River Runner category on Liquid Rhythm Kayaking. Team River Runner is a nationally recognized program using whitewater kayaking as a rehabilitation modality for injured service members. His involvement is instructional and logistical, not ceremonial.

Youth Education & Scouting

Jeffrey serves as a Scouting America BSA Merit Badge Counselor in seven disciplines: Canoeing, Cooking, Kayaking, Orienteering, Search and Rescue, Weather, and Wilderness Survival. This breadth spans water, land, navigation, emergency response, and field nutrition — a curriculum that maps directly onto his professional certifications and expedition experience. He holds Safe Swim Defense, Safety Afloat, and Scouting America BSA Safeguarding Youth Protection credentials, enabling him to lead youth on both land and water.