Continue reading »]]>

Dalua Downhill – Episode 4 Teutonia (English Version) from Zeppelin Filmes on Vimeo.

I saw this on kottke’s blog. It definitely got me thinking about the nature of risk vs. reward. While we do have a lot of discussion about the nature of risk, leadership, and duty of care, it is also important to remember why we got into the outdoors, paddle sports, and specifically kayaking at all. Without risk there is no reward. Watching these crazy bastards fly down a hill on skateboards at 70 mph made me realize that sometimes we can get a bit nuts about our thinking of risk and duty of care, and forget that there is a reason we are out there.

This video perfectly captures the nature of the dilemma, for some of us, we have to have the risk factor tweaked a bit to get some reward out of it. Minute 3:41 of the video says it all for me. Watch the subtitles for the operative phrase.

Continue reading »]]>

This video demonstrates amazing athleticism and teamwork in challenging conditions. The Pa’a ‘Eono ironman canoe race allowed for multiple canoe designs. Looks like the swell was definitely up and moving pretty well. I would have paid real money to be paddling hard in that crew to feel a canoe go that fast on the open ocean.

Continue reading »]]>

Alder Creek Canoe and Kayak put together a brief, (four minute) intro to the surf zone video. Some great initial thoughts on surfing long boats or surfing sea kayaks. I was really glad to hear some discussion about safety and not running into one another, (as has been my complaint in the past about sea kayak surfing videos).

The video touches on, but doesn’t cover in detail the subject of positioning for take-off, body trim, paddle strokes. This is part one, so I hope they have many more videos like this. Great introduction and I hope they come out with a more detailed series in the future.

Surfing sea kayaks is a great way to get an introduction into the surf zone where you can surf what you’ve got and catch a lot of rides.

Continue reading »]]>

I had a great ride with Greg Anderson from Chicago at about 5:00 AM on Saturday during the Gales. We talked a lot about the kayak club CASKA and its relationship with local kayak shops. And I talked about WMCKA and its relationship with local kayak shops. In short we as a community, have a very dysfunctional view of our relationship with retail entities.

We as members of paddling clubs seem to be very reluctant to endorse kayaking shops. Shops on the other hand seem to be very willing to help support kayak clubs, as these are their customers, their community. I’ve been struggling with how to say this for some time, so in typical Go Kayak Now! fashion, I thought I would just come out and say it. Paddling clubs need local shops. We need to support them for the benefit of the community. The worry about getting in bed with a commercial entity is always a risk, but the larger risk, is not having a commercial entity around to get in bed with. Kayaking is a sport that is very gear intensive, and very skills intensive. In order to have a good paddle shop, the local community has to actually buy their gear from the shop.

I’ve actually even heard of retail outlets getting pissed at clubs for having a favorable relationship with a more local club than another. Meaning a shop that was further away didn’t get the treatment they would have liked because there was shop that was closer that did. To this I say, “Hell Yeah.”

Without a local shop, where are you going to send new paddlers to buy or try immersion gear, new paddles, new kayaks. Where can you send them to get charts, VHF radios, compasses, books on kayaking, get repairs done?

The trend in the outdoor industry has been to do comparison shopping and find the “best” deal online. The “best” deal often turns out not to be, as people buy something from somebody they don’t know, and they end up having problems. They also end up not having a relationship with the one local entity that can actually help them fix it, their local kayak shop. I’ve been guilty of this myself. I’ve done the comparison shopping, and bought some gear that doesn’t work the way I’d like. And I can’t go back to a person to return it. A student of mine just told me on the phone yesterday he bought a used boat from a stranger in another state. It is his first composite boat. I am really happy for him. But I am also kinda frustrated. Our local shop needs his sales, and I could have guided him to a boat he was going to love, and into a relationship with the shop.

In short, I suck. And I am not going to do it anymore. I am drawing a line in the sand, and I am going to start buying all of my gear at my local shop. I am going to encourage, (if not insist) everyone in my community to start doing likewise. There should be a symbiotic relationship with shops and clubs. Clubs should be telling shops the gear that they want, and the shops should be fulfilling that need by stocking that gear.

Sometimes it means having to wait for a special order to arrive. But to me that is a small price to pay, to know that there is a real person who is getting my money.

In my area, Lee’s Adventure Sports has invested heavily in paddle sports, they support my lessons, and pay for the pool time during the winter in Southwest Michigan. The were the first distributor of P&H Pyranha, before P&H became the wild US success you see now. They were carrying Lendal’s and Werner while everyone else carried mushy plastic no-name brand paddles.

How about investing something back? Our local clubs should be finding out what they can do to support local paddle shops, before there aren’t any… If there is something your shop doesn’t carry or offer as a service, for the love of Christmas, tell them. They want to be there for you! It is your shop make it the kind of shop you want to buy stuff from, by stepping up and offering some feedback.

Continue reading »]]>

The Gales Storm Gathering has now concluded. A lot of my effort over the last few months has been directed at making the event a success. I am not ready to stick a flag in the hill and declare victory. But I was very very happy with how the event was attended and received by both the participants and the coaches.

Whenever I get together with Shawna and Leon from Body Boat Blade, I walk away with a healthy dose of humility. They are such great people, and terrific paddlers who put a lot of thought into everything they do.

One of the courses that was most heavily attended was Incident Management. I learned most of what I know in this area from Shawna and Leon and Jeff Allen. When I teach this course, I take a good chunk of their approach and put the Wikle filter on it. I am not ashamed to point out where I have stolen from the best. I have been fortunate in my coaching life to have had access to many great mentors. WMCKA has had so many great coaches come to teach at their symposium that all of us have had one on one time with. This alone has put so many of us in a position to learn from the best.

During the Gales a phrase was tossed around quite a bit by Shawna and Leon, called Greater Duty of Care. Maybe the rest of the universe heard this phrase and took heed. I blithely assumed I had prepared myself for duty of care by being an instructor at all. During the course of the symposium I gained new respect for the expertise that Shawna and Leon have developed to this end.

On the trip down the Menominee with Shawna, Leon, Alec BP, Sharon BP, we got on the water with fading daylight on a class IV river none of us had been down, with all new equipment, and no leader. It was a classic deep trouble list. If something had gone wrong what was the plan?

As instructors, what is our duty of care? What can we reasonably be held accountable for? What gear and precautions become necessary to ensure this duty of care is handled. In my paddling life with students, or fellow instructors we rarely do any of the things we say we are going to do when we get together.

So in examining this phrase duty of care, the first part that occurred to me is that the phrase that is often used, is Greater Duty of Care. Meaning not only do we as coaches have duty of care, we have Greater, or sometimes called Higher Duty of Care. What does this actually mean?

From a legal standpoint it means that because instructors or coaches have received training, those heading out with us, have a higher expectation of trust in our decisions, and our ability to lead them out of danger. For ACA/BCU instructors this has always been a cause for some debate. Especially because the ACA and the BCU are there in some senses to provide insurance against litigation in this regard. Though it seems that this litigation happens with very sparse frequency, I for one, would not count on the ACA’s insurance to protect me from a pack of blue-pinstriped hyena attorneys if something horrible really happened. Suffice it to say, this higher expectation of trust is really the operable phrase.

What does that higher duty of care mean? To me, in it’s simplest terms it means that the expectation is I should be able to take a group of about 6 people out on open water and be able to bring them and all of their gear (if possible) back safely to land. I should be ready for whatever comes and be able to pick up the pieces and get everyone back home safely. Though medical conditions and freak accidents do sometimes just happen.
In seeing how seriously it was taken at the Gales, I think I may have to up my game on a daily basis with students and even fellow instructors.

Here is a simple list of things in the arena of Higher Duty of Care I feel I could vastly improve upon.

• Communication of Risk Assessment on land. We often rush through this prior to getting on the water because everyone wants to skip ahead to the fun part.
• Communication of Leadership for any trip.
• Communication of Outs and possible retreats if the weather, or other incidents arise.
• Communication of hand signals
• Communication of radio frequencies, who will use them, and when they will be used.
• Communication of float plan, I am great at doing this for surf, but terrible for journeys. I actually tell my wife where I am parked, where I will be surfing and to call the coast guard if she doesn’t hear from me by [x] time when I surf. I want to be found alive man.
• Communication of what first aid gear I have and where it is.
• Communication about what signalling devices I have and where they are located.

So in this series, not sure how many articles. I am going to be covering how to improve these issues for all paddling groups. In some cases it may be gear we are talking about, in some areas I am woefully deficient, in others I am doing ok.

Continue reading »]]>

The following article was written by Frank Eichenlaub of the Berrien Paddlers Club. He attended my risk management class back in the beginning of August. I didn’t want to shape, or edit Frank’s article in any way so that he could draw his own conclusions and see where he went with it. While a river paddle in high wind doesn’t sound very dangerous to the sea kayaking crowd, the situation was very real for Frank. And it’s important to keep in mind that each of us has our limit.

A couple of weeks ago eleven Berrien Paddlers met at the St Joseph harbor for our
weekly evening paddle. We planned to go out on Lake Michigan or up the Paw Paw
River. The waves and wind on the Lake were more then we wanted contend with so we
decided on the Paw Paw.

The group split into two groups: Fast and slow. About an hour up the river the slow group
decided to turn around. I called one of the guys in the fast group and told him about our
plan. The fast group would continue up the river for a while longer and them turn around
and meet us slow guys in the harbor.

We paddled back to the harbor and moved across the turning basin toward the
Blossomtime Bridge and our take-out site, just on the other side of the bridge. As planned
the fast group met up with us. Three of the fast guys zipped ahead, and landed. Two
loaded up and left. One stayed behind on the beach to wait for his ride.

The remaining eight paddlers moved across a choppy and windy turning basin toward
the bridge. Three were inexperienced and two of those were very tired. One had been
complaining about a sore shoulder. I had asked her several times if she wanted a tow.
Each time she said the she was all right.

As the eight of us moved closer to the bridge the wind became stronger and the water
choppier. Going under the north bridge arch we were hit by a blast of wind that stopped
the group and pushed the tired paddlers backwards. We regrouped and tried to push
through the arch again. The wind stopped the tired folks again.

I stopped the group and told them to let the wind push them back from under the bridge
arch and then paddle to a sheltered spot out of the wind, but yards from the arch. I told
the tired paddler with the sore shoulder I was going to tow her and clipped on.

As we were paddling down the river I had been telling Pat, my wife, about the Risk
Management class I had taken from Keith. I told her about Keith saying that in an
emergency situation you don’t ask people to do stuff, you tell them. “I’m going to tow
you.” Or, “Get out of the wind, over there.”

With the wind blowing and the water choppy I slipped into Tunnel Vision. I had a plan:
I was going to tow this paddler to the beach and come back for the other folks waiting on
the other side of the bridge. What I didn’t do was to tell the other six people what I was
going to do. Off I went with the paddler in tow.

Pat read my mind and organized the others. She had one guy tow the other tired paddler
to the beach. She sent an experienced guy with the other inexperienced paddler. Everyone
plowed ahead and landed on the beach.

Keith asked me to write about the experience and to relate it to a couple of things he
taught in the Risk Management class: SAFE and CLAP. SAFE: Stop, Assess, Formulate,
Execute. CLAP: Communication, Line of Sight, Avoidance, Position.

I did the SAFE portion mostly OK. What I didn’t do was to stop and clearly let the group
know what I was going to do.

How did I do on CLAP? Communication: We had not communicated about what we
would do in an emergency situation. Line of Sight: Three of the group had disappeared
around the bridge. They were strong paddlers and as I had pushed my way through the
bridge arch I could see them on the beach. The other eight of us were in a tight group.
Avoidance: No way could we have avoided the wind and waves under that arch. We
were in a harbor with no other landing spots. We had to get through to our landing area.
Position: I was the closest thing to a leader the group had. The group was tight around me
so I was able to communicate a basic plan, carry out part of it, while Pat picked up clues
from me and organized the group when I had left towing a tired paddler.

Continue reading »]]>

In reading the latest issue of Ocean Paddler, I read the article/interview by expeditioner/philosopher- Jon Turk. I really like Jon Turk. To date he has been one of my favorite guest speakers at WMCKA. His Logic vs. Magic video from the Raven’s Gift book really struck a chord with me. It is an interesting paradigm, and one that appeals to my more poetic impulses. As someone who is primarily engaged in technology, data, and logic, I wholeheartedly believe in Jon’s assessment of modern existence. We have choices every day between logic, and dreams. And dreams, fantasy, and magic in nature are more prevalent than we choose to believe because of our focus on pragmatism. For me it is a balance between the two.

Jon’s interviewed covered a lot of ground from his expedition experience. He has more miles under his kayak seat than I ever will. He has also pursued those miles in regions of the earth most people would never dare to pursue, Northwest Passage, Kamchatcka, Japan, Patagonia and more. Jon is also a very talented and athletic telemark skier, and backcountry alpine skier who spends a lot of his time choosing new routes on pristine slopes in the American Rockies. He has also done some bike touring in Mongolia.

John’s new expedition to Ellesmere Island is already underway.

The reason why this is interesting is in issue 26 of Ocean Paddler magazine, the interview asked Jon why two thirds of his expedition team had little to no sea kayak expedition experience. His response was, “I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but sea kayaking isn’t technically that difficult.”

Based on Jon’s experience with expeditions, climbing, skiing, etc, I can perhaps see where Jon is coming from. Do I completely agree, not sure. Certainly sailing is way more technical and requires years and years of training and practice, rock climbing and alpine climbing are definitely very technical. But is sea kayaking just not that technically difficult?

Certainly surfing has been a big challenge from a skill basis, I could probably spend the rest of my life doing it and not be happy with my performance. Sea Kayaking I feel has a skill and an endurance facet to it that I find really engaging and based on this I have never grown bored of it.

What does the peanut gallery think?

Continue reading »]]>

There have been a ton of posts already about the tragic death on Lake Superior of Kevin Dammen.

The media has covered this event from different angles, and even CASKA’s Tom Bamonte’s post did an excellent job of elucidating the dual-nature of our sport.

One thing that continues to strike me each time there is a new death on the Great Lakes in the sport of kayaking is that the media asks a series of questions, which are invariably the wrong questions. Where was the paddler headed? Who was with them? How cold was the water? What was the weather like? And if the reporter is especially ambitious they might ask how much experience the paddler had. These are all good questions that help fill in the story for a local paper. But it does point at a larger gap in the understanding of fatal kayaking incidents. They certainly never ask if the kayaker had a skirt on the kayak, which may not have been the case with Kevin. The never ask if the kayaker could roll, perform a self-rescue, or a t-rescue? They never ask if the kayaker attended any ACA/BCU training session.

My aha moment is that according to non-paddlers, the media, search and rescue from the DNR, police, and Coast Guard it seems to be based around the idea that kayakers are essentially un-powered boaters. This intuitive or cognitive leap may sound like no big deal, but stick with me.

Interestingly I called the Wisconsin DNR after they did a nice write up to try and inform paddlers about potential risks. Though from my point of view, the article from the DNR achieved more from the point of view of body recovery in a search and rescue than it did in preventing incidents from occurring.

The Wisconsin DNR essentially told me that in search and rescue, their reporting of incidents is based around power boating. How many hours had the victim/pilot logged, and so forth, but nothing in the details about paddling experience, or skills. While this is an after the fact record of the details, it does illuminate that much of the focus on safety and searches revolves around power boating for the Wisconsin DNR. Sounds fair as this is the majority of the boating activity. Kayaks and Canoes make up a smaller portion of recreational boating.

From my trips to Bayfield the National Park Service does ask some very good questions of paddlers headed out to the Apostle Islands. How long are you staying? Where will you be each night? Do you know about the bears? Do you know how cold the water is? They may even ask if you have a wetsuit or a drysuit. Because a kayak sits in the water and the paddler is literally inches above the water, we are more half-swimming than we are half-boating. The types of questions asked of a kayaker do not probe into the nature of our sport. Doug Van Doren has a saying that boaters like boats, and kayakers like the water.

I can say from my time in kayaking that I do not care for big boats, I like to get wet. Staying dry is not part of my interest in the sport. Certainly kayak surfing has taught me plenty about the eventuality of a swim, more than the unlikelihood of a swim. Based on this thought process even the basic safety propositions from inexperienced paddlers and the National Park Service fails to address this fundamental conceptual difference in our sport, our passion and our safety. We are a unique in that we are both endurance athletes and a skill-centric sport. This isn’t to say that sailing/powerboating don’t have their skills, but there is certainly a very different level of emphasis.

If we understand our safety from a perspective of being half-swimming everywhere we go with a paddle, the Great Lakes begin to look a little different. Perhaps more ominous, bigger, and less friendly, but maybe this helps clarify our abilities.

My question to Great Lakes Sea Kayakers is this:

If we were to offer a new series of questions for the National Park Service to ask before they turned kayakers loose on Lake Superior to do overnight trips in the Apostle Islands, what would it be?

In the spirit of Kayak Quixotica’s Kayaker Peer Review post, what would this series of questions look like from our community. I will be calling the National Park Service and suggesting a list to propose to the park and I’d love to hear your feedback.

Picture if a Park Ranger asked you these questions prior to your Apostle Islands Trip. Not to prevent you from doing a trip, but to inform you of the risks.

• Do you have the ability to receive weather updates either on land or on the water during your trip? From a Marine VHF radio or wireless device?
• Are you able to self-rescue your kayak with either an eskimo-roll, or a cowboy re-entry in rough water
• Can you perform a t-rescue for a companion that has exited their kayak in deep water?
• Does your kayak have a sprayskirt to keep water from entering the cockpit?
• Does your kayak have bulkheads fore and aft to keep it from sinking should you swim while at sea?
• Does your kayak have full static rescue lines to allow for a tow? Does anyone in your group possess and know how to use a tow-belt?
• Do you have immersion protection to adequately protect you against the current air and water temps?
• Do you have a signaling device to call for aid? Radio, cell-phone, flares, smoke?
• What is your groups collective decision process for go/no go based on risk factors such as cliffs, waves, wind, and temperatures?
• How far can you paddle a day in winds at five knots, ten knots, fifteen knots? etc.

There will always be those who will not care about these questions and proceed anyway. However I would argue that if a beginning group with any common sense heard this at the ranger station they might make some decisions differently.

What’s your checklist?

Continue reading »]]>

Sea Kayak Surfing's state and future from Adventure Kayak Magazine

The summer issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine has hit the shelves. Go Kayak Now! Editor in Chief – Keith Wikle (I feel funny referring to myself in the third person, but oh well) was interviewed by Paddling Instructor’s (my erstwhile brother from another mother), David Johnston about the state of rough water paddling, and the future of the endeavor.

I feel honored to be asked my opinion about the history and state of sea kayaking rough water. Playing in textured water is certainly what I live for so I would be lying if I didn’t say I felt strongly about it. Not sure how, but I neglected to pitch Tiderace’s park and play designs Xcite and the Xtreme as well as P&H’s excellent Delphin and Aries.

The discussion point of the article is around what caused this boon in sea kayak rough water play: gear, skills, boats, or new action DVDs like This is The Sea, or Pacific Horizons? And is it good or bad?

The answer I arrived at was kind of all four. The introduction of better immersion protection from Kokatat allowed people to push themselves further and have fun getting wet. There was an influx of good training around the 1990s from American instructors who embraced the BCU and their focus on paddling and assessing coaches in the conditions they would be likely to take students into. Justine Curgenven and Bryan Smith have certainly helped immortalize and personalize the fun of rough water sea kayaking by placing the action at boat level. Justine’s raw enthusiasm got a lot of people fired up about sea kayaking, including me, and Bryan Smith has kind of gone very art house with lots of high quality small projects that focus on the athletic nature of kayaking, like the season. And finally the evolution of boat designs towards a kayak that could be paddled over distance and then surfed on standing waves, moving ocean waves, or even just on lumpy water.

There is some debate in the article about whether rough water paddling has been good or bad for the image of the sport. While I understand that we don’t want to frighten new paddlers away with a heavy focus on images of frothy seas, high wind, or steep seas, it would be a disservice to the sport and to students who would focus on building the skills and confidence to perform well in real conditions to only show them graybeard’s in tilley hats paddling on glassy ponds all the time.

It feels a little funny to be asked anything about the sea kayaking’s past. Mainly because I was just at the 22nd Annual WMCKA Symposium with Ken Fink of Maine who was the first Valley Canoe Products importer and distributor back in the 1980s, and who now reps Epic and Feather Craft. Ken has been involved in paddling so long he has an anecdote for everything, and I it was awesome to see Ken celebrated at WMCKA by being the guest speaker and instructor.

Check out the summer issue, and many thanks to David Johnston for the excellent article on rough water paddling.

Continue reading »]]>

In the unfortunate hours of yesterday afternoon, a young man drowned on the Kalamazoo river near Morrow dam in Comstock.

Normally, these events seem a distant sort of event, like hearing about an earthquake in Japan, or a tsunami in southeast Asia, despite the fact that the victims might be our own neighbors.

Preparing for my paddling in current class at Mayors Riverfront Park, we were all cracking jokes about the sewage release and about finding a dead body as if it would be like, Stand By Me.

Lining up kayaks near the river, a car pulled up and three people got out. A man, a woman, and a pimply-teenage boy.

She looked at me, standing there in my stupid red shorty-drytop, and my useless blue-lifejacket, and my retarded tow-rope, and she asks me, “Are you going to look for my son?”

Feeling about as tall as the mud near the edge of the river, I told her, “No ma’m. I’m just teaching a kayaking class on the river today.”

“Would you look for him while you’re out there, he’s black, skinny, short curly hair. I already buried one boy. Looks like I will bury two.”

“Yes ma’m.”

In the longer hours of the evening, I have the opportunity to consider my fortune.

With both my children alive and well, and a rather casual attitude about swift currents, and turbulent water, I am unaccustomed to pondering the fate of those who do not intentionally play in the dangerous streams I do.

I spend most of my existence thumbing my nose at risk. That is, until I stare a grieving mother in the eye. Cold resignation, but grief, buried just beneath the surface, waiting, staring back.

It’s all fun and games until you’re looking for your own son’s body.