Dan Foster

Have you ever missed out on an NSPN trip because by the time you noticed it on the NSPN forum, it was already full? Do you wish there was a way to get an email every time a new trip was announced? Here's how to set things up so you'll never miss out on another NSPN trip again. How to Follow the Trips / NSPN Events forum Go to this page, and click on the Follow button: https://www.nspn.org/forums/forum/103-trips-nspn-events/ On desktop and laptop computers, the follow button is a white button in the upper right corner of the page, and when you hover over it, it says Follow this content. On mobile phones, the follow button is at the very bottom of the page. Once you click on the Follow button, you'll be asked how you want to be notified about new content: [X] A notification when new content is posted [ ] One email per day with all new content from that day [ ] One email per week with all new content from that week [ ] Do not send me notifications If you don't want to miss out on trips, select the first option! Now, when you go to the Trips forum, you'll see the button has changed to say Following. You can click on it to change your notification preferences, and you can click the number off to the right to see the other people who are following that content as well. (Useful if your friend complains they never hear about trips - you can check if they have followed these instructions.) Following Additional Content You can follow other things besides new trips! You can follow the Trip Reports forum. You can follow the Calendar to see when new things are added. You can follow individual forum posts to keep tabs on a subject that interests you, or a discussion of a particular event you want to attend. Just look for the Follow button, and click it to get email notifications. Managing Your Followed Content You can see exactly what content (forums, posts, etc.) you've followed by clicking Manage Followed Content under your profile: https://www.nspn.org/forum/followed/?type=forums_forum&change_section=1 Micro-Manage Your Notification Settings You can go to this page to tweak all sorts of settings about how you want to be notified when various things happen, like someone quotes something you said in a subsequent comment. https://www.nspn.org/forum/notifications/options/ You really don't need to adjust anything on this settings page unless there's a specific type of notification you're sick of receiving. Perhaps the most important setting is the first one - make sure you're subscribed to get the NSPN newsletter - we'll be using this more frequently in the future to let you know in advance about major NSPN events like parties, pool sessions, and big club trips. [X] Send me news and information Enabling this option will add you to our mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please note that there is a global setting on this page for your followed content notifications. It is not a global "follow everything" button. Making a change here DOES NOT subscribe you to notifications about new content or new trips until you actually start following some content! Method to use for content I follow automatically (note the "for content I follow" part!) [X] A notification when new content is posted [ ] One email per day with all new content from that day [ ] One email per week with all new content from that week [ ] Do not send me notifications Now that you've followed the Trips forum, you'll get an email notification every time a new trip is posted, and you'll have a leg up on getting a spot on that really popular trip you've always wanted to attend. As a reward for reading all of this, here's one last tip you can use to get the most out of the NSPN forums: Bookmark the Unread Content page Add this page as a bookmark in your Web browser: https://www.nspn.org/forum/discover/unread/ Get in the habit of visiting the Unread Content page first, which will show you all of the new posts and replies on the forum that you haven't read yet. Read any of the new content that interests you, and if the remaining stuff isn't of interest (a for-sale item that you don't need, for example), click Mark Site Read and you won't see it again. Mark Site Read is in the upper right corner for desktops and laptops, and on mobile phones it is a menu item on the popup menu in the upper right corner. If you need help with any of this, bring your laptop or mobile phone to an NSPN event, and someone should be able to help walk you through the process, following the instructions above.

One thing I keep hearing over and over in our club is that our multi-day camping trips are really popular, to the point where they sometimes fill on the day that they are posted. The solution is clear - offer more camping trips, and encourage more club members to organize more camping trips. I got my start organizing the Squam trip when another club trip passed the reins to me, which allowed them to go on to start some additional trips. I'm perfectly happy continuing to organize the annual fall Squam Lake trip, but I realize that this lake-based trip is a perfect opportunity for someone else to get comfortable with organizing a camping trip without some of the complexities that come with an ocean trip. So, if anyone out there has been thinking about leading trips but isn't sure they're ready to take the plunge, I'll make the following offer: you'll get a guaranteed spot on this year's Squam trip (this trip is one that tends to fill almost immediately) and we'll work together on the rest of the organizational details for the 2019 trip (the camping site is already reserved, so this really just involves sending out a group email, and proposing some activities based on the weather we get). You'll take the reins in 2020, and I'll be available for help (and will probably attend). I'll commit to launching a new club camping trip in 2020. Reply here or send me a Private Message if you're interested. There's been talk about starting a second Squam trip earlier in the season, so if more than one person is interested, we can work together and offer multiple lake camping trips.

I'm out of town for this week's orienteering event, but I'm a member of NEOC and try to attend a few O meets each spring. I'd be happy to meet up at an event with anyone looking to give it a try. It's a great way to sharpen your awareness of the terrain around you, and despite what you might think, you don't really need any compass skills beyond knowing which end of the needle is painted red. It's 99% matching ground features to the map, and the compass needle is just there to help you point the map in the right direction.

Andy, the CG website encourages boaters to limit DSC tests to once per week. I just sent a DSC radio test using Bill's instructions, but given that I'm an hour inland, I did not expect or receive a reply. It's less than a one second transmission, and DSC means it's only to be heard by the party you're calling. I think the prohibition on marine radio use on land is to keep people from using them like walkie-talkies and tying up an entire marine VHF channel.

Gary, the potential scenario that worries me is: can a paddler or a swimmer with a VHF in 4' seas both transmit and receive understandable information to a potential rescuer in a lobster boat 1 mile distant. I personally believe that VHF works great for boat-to-boat communications when both antennae have a line-of-sight path above the water, but that kayakers and swimmers are so close to the surface that wave crests and swell may attenuate our transmissions and render them useless in the scenarios where we'd actually need them. Has anyone ever tested VHF communications between two widely-separated pods in bigger seas, where you don't have continuous visual line-of-sight to the other party?

Has anyone tried this? I'd try it now if I was within range of the coast. (Click the link to see the right channel to use for your area: 27 for Boston and Portsmouth, 26 for MA north shore.) https://www.seatow.com/boating-safety/automated-radio-checks It’s simple to use: Automated Radio Check Service uses one of VHF Channels 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 84. Simply tune your radio to the proper channel for your community. Conduct a radio check as you normally would. Upon releasing the mic, the system will replay your transmission, letting you hear how you sound.

Yeah, I would amend "don't take risks that you are not prepared to take without the device" to "include the possibility of device failure in your overall risk assessment". I'm willing to take on SOME more risk when I'm carrying a safety device, even if I feel it has a non-zero chance of failure. Rolls, radios, and rescue beacons are all examples of things that I don't trust 100%, but that let me paddle further than I would if I didn't have them at all. Personally, I think many of us over-estimate the reliability of our handheld VHF radios to get a message to the Coast Guard in a life-or-death kayaking incident, and under-estimate the reliability of GPS, PLBs, and other modern "gadgets". I have never seen a paddler ask for a radio check from CG or a far-off boater. Instead, we assume that because we can hear the radio of the guy 30 feet from us, we've got reliable safety comms. I'm more confident in the reliability of my inReach, because I can audit its performance. On the beach, I press the test button, which sends a test-SOS message to any satellites overhead and waits for a test-received message back with my device's registration number in the payload, which tests the exact path a real SOS message would take. At all times, the unit blinks a red light at me if it doesn't have a connection to the satellite network, indicating that I've got it oriented poorly or shielded somehow. When I choose to send an outgoing message, it blinks until the message is successfully sent, and beeps for confirmation. When I get home, I can view the map of tracking points it sent, and if they aren't evenly spaced out at 10 minute intervals, or stray from my known path travelled, I would know that I didn't have reliable 2-way communication at particular points on my trip. My own personal auditing of paddles with the device near the top of my day hatch or in the top of a backpack gives me 99% confidence that it will work as described if I remember to charge it and turn it on.

Recent discussion about viewing NH stone walls on LIDAR - there are links and instructions on the second page of the discussion: https://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?60206-New-Hampshire-Stone-Wall-Project

I carry a Garmin inReach on solo and group outings in the woods and on water. I was present at an incident on land a while back that required outside assistance, and was moments away from pressing the SOS button when we managed to get a cell connection to 911. I was very thankful for the voice connection to 911, as we were very quickly able to communicate what we needed. Being on land with the inReach, we could have exchanged short text messages to communicate the assistance needed. Had the same incident happened on rough water where we couldn't exchange messages over the inReach, or with only a PLB available, the responding agency would have had no choice but to send the full response team, since they wouldn't know the nature of the emergency. One further benefit of an electronic device that sends lat/lon with the distress signal: Had we used the inReach, it may have sped up "where are you located?" part of the response. The first thing 911 wants to know is: "police, fire, or medical", and the second is the address and town you are in, so they can patch in the proper responders. On the ocean, it's fairly easy - Coast Guard will respond, but inland you should know what township your particular patch of woods lies in. In this particular instance my phone wasn't sending lat/lon and the cell tower I connected through was not in the same town that I was in. So even though I could describe precisely where we were, the 911 operator had to guess at the town, and the first agency they patched in immediately told us to call their neighbors. Until help arrived, I spent the rest of the time on the line with 911 relaying vital signs (quality and rate of pulse and respiration), and relaying any changes in the patient's condition. We were fortunate to have some very skilled individuals handling patient care, and another member of the group ran back and forth from the patient to the spot where we could get cell service. The first responders arrived on scene, and the incident had a happy ending. Having multiple communications options definitely helped that day. I'd certainly recommend carrying something like a PLB, EPIRB, or a commercial option like Spot or inReach as a backup to radios or cell phones.

WHEN: Thursday, April 4th, 5:30 to 7:30 pm WHERE: Newbury Kayak & Canoe, 291 High Rd, Newbury, MA 01951

I really enjoyed the photos and your trip report from the Boundary Waters. Another vote for Lost in the Wild, and while we're discussing BWCA/Quetico books, I'll put in a plug for my wife's uncle's new novel, set in Quetico. Find it in the canoeing-action-romance-coming-of-age section of your favorite bookstore, or on Amazon at: Alone on the Shield : https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Shield-Novel-Kirk-Landers/dp/1613739915/

You might look at the [boat traffic] Density Map layer on Marinetraffic.com to get an idea of how the traffic fans out and if there are any places you can hide "mid-stream" https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-70.9/centery:42.4/zoom:11 You might also have someone checking AIS data on the water to see if any really big ships are headed through the channel.

Glad to hear you got out (and back)! You're the king of tides until someone else ventures out above 11.5 feet.

Just as an example of how this data could be displayed in a useful form, here's a website that lets you drag a slider to see the currents ebb and flow around Puget Sound. Move the map a little to the north and look at the current in Deception Pass! http://www.deepzoom.com He plots the tide and current stations for our area, but the current slider doesn't work here. I would love to see this visualization for the Piscataqua.

One modification that might help - when you're pushing up on the bow to lift the boat, hold your kayak paddle in the middle of the shaft with the other hand, after letting it float to the surface with the blades as flat on the water as possible, and push down hard on the paddle while pushing up on the boat. Pushing down on the paddle helps keep your body from submerging and gets a bit more of the boat out of the water. Probably harder to do with a canoe paddle, but you'll still get some resistance against the water if you choke up on the throat of the paddle.

Tide and current data for complex river/harbor/estuary interactions like the Portsmouth, NH area drive me nuts. NOAA gives a webpage for each tide or current station, but there's no "big picture" that shows how high tide at various points up the Piscataqua and into Great Bay lags the high tide at the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor. Do you have a resource you use for these kinds of questions? After hours of reverse googling, I managed to find almost exactly what I was looking for, 300 pages into NOAA's Tide Tables - 2019 East Coast of North and South America Including Greenland Here's a PDF with just the four relevant pages for our area, showing the lag in high and low tides for subordinate tide stations relative to the reference station. Maine Tidal Differences.pdf Have any of you found a more accessible source for this information? I'm currently interested in the Portsmouth/Piscataqua region, but I'd really like a general solution that covers the entire coastline.

I'll be there, and I hope others join as well, because it's fun to find out what makes an ocean wave wave.

I just turned on my Standard Horizon HX870 and confirmed that it works as Rob describes: 1. pressing Transmit while in Tri/Dual Watch mode always transmits on the selected primary channel. Leon, did you actually test this behavior with your VHF? 2. listening to weather channel while in Tri-watch causes an audible dropout every two seconds while the receiver momentarily monitors the other channel. Given that they'd have to put an entire second RF receiver into each radio to allow an uninterrupted background scan for traffic on the other channels, this seems like a reasonable design tradeoff. Receiving: I can monitor ch 72 and 16 and 9 constantly with Tri-watch, or disengage it to only monitor 72. Transmitting: Always transmits on 72, unless I press 16/S key to switch to 16. Pressing again switches back to 72. If the keylock is engaged, I have to press that first, and then press 16/S. That doesn't seem like too much to keep track of. I would welcome a laminated cheat sheet with best practices for radio settings and channel presets, recommended use on group paddles, a template for distress calls, etc.

Can anyone from last year's Sullivan Falls/MDI trip confirm that this year's training with Nate is going to be on Friday, Sept 6th? Just checking because I thought it had been on Wednesday before MDI in the past?

This year's Squam Lake camping trip will be held over Columbus Day weekend, to allow campers who have regular work schedules to join us. Since this is one of only a few trips we run that doesn't require taking a day off of work, some preference will be given to those with real jobs who normally wouldn't be able to join us without calling in sick. Stay tuned for details. We have our usual spot reserved on Moon Island in Squam Lake for Saturday and Sunday nights. The group will meet at Squam Lakes Association headquarters in Holderness, NH on Saturday morning in time for a late-morning launch, and will return to the cars after lunch on Monday. There is typically a paddle-and-hike (surf and turf?) option on Sunday as well as an option for a longer paddle without any hiking. While there is not much of a tidal range on Squam Lake, there's a good chance of wind on the water and along our shoreline campsite, and temperatures can dip into the 30s in mid-October. The foliage, food, and friendship are always spectacular. We are limited to a maximum of 10 tents in our group campsite. The cost to reserve a spot on the trip is $25, and includes two nights of camping on raised wooden tent platforms, firewood, and defrays our annual membership in the Squam Lakes Association. Registration for this trip is not yet open. More details will be announced in late spring, and registration will be opened at that time. You can click the Follow button (upper right corner on the desktop version of this website) to express interest in this trip and get notified when registration details are announced.

It's a little unfair to call it "channel lock", when it's actually a described as a keypad lock that locks out the keypad buttons. The Icom M73 manual says: (pasting from PDF, some of the graphics didn't come through) ■This function electronically locks all keys (except for [?] and [?]) to prevent accidental channel changes and function access. [I'm guessing volume up/down are the two [?] keys] ➥ Push [lock key] for 1 second to turn the lock function ON or OFF. Hold down for 1 second [lock icon] Appears while the lock function is in use. http://www.icomamerica.com/en/products/marine/handhelds/m73/default.aspx My Standard Horizon HX870 has a dedicated lock key, with the same functionality and description in the manual. It displays KEY LOCK across the entire screen when you hit any button (except Vol up/down, Squelch and Push-to-talk) while locked, including 16/S. I didn't try hitting the DSC Distress button on the side while locked. Mine also remembers the key lock when powered off, and flashes it across the entire screen on startup and when pressing any key. Maybe the takeaway from all of this is that if we're going to take advantage of the key lock so we can stuff the radio into a PFD pocket, we need to commit the unlock sequence to muscle memory so it becomes automatic.

I write mapping and charting software, so I've been creating 24x36" PDF charts with magnetic lines, scale bars, and compass rose overlays, and printing them at Staples. They charge $5.89 for a sheet. I was going to offer to create a series of standard PDF charts for popular club destinations, but the initial feedback I got was that everyone preferred waterproof charts over paper charts. Muscongus Bay Kayaking Chart.pdf

Nice report! A family member was considering taking a ranger job at Point Reyes National Seashore a few years back, and so I immediately started scouting kayaking options in case I ever got to visit. It's nice to know there's a friendly kayak club in the area!