kayaks to hell

Laugh out loud with this hilarious look at the trials and tribulations of paddling, as seen through the eyes of renowned cartoonist William Nealy.

A celebrated author and cartoonist, William Nealy gained cult-hero status in the outdoor-sports community by blending his passion for the outdoors with his unique style of caricatures. He had a knack for learning-not by doing but by crashing and burning! The works of this American treasure were almost lost forever, but Menasha Ridge Press is proud to help bring back William’s irreverent illustrations.

Kayaks to Hell is a riot of a book that accurately depicts the monomania, elusive machismo, and marathon-dance mentality of whitewater paddling. With a unique blend of satire and cartoon art, the best-selling author opens up about the sport--and its disciples.

• Boat racks


• Canoeing businessmen


• Paddling trips


• Water rescues


• Much, much more!

William’s zany illustrations have been bound and bandaged together in a monumental new collection of books that include cartoons long out of print. Kayaks to Hell is a wonderful part of The William Nealy Collection, ideal for anyone who loves to laugh and enjoys the great outdoors.

William ＂Not Bill＂ Nealy was a wild, gentle, brilliant artist and creator turned cult hero who wrote 10 books for Menasha Ridge Press from 1982 to 2000. William shared his hard-won ＂crash-and-learn＂ experiences through humorous hand-drawn cartoons and illustrated river maps that enabled generations to follow in his footsteps. His subjects included paddling, mountain biking, skiing, and inline skating. His hand-drawn, poster-size river maps of the Nantahala, Ocoee, Chattooga, Gauley, Youghiogheny, and several other rivers are still sought after and in use today.

William was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He and his wife, Holly Wallace, spent their adult years in a home William built in the woods on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, along with an assortment of dogs, lizards, pigs, snakes, turtles, and amphibians. William died in 2001.

His longtime friend and publisher, Bob Sehlinger, wrote: ＂When William Nealy died in 2001, paddling lost its Poet Laureate, one of its best teachers, and its greatest icon. William was arguably the best-known ambassador of whitewater sport, entertaining and instructing hundreds of thousands of paddlers through his illustrated books, including the classics: Whitewater Home Companion Volumes I and II, Whitewater Tales of Terror, Kayaks to Hell, and his best-known work, Kayak, which combined expert paddling instruction with artful caricatures and parodies of the whitewater community itself.＂