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Siskiwit LV Launched
Ralph M. recently completed a Siskiwit LV build. Here’s what he wrote: I put my just completed Siskiwit in the water (Puget Sound) for the first time on Thursday evening. It is a wonderful boat; stability and handling exactly as you said. Excellent response to leaned turns, a bit of skeg as needed. With skeg all the way down it obediently heads downwind. I had whitecaps building up, modest chop, a good first test for an old guy with back problems. Weight is a bit under 40 pounds. Thank you for a really good design. Here are a few photos that he took of his kayak. It’s a…
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Crackpot Kayak Dude
Every now and then some crackpot contacts me, and it irritates me enough to post the conversation. I get a ton of these types of emails and sometimes share them on my private FB profile, because they are humorous. But a few deserve to see the light of day. Here’s one of them. I have to wonder if it is because I give away drawings of kayaks for free on this website. Maybe I need to raise the price to $5 or $10 minimum for any drawings. Crackpot Kayaker: Hello !! I just tried to answer your questions about why you do not receive more pictures , answers or contacts…
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The First Roll Expedition
For Immediate Release: 4/1/2019 Grand Marais, Minnesota: PaddlingLight’s publisher and primary author Bryan Hansel is excited to announce a new world record attempt and a new expedition. Over the next year, he will attempt to roll his kayak in a new pool every day. Not only will the pools be different, but each pool will be newly constructed and have never had a kayak roll in it. “I’m excited about this expedition,” said Hansel. “Each day, I’ll explore a new pool with a roll and discover what it is like to roll in that pool. To me kayaking is about discovery and I’m looking forward to this expedition of discovery.”…
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Totally Lame GoPro: Setting a Kayaker on Fire
Someone posted the below video to my social media feeds today and made the comment, “There are thousands of good reasons and good ways to paddle, this is not one of them.” The title for the video was, GoPro: The Kayak Fire Fall with Rafa Ortiz. With a clickbaity title like that, how could I not click on the link and see what GoPro was doing now? My first thought when I started the video was, I wonder if they found a natural phenomenon like Yosemite’s Firefall. When the setting sun hits Horsetail Falls exactly right in the month of February, it lights up like a burning stream of fire.…
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How to Take a $H!T in the BWCAW
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) is America’s most used wilderness area. Each year an estimated 250,000 visitors paddle its pristine lakes and over 1,200 miles of canoe routes and camp at one of over 2,000 designated campsites. This many people using the million acres puts a strain on the land. While in other wilderness areas if you need to take a crap you dig a hole and bury your poop (as outlined in the book How to Shit in the Woods), it isn’t like that in the BWCAW. In the BWCAW, you take your shit by sitting your arse down on a thunder box (latrine) and letting it…
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Kayakers Dying and Darwin
Natural Selection is a wonderful thing. This was a Facebook response to a news report about a kayaker drowning on the Great Lakes (See: Â Search for missing kayaker continues). The news report tells us that two men in their 20s went kayaking on Lake Huron. They weren’t wearing lifejackets and both capsized. One of the men couldn’t swim. He presumably drowned. They are still searching for his body. Natural Selection is a wonderful thing. So, instead of expressing empathy with this man’s family, his parents and his friends, the Internet-dude responds that drownings on the Great Lake are a “wonderful thing.” Natural Selection is a wonderful thing. You have to…
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Cape Wrath Packrafting and Fat Biking Trip
It’s one of those days when I have a pile of work to do, but just want to watch videos about paddling. And then I stumbled onto this Cape Wrath packrafting and fat biking video. After about two hours of dreaming up trips to do with a fat bike and packraft, I think I better get back to work! This is a fun video.
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The Audacity of Winning Bold Kayaking Arguments on the Internet
If you have been a long time reader of the website, you know that I’m officially out of the kayaking business. After years in the canoe and kayak retail business, years of guiding and then years of owning a kayak guiding business, I got out of it — it is now a hobby of mine. As a hobby and as a business one of my main goals and beliefs is that we are in this sport together and if we work together as partners we can make the sport better. Like everything on the Internet and maybe in the world, discussion is devolving to the point that partnership is no…
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Ranting about Painters — WITH a Paddle in IT!
Probably not best to start the year off with a rant as the first post, but maybe, just maybe, 2017 will be the year when this kind of thing stops. What do you ask? The silly need of people to comment about how a photo of a canoe or kayak that they saw on social media doesn’t meet their idea of what a canoe or kayak should be or some other silliness like that. To be completely honest (cliched phrase on purpose, because it’s like a cliche that you going to get someone who thinks they are the know-it-all paddler to comment on a photo that they have no knowledge…
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To Preserve Public Lands, There is Only One Choice in This Election
One of the missions of PaddlingLight is to promote wilderness protection. Why? There are lots of reasons why wilderness and wild places and public lands are good for us, including mentally and economically, but, perhaps, more importantly because wilderness travel by canoe and kayak is the apex of this sport. It’s what we do. We go paddling, and much of the time, we go paddling in areas that are accessed via public lands. While all the destinations that we paddle aren’t in wilderness areas or areas with large expanses of public lands, the celebrated areas — those areas that we dream of paddling — such as the Everglades, Boundary Waters Canoe…
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Illusory Truth Effect and Sea Kayaking (Sort of Off-Topic)
In a recent Facebook post, a person that I’ve known for over 10 years and someone who has authored several articles for this website, said, I don’t need to support my views with facts because I know that they are true. It was as if Stephen Colbert’s truthiness joke was manifest in reality. This person was arguing something that had no real evidence, but had been said over and over and over again — heck, it has been said enough times that I believe it, too, even though I’ve never seen any real evidence that could be used in court to prove it or convict the people involved. There’s a cognitive…
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Is Your Silent Sport a Fad?
Silent sports defined by a sports sole reliance on self-propulsion is the category of sports that paddlesports falls into. It’s joined by other sports such as biking, mountain biking, fat biking, hiking, running, climbing, snowshoeing and many other sports that don’t rely on fossil fuel or electronics to participate. Within the silent sport category, many sports have shined for a short time only to die out as a fad. Remember inline skating, anyone? Here are a few silent sports that have stood up to the test of time as well as some that ended up as fads: Canoeing – not a fad Biking – not a fad Cross Country Skiing – not…
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PaddlingLight to Become PedalingLight
After a long debate with our publishing partners, authors and advisors, we decided that PaddlingLight will shut down within a week and change our focus to biking. Our new domain name is PedalingLight. PedalingLight’s mission is to provide information on lightweight bicycle travel, touring and bikepacking while promoting the protection and preservation of our federal, state and local lands. It will continue PaddlingLight’s belief in the DIY culture by providing drawings and free plans for bike frames. Over the last five months, we’ve been working hard at converting all our articles from sea kayaking and canoeing to articles about biking. All the current content that was relevant to biking has…
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KayaLeg: Help or Hassle? Making Entry Into a Kayak Easy?
Recently, Ralph Wirsig, the owner of KayaArm, contacted me to introduce me to his new product. The new product is called KayaLeg. Both the KayaArm and KayaLeg offer kayakers a new and potentially easier way — at least for some kayakers — to get into a kayak. The KayaArm is a product that you permanently install on a dock. It stabilizes the kayak while you get in. I actually think that the KayaArm is a pretty cool product and if you’re lucky enough (or rich enough) to live on a lake with a dock, then the KayaArm is something to consider adding to your dock. Especially if you have any flexibility…
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Sandals! You’ll hurt your feet!
Sandals are awesome to wear for paddling trip. When wearing sandals and you step into the water, your foot gets wet. You take it out of the water and it dries. The sweat dries off your feet quickly, and, well, they’re pretty darn awesome. Sure there are some downsides, such as they don’t offer the support of a hiking boot and sandals that have open toes don’t protect your toes and they suck in mud (although you can wash your feet when you get to a lake). These disadvantages are common sense no brainers, and the awesomeness of wearing sandals outweighs the disadvantages. Still, there are some who can’t imagine…