Well, we made the big switch and moved our blog over to Wordpress. All the archives are over and we just need to make things look pretty now. We are in the process of adding some new features. Look for a couple of book reviews coming this week.

What do you think of the new site?

I just finished reading an interesting blog entry on the Scottish Sea Kayaking Photo Gallery about a mink eradication program in the Western Isles. It started back in 2001 and they want to get rid of the North American minks that escaped from fur farms back in the 60’s and 70’s. Looks they are looking for more people to help out with the cause.

On a different note, it seems that the printers have given a final date to the publishers (Pesda Press) for the new book Sea Kayak by Gordon Brown. They will start shipping it December 7^th. Just in time for Christmas. Get it on your list if you haven’t already.

I still haven’t figured out a security error that keeps popping up in the backend so I still can’t publish photos in the blog. It seems it messed things up when I changed domains. I will try to get it sorted out tomorrow.

I stated going through my hard drive and formatting my lesson plans for posting. I also started a new category for user manuals for paddling gear like GPS or VHF radios. They sometime come with interesting technical information that is interesting for gear geeks like myself.

I was hunting around reading the latest paddling news and I found this interesting article. It talks about how a judge in Louisiana recently ruled that it is illegal to use a boat for recreational purposes in US navigable waters.



In the case of Normal Parm v. Sheriff Mark Shumate, James ruled that federal law grants exclusive and private control over the waters of the river, outside the main shipping channel, to riparian landowners. The shallows of the navigable waters are no longer open to the public. That, in effect, makes boating illegal across most of the country.



"Even though this action seems like a horrible pre-April fools joke, it is very serious," said Phil Keeter, MRAA president, in a statement. "Because essentially all the waters and waterways of our country are considered navigable in the US law, this ruling declares recreational boating, water skiing, fishing, waterfowl hunting, and fishing tournaments to be illegal and the public subject to jail sentences for recreating with their families."



So what does mean? I don’t really know. Will you still be able to paddle your kayak and not worry about possible jail time? Just in case that happens, I am proposing that you get prepared now. Paint your boat all black (flat black is better). Only paddle at night so nobody will see you and hunt you down to being out on the water. Even better yet, stay at home, watch This is the Sea and remember the good times when you could legally paddle.



But what happens if I get caught? What should I tell my cell mate when he asks, "What are you in here for?"



Whatever you do, make up a good lie. Don’t let them know the real reason. If word gets out to your fellow prison mates, you won’t get picked first for the jail yard baseball team if you know what I mean...

I recently came upon SmartFlix. It is an online DVD rental service similar to NetFlix. SmartFlix specializes in only renting "How-To" videos for the handy handy person. Why two handies (is that real word)? I have learned through my short life that not all handy people are that handy after all...

At SmartFlix you can rent videos from almost everybody convincible topic from learning how to Building a Small Steam Engine to learning how to play back-up banjo (That has always been high up on my life to-do lists...).

When browsing through it, I discovered that there are also a pike of canoeing and kayaking skills videos. Some we have all seen before but others looked new and interesting.

Looking to expand your mind over the winter? Rent "Cave Cooking". Here is the description for those who don’t feel like clicking over:

Cave Cooking is our way of showing you wilderness food preparations. In this landmark video Karen shows you how to clean and cook fish, squirrel, marmot, maggot and some select wild edible plants.

I think I might just rent this in time for Christmas. :)

So I had a really interesting experience out paddling last weekend. I went out paddling with one of my regular paddling friends. We are both at a fairly high skill level. We like to get out surf and play around in bumpy waters.



This past weekend I was reminded just how quickly a controlled situation can quickly spiral out of control and into a potentially life threatening situation.



We teach rescue clinics both beginner and advanced all the time but we recently discovered that we rarely practice rescues in the extreme conditions that are truly a challenge for us. I hear the same thing happens to aerobic instructors. They are leading programs all day but because they are leading for beginners, they are not getting much benefit out of it due to the low level of intensity for their level.



The wind was blowing really good. The surf was up and rolling in at around 3-4 feet. It was really 3-4 feet, not your fish story measurement...  We decided before we went out that we would spend the morning practicing rescues. After busting through the surf, I decided to come out of my boat and reenter and roll. No problem there. I’m back in my boat, my paddling friend hooks up to me with his pig tow and starts to paddle into the waves. The idea was to provide some positive traction so I didn’t get broached in the waves.



I started pumping but realized that it was fairly futile as the waves were just pouring in just as quickly as I was pumping. While this was going on, my friend (let’s call him George) gets bowled over by a rogue wave. The stern of his boat surfed over and hit me in the torso promptly knocking me over. Now we are both upside down and tied together. In the process, George lost his paddle and the surf took the spare off his back deck. George releases his pig tail and is now swimming.



I roll back up and I am kinda laughing to myself. It was just a month earlier I got in an argument with somebody in one of my classes as to the benefit of practicing the

"All in" rescue. He said it never happens... Here we are.



To cut the long story short, I help George find his paddles and he swims in to shore after his boat. I follow along beside him but ended up having paddle on ahead when we got into the surf as my boat was still full of water and I didn’t want to surf into him. The total distance into shore was about 300 feet so I felt OK about leaving him behind.



After picking up the pieces along the beach, we sat down on a picnic table to take a break and talk it through. The one thing that really surprised me was that the time it took things to go wrong took about 45 seconds. Seriously, 45 seconds.



We also discovered that there are certain conditions where a hand pump just becomes ineffective. What would have happened if this had of happened in conditions where swimming to shore wasn’t an option? It drove home great benefits of a foot pump. In that situation, I could have sealed my skirt and spent the time just pumping with my foot. And the funny thing is that at the time of the initial tip over, we weren’t in that crazy conditions, it was about 2 feet of swells and 2 feet of wind waves.



So we realized that accidents can happen to anyone and you especially need to be prepared in those conditions when practicing that it is going to fall apart and turn into a real rescue.



We are planning a trip for next weekend and really looking forward to it.

The Scoutmaster blog has been a really interesting read over the past couple of months. Today Clarke Green posted a couple of links to websites on how to make your own camping gear.

Friends who know me would say that I am cheap. I would disagree with that statement; I would describe myself as "selective to how I spend my money". They don’t know it yet but I am getting them all the "gift of friendship" for Christmas. Please don’t tell them, I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

Take a peek at Homemade Backpacking Gear and Make your Own Gear. Great resources with lots of creative ideas on making gear. Here is another cool use for drinking straws besides drinking.

I haven’t made a thing yet but I think that I am going to jump in the deep end of the pool and start off by making my own sleeping bag. I think that I can save even more pennies by taking the down from the kids pillows. I don’t think they will notice... I will just tell them that the Grinch came and took the fill. They will understand...

Today I found two really interesting education websites for classrooms. The first website shows examples of wave erosion against a sea stack. The series of images shows the demise of Jump-off Joe, a sea stack at Nye Beach, near Newport, Oregon. Sea stacks begin as part of a headland or sea cliff. Relentless pounding by waves erodes the softer, weaker parts of the rock first, leaving harder, more resistant rock behind. It took over 100 years to erode this sea stack to sand.

The second interesting teaching site is a flash animation demonstration wave refraction against headlands. The reason why you find lots of erosion and cliffs along headlands is because the waves are refracted inwards concentrating the wave pressure on that particular area. I guess that also explains why you tend to get much rougher water near headlands. Makes sense.

Just posted
a commentary about GPS use and why most instructors are rejecting it. You can
read it in the resources articles section. Very tired, off to bed.

Well, Sean and I survived our kayaking trip this past weekend. We originally planned to go north to Tobermory, Ontario but as we were watching the weather during the week leading up to the trip, a huge storm came in. There is a fantastic website out there called Weather Underground. They do a great job displaying weather. See the graphic to the right. It displays wind speed, barometer, water temperature and wave height in a stacked graphic. The best part about it is that you can easily see the relationship between the four factors. Very cool.

Alright, back to our story. As you can see by the clip the wave height for the Northen Lake Huron buoy peaked that day at 3.9 meters (12.8 feet). A touch big for our liking so we decided to head to the eastern Georgian Bay and put in at Snug Harbour just north of Parry Sounds, Ontario. The waves over there were only peaking at 1.5 meters so it was a little bit more manageable.

We went out for Saturday night giving us two solid days of paddling. For those who know the area, we paddled out to Franklen Island and set up shop in a nice sheltered area as the wind was blowing consistently at 30 knots and gusting up to 40 all day.

We jumped back on the water and decided to play around the savage rocks on the southern tip of Franklen. The savage rocks is a large area of shoals where the swells rise up and crash. There was some great surf and lots of really fun rockhopping.

Weather was interesting. Lots of hail, lots of rain and lots of sleet.

Don't have a clue where I am talking about? You can download a mini tour of Franklen Island for Google Earth. Get it here.