Category Archives: Tutorial

Organizing Camping Gear for Canoe Camping and Kayak Camping

Organzing camping gear by laying everything out.

Many checklists that help with organizing camping gear are broken down into categories that don’t necessarily reflect how we live our lives in our homes. For example, a checklist might break the list into paddling clothing, camp clothing, personal gear, group gear and personal items. At a glance, you can’t really tell what you’re bringing. [...]

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Kayaking Accessories for Beginners

Kayaking accessories on the beach

As a first time kayak buyer, you probably didn’t know or don’t know what kayaking accessories to get with your first kayak, and unless you bought from a knowledgeable salesperson, who also kayaks, he probably didn’t get you everything that you needed. The problem is two-fold: 1. Many salespeople don’t understand kayaking. 2. When you [...]

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How to Print Free Canadian Topographic Maps Quickly and Inexpensively

Free Canadian Topo map example

This is a guest post from educator and wilderness guide Dave Freeman. Canadian topographic maps generally cost between $11 and $16 dollars each. When buying many maps for an extended camping trip, the costs quickly add up. Luckily, the Canadian government offers free electronic copies of all of their topo maps. By following a few [...]

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Boundary Waters (BWCA) Primer

Canoe in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota protects 1.09 million acres of Boreal forest and lakes under the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the 1978 BWCA Act. The U.S. set aside the area to provide a place “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” It is one of two protected [...]

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Navigation: How to Use a Compass

Part of a compass

When paddling, you use a compass to determine or identify courses, bearings and headings. Because the deck of a kayak or the workstation in a canoe is small, limiting the number of instruments used for navigation speeds up the process and reduces the chance of losing an item overboard. A baseplate compass combines a protractor [...]

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How to Use a VHF Radio

Icom M72 VHF radio ready for use on channel 16.

When paddling, you might need to communicate to other vessels. One tool that a kayaker or canoeist can use to communicate is a handheld VHF radio. A VHF radio broadcasts your message out to other boaters in the area listening to their radios. You can use VHF radios in emergencies or just to relay information. [...]

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NOAA Marine Chart Converter

NOAA Marine Chart

NOAA makes its marine charts available for free to the public, but those charts come in a BSB format. If you want to manipulate the marine charts on your computer, unless you hack the file, you have to use a computer program designed to read the BSB format. To make the charts usable in any [...]

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How to Cook Bannock on a Stick – Campfire Bread

Bannock on a stick cooking over a campfire.

Fresh bread on an extended paddling trip feels like a treat, especially after eating hard crackers, bagels or pitas for a week. One way to make this treat is by cooking bannock. For over a 1000 years, bannock, a simple bread made from the flour of a variety of grains, has filled the bellies of [...]

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Paddling Weather Lore and Prediction

Kayak and stormy weather

Paddlers live at the mercy of the weather. On a calm day, we can paddle miles. On a stormy day, a strong headwind makes progress a crawl, and nothing is worse than lightning striking during a long crossing. Having simple tools to help predict the weather during a paddling trip helps with the decision making [...]

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How to Replace Your Kayak’s End Toggle

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A couple of years ago, I watched a friend of mine carrying his wife’s boat down to the shore. A new kayaker taking a lesson from us carried the bow. Unfortunately, the worn-out rope attaching the kayak’s end toggle to the boat broke sending the bow of the $3200 fiberglass Valley Pintail to the asphalt. [...]

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Outfitting Your Canoe’s Thwarts

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As a canoeist, I’m always looking for a place to stash a map, water bottle, or my compass. On days with scattered showers, I want a place to store my rain jacket that I can quickly get to it. In the past, I’ve just stored stuff in the bilge of the canoe, which isn’t ideal–items [...]

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How Much Faster is the Longer Kayak?

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Recently, Silbs asks, Meanwhile, I have been driving myself nuts while mulling over an issue around boat size and speed. For starters, we all agree that a longer boat (all else being equal) can go faster than a shorter one. So far so good. In addition, we know that that longer boat will need more [...]

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Quick Emergency Fix for a Broken Zipper

zipper

The most common failure of a zipper in the outdoors is when the zipper parts after closed. If your zipper is a coil zipper–most zippers used for outdoor gear are–then the problem probably lies with the zipper pull. Often the zipper pull becomes deformed and that deformity prevents the coils from meshing, which causes the [...]

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How Far Away is the Horizon

Kayaking. Duluth lift bridge on the horizon.

APPARENT HORIZON: Where the sky appears to meet the Earth. (Also sea horizon.) Because of perspective effects, different observers generally have different apparent horizons. Because of refraction, even the sea horizon usually lies above the geometric horizon. -From the Atmospheric Optics Glossary. Knowing the distance to the horizon is handy when estimating how long it [...]

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How to Decorate a Canoe Paddle

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Since I built a Northwoods canoe paddle in a North House Folk School class, it has decorated the corner of my living room. Serving as decoration, I always thought that it needed a design painted onto it–if I’m only using it for decoration, why not. For awhile now, I’ve been following Murat’s Paddle Making (and [...]

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