Nick Schade

I put together a video from surfing Napatree Point after Noel. I didn't get much good footage, but the video is still kind of fun.

There are no rules about using a skeg or rudder beyond doing what works best for you. There will be times when the boat does what you want more easily with the skeg/rudder deployed and other times when you are more comfortable without it. The thing to do is to try it both ways and switch back and forth until you get a feel for it. In the video at you will see that I change the skeg several times, I was just checking which I liked better. While surfing that wave I had a little better control with the skeg down, but when crossing the eddy line it was easier with the skeg up. In other words, using the skeg is not a set-and-forget thing, but changes with momentary needs. In summary, the response to the question: "Is it better to have the skegs or rudders up or down ??", the answer is "yes".

I've been using a Optio W-10 for a couple years now. It's picture quality is not as good as bigger camera's with better lenses, but it fits in the pocket of my PFD and I can strap it to my helmet to take surprisingly good video. With a 2 gig card it will take an hours worth of footage at 15 frames per second. Since the best photographs are those that you have the camera out to take, I have been very happy with the little Optio. It may not last forever, but it has been through some significant dunkings without a problem.

Surfing is not universally "planing", but sometimes it does seem to achieve that at times. A boat is considered to be planing when its center of gravity rises above its position when in displacement mode - relative to the water surface. I.E. when the boat lifts up higher out of the water. At lower speeds of surfing the boat is just getting pushed along by the wave and is still in displacement mode. As the waves become faster it is possible that the boat will be pushed fast enough to lift up. I have clocked myself at up to 12 mph and the boat still appeared to be in displacement mode. I have not had my GPS going at times when I felt I was planing, but I expect it would be at speeds over 15 mph. When the transition occurs depends on the boat design. Long narrow boats with fine, rounded ends will need to be going faster than a short, fat boat with a flat run at the stern does not need to go as fast. In other words sea kayaks are very poorly designed for planing, and it is probably that it is not possible to make some designs plane at any attainable speed.

Just forget that old school method. It is meaningless with regards to how fast your boat can go. Long narrow boats like kayaks exceed their hull speed consistently. This equation tells you when the wavelength of your wake matches the waterline length of the boat. This is just a physical curiosity, not a speed limit. If you want to know how fast you can go, get in the boat and paddle it. If you want to predict how fast you can go without actually paddling you can model the hull and determine a drag curve then do some testing to see how much power you can produce, but during that time you could be paddling.

What kind of resin are you using? If it is polyester, sun & heat may harden it. If Epoxy, if you did not use the correct ratio of resin to hardener, no amount of time or heat will harden it. The epoxy will only fully cure if all the constituents needed to complete the chemical reaction are present. You would need to scrape off the glop and try again.

You can use "Preview" indefinitely before you post your message. And even that is unnecessary. You can write your message in the little box then go off and read other messages before returning to re-read what you wrote and decide if you are comfortable with it. Even the 10 minute editing grace period after posting is more than should really be necessary. If you can't trust yourself to take the time and thought it requires to write a message that you are comfortable leaving up for all to read, I guess you really do need to be careful. I would presume that most people are capable of writing carefully enough that any errors that do make it into a post can be corrected with a simple follow up message. Limiting the ability to edit messages, does not strike me has particularly harsh. Those who aren't able to live by this restriction can always fall back on prevailing on the web administrator to delete their message. I'm sure the web admin doesn't have anything better to do with his/her time. I think if people can keep in mind that the whole reason for this bulletin board is to help us all have a fun time on the water, we ought to be able to maintain a level of civil discourse with very little effort. Restrictions on our ability to edit our mistakes should not be relevant to this effort. For what it is worth, I worked on this message off and on for about 45 minutes.

It is a marketing term. It doesn't have any real meaning. The Elsmere has chines - they are a little weird, but they are still chines.

using the Lendal website for data: http://www.lendal.com/page.asp?pgid=500010037 You could by the Archipelago: 4 piece, Glass, weight 863 gm,cost £218 or instead get: 1 piece, Expedition Composite (carbon), weight 693 gm,cost £231 The weight difference is about 6 ounces (24% less), the cost difference is about $25 (6% more). If you were to spend the extra $25 you would have a much lighter paddle which you would more likely want to use at a high angle because it is lighter and easier to hold up high. Plus it is less likely to break. If your goal is to be able to swap blades, you can forget the savings because the blades are no bargain. So, for the ability to swap blades you are paying more and using a paddle that is 24% heavier. Why is it so important that you use a different blade for high angle vs low angle? It isn't important at all. You can do either technique with any blade. One blade style maybe slightly better than another for different techniques, but I'm not certain it is. I would rather get a well-made, high-quality, 1 piece paddle, learn to use it well in all conditions and not worry about a gimmicky, heavy, failure prone, expensive 4-piece. Get a cheaper standard 2-piece take apart for spare and you are good to go. just my $0.02

The only reason I can see for a 4 piece paddle is if you are limited in storage to things that are only 18" long or so. If you can store something about 36" long then a 2 piece will be stronger, lighter and cheaper. This should not be too hard since presumably you have a place to store your kayak, and a 2-piece paddle fits in a cockpit. In other words, unless you have a specific need for a paddle that breaks down into short pieces, save your money and get a two 2-piece, or better yet a 1-piece. I won't push too hard for a solid paddle because they are hard to come by these days, but fewer pieces means less weight, better reliability, and lower cost.

Standing waves are not caused by current alone. In a long straight channel even a very fast current will not produce waves. Typically standing waves are produced when there is some sort of obstruction in the current. The water has to accelerate to get around the obstruction and then decellerate after the obstruction. The waves are the result of the deceleration. The waves are the way the water sheds kinetic energy as the water decelerates One way to think of the waves is as the wake caused by the obstruction. If you follow behind a speed boat you will notice a series of waves traveling in the same direction and at the same speed as the boat. The boat is an obstruction moving across stationary water. Now make the water move, submerge the boat stationary below the surface and you will have standing waves. Standing waves are produced by the same mechanism that makes a boat wake. Actually most of the waves we see offshore when current passes over a reef or through a channel are not standing waves, but regular wind waves that get bunched up as they hit the faster moving water near the obstruction. These waves will travel up towards the obstruction and aren't "standing" like you will see in white water.

I do not think it would have been possible to put on seawings after a capsize in these conditions nor would they have been enough to keep the boats upright in conditions that pitch-pole a 17' kayak.

It has been my experience that the breakers you see near shore are typically not as big as the swells that are measured by the off-shore buoys. While a swell will stack up higher when it hits shallow water, there is a lot of shallow water between the buoys and the beach. Much of the energy has been lost before they get close to shore.

>the one advantage that MDI has over >Stonington is the night life and shopping. I've paddled for years around the MDI area and never, on any of my paddles, have I encountered the ability to shop. The waters around MDI have cliffs, caves, waves, islands, guillemots, porpoises, and whales and a wonderful lack of shopping. The night life consists of barking seals, mumbling eiders and phosphorescing dinoflagellates. Shopping can be done at the local mall. Maine is for everything but shopping.

I want to thank Keith and John for putting together this report. It shows that prepared paddlers can still get in trouble and that some of those things you may carry but plan on never using may come in handy. I have paddled in this same area after seeing forecasts similar to what Keith and John saw. However, I was much less prepared should anything go wrong. Luckily I came back after having a wonderful time. The conditions I experienced were not in fact as bad as what these two experienced, but that was just luck. In hindsight it may be possible to say that this incident was entirely avoidable, but until you have actually experienced something, you may not recognize the signs. There will be two kinds of people who will dismiss this incident as something they don't need to worry about. Some people will think they are too skilled, others will think they are too smart. Those in the "skilled" camp will think that they would not have failed at the roll or would have succeeded in some sort of re-entry. The "smart" camp will think they would have known better than to go out into such obviously dangerous conditions. The "skilled" group need to understand that no matter how good they are, the ocean is always capable of being stronger than the best individual. Nobody's skills are infinite. At some point you may reach the limits of your abilities. Maybe not in these conditions, but sometimes you don't know what you will encounter. the "smart" group is under the impression that they can identify all risks and easily avoid them. They think there skills are so far above the conditions that they choose to paddle that they will easily paddle around any trouble. It is a nice idea, but assumes perfection in their ability to predict the future. If you read Keith's report and your reaction is "this would never happen to me" you are almost certainly correct. You will probably never get into the exact same pickle that these two experienced. But, if you think you are safe because you can either roll in 5' breaking waves or can easily avoid them, you miss the point. If you go out in conditions you think you can handle and your skills have never let you down, Keith and John were merely doing what you do and they got in trouble. Doing what you do everyday may put you in a position where you are over your head. Your planning needs to include plans for what you will do when your plans fail, and plans for when your failure plan fails...

>the paradox is the better equipped and more skilled we become >the more likly we are to be caught in severe conditions and >be in need of rescue. Take a look at the theory of "risk homeostasis" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_homeostasis This theory suggests that people modify their actions depending on perceived risk to keep actual risk about constant. With improved ability people step up the difficulty of what they do to the point that the risk is about the same as when they did not have that ability. ABS brakes don't save as many lives as expected because people drive worse when they have them.

> A friend of mine lost his best >friend in small avalanche while on a rescue mission on Mt. >Washington trying to save three climbers (all survived) that >foolishly decided they could handle the coming weather >conditions. I'm curious as to what this friend of a friend did on his time off. Did he stay home and practice his rescue skills in the basement? Much more likely he went out and played in White Mountains. If he had the skills to go to the aid of others it is probably because he took risks to learn those skills. Technical mountain rescue skills can not be learned in a safe manner. If you ever make a mistake or experience a problem out on the water and need a assistance it is people like Keith and John who are going to provide it. After events like this there are always people so confident in their own infallibility that they feel justified in castigating the choices others make. I suspect Keith and John will happily admit that they made mistakes. It is the people who think they are above making mistakes who are the most dangerous. I suggest you look back at your own paddling career and see if you never made any choices you would now consider stupid. I doubt there is anyone in NSPN who did not at one time or another paddle on cold water with poor immersion protection, or make a crossing to an island without knowing what the conditions on the crossing were going to be. If you are now an experienced kayaker, it is only by pushing your limits that you gained that experience. Most of the time our survival of stupid mistakes is just dumb luck. Part of the learning process from this event will be picking apart the mistakes Keith and John made, but the fact that they had to be rescued is not evidence that they should not have even been on the water. We need more information before we can know what they did wrong.

>We'll be writing up a more thorough after action report with >a description of conditions, what happened and lessons >learned, but it will take a bit to get it all down and >sorted out, so look for it next week. Keith, I'm glad it all ended well. Anything you write will open you up to criticism, but it will be quite valuable for people to see how an experienced paddler can still get in trouble. While you may feel embarrassed in some ways, it would be a great service to have a comprehensive report on what when wrong and what you did to deal with it. Getting it written down quickly will help keep the details fresh in your mind. Hopefully people can keep the idle speculation to a minimum until we have a chance to learn more details. Thanks, Nick

>The upside is that people probably feel more free to say >whatever they want, since they know they can change it. The >downside is that people probably feel more free to say >whatever they want, since they know they can change it. ;-) With my bulletin boards I decided that civil discourse was best served by turning off the ability to edit (and thus delete) messages. I also make it clear that the messages may end up staying on the site forever. My goal is to encourage people to think before they post their message. It may not always work, but I believe it tends to make the board self policing. By deleting a post, the user is not only deleting his own material, but deleting the context of any follow up posts, thus deleting much of the value of other peoples messages. I have no problem with the idea of proof-reading a post and correcting typos. But changing the content and meaning of a post after people have responded to it is disruptive and selfish. On my boards, changing errors is usually done with a followup message. The operators of the NSPN board allow people to edit and that is OK. But when people delete their post, they need to understand that by doing so they do effect other people and they reduce the value of the community resource. They have every right to do what they want, but they shouldn't be surprised when other people are annoyed.

>I like going out on the longer trips but I am not currently >intrested in racing the Blackburn. Remember that the Blackburn bills itself as a "Challenge" not a "Race". You don't need to be interested in racing to enjoy the challenge of paddling around Cape Ann. You could do this with one or two friends any day of the year, but it does add to the experience to do it with a large group who are all trying to push themselves beyond their typical effort There are only a few people who enter the race with serious thoughts of winning. Most do it as a personal experience. Also, at the end of the race there is food, beer and this year ice cream.

Fort Getty on Jamestown Island has tent sites and good launching possibilities.

I am looking forward to paddling out to see the wind farm. As a tourist to the area, I would consider it an attraction. I am willing to bet that 100 years from now when the towers are rusting out the residents along that shore will be clamoring for their repair. The windmills will be considered a beautiful part of the landscape. There are historic windmills on the Cape: http://www.windmillworld.com/world/capecod.htm These are not inherently beautiful, but they are a valued part of the local culture and people work hard to preserve them. The same will happen with the wind farm. But even if they are horrible eyesores, ruin fishing for miles around and kill hundreds of sea gulls every year, there is always a price to be paid for our energy consumption. Better have it out where the consumers can see it than hide it away where we can pretend it doesn't hurt anyone.

>Nick: WTF? I hadn't noticed you having any problem with >using club message boards to try to make a buck off >kayaking. You don't seem to think using forums like this for >free advertising is "bad form". You're a hypocrite. > >I don't owe this forum anything. If I choose to remove >material that I put significant effort into developing and >sharing here, for free, that's my business. If people want >to make a stink over it, then I won't bother to in future. I'm sorry you took offense. Perhaps I was too harsh. I could go back and edit my earlier post to eliminate the context for your reply, thus making your insults appear more gratuitous than they already are, however I'll stand by what I said. I don't think it serves for a civil discussion to pretend I said anything different. I do serve a commercial purpose with some of my posts, however I think I make it clear when I am doing so. I also have put a lot of effort into posting information online. I have never felt that this in anyway interfered with my other efforts at publication. Much of the material that I have published elsewhere is available online in various forms and a substantial amount of my material that is currently online I will probably want to reuse in other forms in the future. There is no copyright conflict in doing this. You have every right to do whatever you want to with your own information. You reserve all the rights unless you explicitly give them up. But removing a previous post or changing the content removes the context for people reading the replies to that post. This reduces the value of the message board. You aren't obligated to maintain the value of this message board, but its value to you and everyone else is dependent on the cooperation of all the users. What was going on a red nun #4 that generated a discussion elsewhere in this thread? Is it something I would like to know if I head out that way? I don't know because the context is gone. By deleting your message the effort other people took to ask questions about it has lost its value. I think that is too bad.

> Some of these stories may appear in >print publications and just need to be sure there are no >copyright issues. Deleting material from this site will do nothing to change the copyright issues. The moment they are published anywhere copyright rules come into play. Whoever wrote the article owns the rights to the material. It can not be published any where else without their permission. Deleting only makes it so people who want to read it will now have to figure out where it is being published and pay for it. This is good for the new publisher, but does not change the copyright status in any way. It is not a copyright issue, but profit issue. A magazine may prefer that their articles not appear anywhere else so they can charge for the information, but not because of copyright reasons. The author still owns the copyright and may print it elsewhere if he wants. I must say I find it to be very poor form to delete messages just so someone can make a profit from it. If you think you want to publish information somewhere else at some time and won't want it here, don't put it here in the first place. Once you put it here learn to live with that choice. The fact that many people like to delete messages significantly reduces the usefulness of this message board. BTW to read old articles that may have been deleted, you can often go to http://web.archive.org/ Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20050206033431/...rum/dcboard.cgi you can find message from a year ago.

I don't want a LNG terminal anywhere, yet live with the benefits of a society that has a lot of low cost energy. The problem is not that an LNG terminal would wreck a nice spot, but that we sustain a demand for energy. Among of the other options for an LNG terminal include Long Island Sound http://actionnetwork.org/eany/alert-descri...lert_id=3476803 and Corea, ME http://news.mainetoday.com/indepth/lng/new...ouldsboro.shtml . None of the options will ever win unanimous consent as being a good place to wreck. Personally I would rather have such a thing destroy a place that is already industrialized than ruining more pristine wilderness such as Corea. (see the thread about Great Wass) The question should not be how much damage the LNG terminal will do to a particular location, but which location will do the least damage. Don't fight one location until you have identified a better one. But the best way to fight this problem is to start limiting our energy usage by turning off our computers, stop driving unnecessarily (i.e. trips to the harbor to go paddling), going to bed when it gets dark, and sleeping in a cold room. Since I don't really want to make the sacrifices that foregoing the energy would involve I need to accept the fact that my continued demand has real-life down-sides. Sometimes we need to accept the bad stuff in our own back yard.