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Ranting about Painters — WITH a Paddle in IT!
Here we go again. It’s that time of the year when paddlers make silly points on the Internet. I never understand 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 of), I just don’t even have the energy to continue describing this type…
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A Simple Menu for a 12,000-mile Backcountry Journey
On backcountry kayak camping trips, a varied and robust menu seems a given. There are dozens of camping cookbooks devoted to the topic, and 100s and 100s of recipes and even magazine columns devoted to cooking tasty treats while on the trail. All that food planning and preparation takes time and effort, so you might be tempted to ignore all that advice and just pack mac and cheese. National Geographic Adventurers of the Year Amy and Dave Freeman did just that on their 3-year, 12,000-mile kayak, canoe and dogsled journey from Seattle, Washington to Key West, Florida. They ditched the fancy menus and simplified each of their daily meals to…
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The Canoeist and Kayaker Holiday Gift Guide
Paddlers being the picky, hard-to-please group that they are, are extremely hard to shop for during the holidays. Most paddlers already own everything they want, except for that new boat. While that new NDK Romany or Northstar Magic would look great under the tree spending a couple grand probably isn’t within everyone’s idea of a perfect gift. Here are a few unique gifts for canoeists and kayakers. It’s something to surprise them with and maybe something unexpected as well. Jon Turk’s Crocodiles and Ice A more detail review is coming on this book, but in essence this book details several adventures including Turk’s kayak and ski circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island. The…
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Hazardous Attitudes in Paddling
Recently, I’ve been studying for a pilot’s license and came across an interesting way to think about attitudes that might get you into trouble. These attitudes appear in the FAA’s (Federal Aviation Administration) Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and are described as a predisposition that motivates a person to respond to people, situations or events is a manner aligned with the attitude. They identify five hazardous attitudes that interfere with decision making: anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, macho and resignation (see page 2-5). You can look for these attitudes in yourself and your paddling partners. Once you identify that you know they exist, you can overcome a hazardous attitude by redirecting the attitude…
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A Siskiwit SOF Hits the Water
Mike from Columbus, MS finished building a Siskiwit SOF kayak, the skin-on-frame version of the Siskiwit Bay. This is what he had to say: I finally got around to building the Siskiwit Bay SOF from plans purchased last year. It took about 6 weeks, 60’ish hours, and perhaps $350 – $400 in materials. Please see the attached pictures (which you may use as you like for PaddlingLight.com). The frames are high quality birch plywood, the stringers of cedar, and the stems from white pine. The entire frame is protected with tung oil/linseed/mineral spirits mix. Covering is iron oxide dyed polyester (red sections only, white is natural color) waterproofed with 2-part polyurethane. The cockpit…
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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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Review: Paleo Meals To Go
In 2013 while on a multi-day backpacking trip in the Maroon Bells, Ty Soukup tried a standard freeze-dried meal for dinner. He got sick. Earlier in the year, he had started the paleo diet, a diet which according to Google definitions is “based on the types of foods presumed to have been eaten by early humans, consisting chiefly of meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit, and excluding dairy or grain products and processed food.” If you’ve had a typical freeze-dried backpacking meal, you know that they’re full of salt and potatoes or pasta. Those ingredients don’t align with a paleo diet. Literally sick from standard freeze-dried backpacking meals that didn’t align…
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Kayak Cockpit Placement Rule of Thumb
If you’re working from a set of sea kayaking plans, figuring out the kayak cockpit placement is easy. You just consult the diagrams. But, if it’s a historic replica or one of your own designs or if the plans didn’t include drawings of the cockpit area, finding the best placement becomes a challenge. This is a hurdle I faced when building my Siskiwit Bay and Siskiwit LV designs. After a day or two a research, I ended up coming up with several rule of thumbs for sea kayak cockpit placements. Any homebuilder could use these and come up with a good cockpit placement. Sea Kayak Cockpit Placement Rule of Thumb…
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Canoe Lovers: Grand Portage Rendezvous Days and Powwow
Last weekend was the annual Rendezvous Days and Powwow at Grand Portage National Monument in northern Minnesota. The Grand Portage was the 8-mile trail that fur-trading voyageurs took to bring the furs they gathered to the company’s remote headquarters. In August every year, the voyageurs would show up and the rich company owners would come from Europe, and Grand Portage became a rough and tumble celebration. After the celebration, the furs were loaded aboard massive voyageur canoes and paddled across the Great Lakes and eventually shipped to Europe where many became hats. In the states, the voyageurs would carry trade goods up the portage and then paddle 100s of miles back…
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Jon Turk’s New Book Crocodiles and Ice: A Journey into Deep Wild Available for Preorder
Adventurer and sea kayaker Jon Turk has a new book coming out in September. Amazon is now taking preorders. The book, called Crocodiles and Ice: A Journey in the Deep Wild, ties together several of Jon’s expeditions under the theme of a “journey into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth.” The book covers Jon’s circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island, which is the trip that won him National Geographics Adventurer of the Year, and several other trips as well. Here’s the description: Crocodiles and Ice is a scientist/adventurer’s journey into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth. The book highlights my…
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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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North House Folk School’s Wooden Boat Show 2016
Each year on the summer solstice weekend, the North House Folk School in Grand Marais puts on its annual Wooden Boat Show. The 2017 dates are June 16-18, 2017. The event not only is a gathering of handcrafted canoes, kayaks and other boats, but a festival weekend full of classes, workshops, talks, slideshows and more. It’s a fun weekend and if you love wooden canoe and kayaks, you should put it on your calendar as an event to attend. It also features a wooden boat auction. I let a wooden canoe go that I would have loved to restore this year, because I don’t have the space on my project list…
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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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Safety-shaming says, “Say it ain’t so.” The Coach’s eye says, “You messed up.”
There are several Facebook paddling groups that I find enjoyable and both approach safety in two different ways. The approaches couldn’t be more polarized. One group focuses on safety and understands safety. The other group rallies against safety. Two recent posts demonstrate the difference. In one group, a respectful safety conversation was had after someone posted about safety. In the other, people railed against the original poster and eventually the post was deleted by an admin. The Post in the Pro Kayak Safety Group The first post was in Inland Seas, Kayaking the Great Lakes from one of the most experienced kayakers in North America and he posted a photo taken…
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A Skene Walrus Hits the Water
Another Walrus hits the water. This time it’s a folder. And it looks great. Norman L. Skene originally published the drawings in The Rudder Magazine. Later George Putz published the plans in his book Wood and Canvas Kayak Building. Skene based the Walrus on the 1921 Southwest Greenland Kayak, aka the Skinny Walrus. Markus Kosel, the builder, did a great job as you can see from the following pictures. Here’s what Markus says: I followed you advice and I built the Skene Walrus. The boat is built as a traditional folding kayak, with a wooden frame and a skin made from PVC coated fabric underneath and a canvas deck. The dimensions are those of Skene’s…
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