MPARSONS

Hello, NSPN! Long time, no see! I've got a problem with my skeg that exceeds my skill set. In the past it is the kind of thing I would have taken to Carl Ladd for repair, but apparently he sold Osprey, so I don't know who to go to for help with something more advanced. Does anybody have any ideas?

Thanks, Phil. That was a really good read over lunch. The most interesting takeaway for me is that if the forecast is X, you will encounter a few up to 1.6X. Exceeding X by a meaningful amount should be expected and planned for.

Unrelated to kayaking, several years ago I tried to use a GPS to get to Edaville Railroad in Carver, MA. Following the GPS directions led me to an empty parking lot that had a cardboard sign saying "YOUR GPS IS WRONG. THIS IS NOT EDAVILLE RAILROAD." Of course, I had been blindly following the GPS directions so I had no idea where I actually was, making it that much harder to find my way out with a road map. That is probably completely irrelevant for your purposes, but after I finished being really mad I started to think it was pretty funny so I thought I'd share it.

So it sounds like you use the GPS the way one might use a range or transit. I never thought of using a GPS that way. In a range, if the rear object moves to the right you have drifted off couse and need to adjust to the left. On your GPS, if the arrow starts to point right, you have drifted off couse and need to adjust to the right. That would mean your bow may not be pointing in the direction of the arrow, but you should be moving in a relatively straight line.

Leon, When working on form I'll sometimes look at an object floating in the water close to where I'm planting the paddle, like a lobster buoy or a bit of flotsam, to get a sense for whether the paddle is slipping. For example, if the paddle enters about 18 inches from the lobster buoy and exits about 18 inches from the lobster buoy then there was pretty much no slippage. While that may not be as precise as someone watching from shore it is still doable. Do you think that is an effective way to estimate how well the paddle is locking or would any slippage be too small to identify that way? Marc

I believe the stroke should look identical, but not use as much effort. I believe your form can get sharper at slower speeds because you are not exerting yourself as much. In any sport when you work on your form you slow things down a bit. I think this is a case where there is more than one correct answer, though. Some people may have different strokes for different situations and I doubt there is anything wrong with that.

Even in a relatively cohesive group there is going to be a front and a back of the pod. If you are in the front and having trouble slowing your cadence, you can always turn around and paddle back to talk to the folks in back. When the coversation with them lags you can accelate back to the front to talk to those folks for a while. If you keep moving to different parts of the group you will paddle a longer distance than those who didn't and you may need your faster cadence to do so. By "touching" each member of the group periodically (or even frequently) throughout the trip It has the added benefit of allowing you to gauge how everyone is doing.

Besides what others have said, sometimes a short portage can get you around a choke point. Rather than carry a fully laden kayak, you might be able to clip your towbelt into your boat and walk along the shore while pulling the kayak upstream around the choke point. Whether you can do that depends on a lot of factors like whether you have permission to be on the shore and whether you can do it without either twisting an ankle or towing your boat into a rock or other nastiness. You also wouldn't want to do it that way if the current location was such that using the quick release on your tow belt would result in never seeing your kayak again.

I would be inclined to eddy hop to avoid the stronger current in the middle of the channel. Its been too long since high school geometry and physics for me to have an opinion on whether the zig zag would work, but I see no reason eddy hopping wouldn't work. Seems to me the zig zagging means you would be doubling the distance paddled and leaving yourself exposed to the full force of the current most of the time. Just to be clear, when I say eddy hop, I mean take advantage of the rocks and other features near shore to find water that is either not moving or even moving a bit in the opposite direction as the main current. Sometimes its hard to identify the eddy lines, but unless the current is flowing through a completely featureless, frictionless channel, there will always be some eddies.

I'm interested, but early is not better for me tomorrow. I wouldn't be able to do it until early afternoon. Let me know if that works for you.

I've had an Immersion Research rear entry drysuit for several years. The rear entry has never been an issue. If someone is around and I am tired, I'll ask for a hand. As long as I keep the zipper lubricated I can easily do it myself. I sometimes have to be careful not to accidentally snag my base layer with the zipper. Its easy to avoid but when you can't see what you are doing its also easy to forget.

Jason, Rob, and Phil, that is a great point. In my mind I was comparing the strength of the deck line to the strength of the other things keeping the boat on the roof, but the fact of the matter is the deck line is the same line that would be used to attach a toggle anyway. If it is strong enough when working to attach a toggle, it would be strong enough when working as a deck line. Pru and Doug, thanks for the feedback. Just so you know, I wasn't suggesting not having anything in place of a toggle. Of course it is crucial for rescues and other purposes. The monkey fist I'm using can do all of the things a bow toggle can do except it doesn't have a loop to run a tie down through. Some people think that no loop is an advantage because a finger could wind up inside a loop with painful consequences. For the sake of full disclosure and at the risk of stirring up controversy, I don't always use bow and stern tie downs because I have a factory installed roof rack that I am confident will still be bolted to the roof when the car goes into a crusher or the sun goes supernova, whichever comes first. I'm getting rid of that vehicle, though, and my new one won't have such a bombproof -- I'm intentionally playing on Rick's earlier post about hyperbole -- setup.

During a disagreement with a large rock last season my plastic bow toggle broke. I decided to replace it with a monkey fist knot. I’ve heard of some people doing this to avoid getting a finger caught in the loop. I suppose that could happen, but the real reason I did it is because I like the way they look and it was an excuse to do a traditional nautical knot. Now I can’t figure out where to put a bow line when I cartop my kayak. The only thing I can think of is running it under the deck lines. I have a hard time believing that if I was in a situation where my rack or tie down straps failed, the recessed deck fittings would hold up. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine the deck line itself would survive the stresses that would cause a rack or nylon webbing to fail. Am I missing something? I’m not an expert on the forces involved and I suspect the A I got in high school physics was more a function of the teacher being my baseball coach than actual aptitude. I have enough of a conscience to not want to be responsible for launching a 17 foot fiberglass projectile across the highway.

I have a related kayaking story. About ten years ago I was paddling under a bridge over the Charles and noticed a strong gas smell. I called to report it and was told that they don't respond to reports of outdoor gas leaks. They said if I started to smell it indoors to call them back. I practically begged them to check it out anyway figuring that if the gas was concentrated enough to smell outside in the wind there must be a lot of it. They told me that no matter what they would not investigate unless someone reported smelling it indoors.

While living in South Boston I always thought it would be fun to watch the idiots jump in the water at the L Street Bathhouse from a vantage point on the water. (I say "idiot" in the most endearing way possible, of course.) Although I moved away from there this year, I still think it would be fun. Maybe a larger Boston Harbor trip could involve a detour to see the festivities. Boston Harbor meets your criteria of being protected with multiple emergency bailout options.