Rob Mercer

Rob Mercer is an Australian Canoeing qualified Sea Kayak Instructor based in Sydney, Australia. He has been paddling kayaks for 20 years and going out to sea in small boats for forty-eight years. Rob is recognised as one of the premier Sea Kayak Instructors for paddlers at all levels wishing to accelerate their skills. Rob was a founding member of the Australian Canoeing National Education and Safety Committee, serving on that committee for a number of years. Rob holds an Advanced Sea Kayak Instructor (level 3) and Assessor qualification under the Australian Canoeing Scheme; and is the Principal of the Registered National Training Provider (registration number 037), The Balanced Boater. Through this enterprise Rob offers instruction and guiding to individuals and small groups and specializes in targeted programs working with clients to pursue their personal kayaking goals at many levels.

Rob also offers ‘bespoke’ guided trips on open water for small groups, drawing on a lifetime of experience paddling on Australia’s East Coast waters.

Rob is active in the local club paddling community and is a life member of the New South Wales Sea Kayak Club awarded in recognition of his contribution to club training.

Rob also regularly presents and instructs at Sea Kayak Symposiums around Australia.

Rob’s trip’s resume includes crossing Bass Strait between the Australian mainland & Tasmania, paddling on the east Coast of Tasmania, North Island New Zealand and extensively along the NSW and Queensland coast, between Sydney and Torres Strait, including the remote Cape York Peninsula. He has also explored many of the remote and largely unpopulated island groups off the east coast, and recently paddled an unsupported trip through the Capricornia Cays in Queensland with Chris James and Mark Sundin. On this trip they became the first group of kayakers to paddle out to the remote North Reef Lighthouse some 130 kilometres offshore. In 2012 he and the same team set up the “Degree in a Day” paddles to raise awareness for the RUOK foundation that provides a national focus on suicide prevention. In March of that year they successfully completed the 60 nautical mile open water trip from Sydney to Jervis Bay (one degree of latitude) in less than 14 hours.