Dan Foster

http://www.nspn.org/forum/store/product/1-nspn-annual-membership/

Sue, once you join NSPN (it's a steal at $15 for a year), you'll be able to RSVP for events on the Calendar like the Nav Workshop.

Join us for a day of navigation practice, with hand-on exercises on land, in the classroom at REI, and in your kayak on a nearby pond.

9 - 11: Basics of map reading, orienting the map with a compass, taking a bearing with a compass, land exercises outside at a nearby park.

11 - 3: REI Reading classroom: using map and compass together, declination, lunch, plotting/reading bearings on a chart, triangulation, map and compass exercises.

3 - 5: Veteran's Field boat launch at south end of Lake Quannapowitt: (Level 1 paddle) on-water navigation practice, matching features to the chart, using ranges to stay on a bearing, triangulation practice.

5:30: dinner nearby for anyone who wants to socialize afterwards.

This is a free event, but you must RSVP ahead of time so that we can print enough maps for the class. The exact meeting time and location for Sunday morning will be sent to everyone who registers a few days prior to the navigation workshop. Please RSVP on the NSPN calendar posting here: http://www.nspn.org/forum/calendar/event/1103-nspn-navigation-workshop-at-rei-in-reading/

Feel free to ask questions or discuss the upcoming workshop in this thread.

Here's the working plan. Feedback welcome before it becomes official. The April 23rd event will be posted in a few days on the NSPN calendar.

Some people have been asking for beginner instruction and others would like an intermediate-level class. I'd prefer to start with the basics in April, and build on that later in the season with an ocean paddle out of Hingham or Hull with actual tides and current.

Here's the proposed schedule for the Navigation Workshop on Sunday, April 23rd:

9 - 11: Basics of map reading, orienting the map with a compass, taking a bearing with a compass, land exercises outside at a nearby park (Gertrude Spaulding Park, Veterans Field, or Breakheart Reservation)

11 - 3: REI Reading classroom: using map and compass together, declination, lunch, plotting/reading bearings on a chart, triangulation, map and compass exercises

3 - 5: Veteran's Field boat launch at south end of Lake Quannapowitt: (Level 1 paddle) on-water navigation practice, matching features to the chart, using ranges to stay on a bearing, triangulation practice.

5:30: dinner nearby for anyone who wants to socialize afterwards.

It's looking like the navigation workshop will be Sunday, April 23rd, at (and around) REI in Reading.

I own the lowest-priced Kokatat model in the "fully-dry" category, which uses Hydrus 3L fabric instead of GoreTex.

https://kokatat.com/product/hydrus-3l-swift-entry-dry-suit-dsuhse

Kokatat doesn't advertise it this way, but you can order it through your favorite retailer with a relief zipper and booties, both of which I'd consider to be essential.

Pros: saves a few hundred $, same Kokatat warranty and workmanship, fully-dry neck and wrist gaskets.

Cons: The latex neck gasket is fully exposed, without any neoprene to wrap around it. It makes you look like you've got a Turtle neck, and not the classy Steve Jobs kind. I get pretty steamy in mine, but I don't have enough experience in a GoreTex model to compare the effectiveness of the breathable membranes.

All in all, I'm happy for the additional paddling opportunities that owning a dry suit provides. 99% of the time (i.e., 100% of the time when I'm right-side-up), I wish I was wearing a semi-dry suit or cotton shorts and a t-shirt. It's what you're going to be doing the other 1% of the time that dictates what level of features you need and want to pay for.

A sabiki rig for mackerel or bait fish has 6 or more small hooks with an artificial bait that looks like a large fly or tiny minnow. You clip a 1-2 oz lead sinker on one end, and lower it from your kayak or a pier off the cheapest rod and reel you own. You could even skip the rod and reel and just use a hand line or 50 feet of mono and something to wrap it around. When it hits the bottom, slowly jig it up and down until a school of bait fish swims by. Since macks and other bait fish swim in big "bait balls", you'll typically catch multiple fish if you leave it down for an extra 30 seconds after you feel the first strike.

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sabiki&tbs=imgo:1

Half of the fun of a sabiki rig is detangling 6+ mini hooks from each other, your fish, and your clothing as your kayak drifts into the rocks or the boating channel.

If you want to skip the live bait, get an artificial lure (we use Daiwa Salt Pro Minnows), the shortest saltwater rod you can find (7.5' or less, easier to deal with in a kayak), and cast around the rocks, or watch for surface feedings around dawn. When you see a bunch of seagulls dive-bombing the surface, paddle over as fast as you can and start casting into the fray. With any luck, you'll catch a striper, and not a seagull.

We've had some luck using a sabiki (multiple small hooks on a weighted line) to catch mackerel for bait. We then hook a mack through the lip and let it swim in and out of the rocks where we think stripers may be lurking. What usually happens is we end up having mackerel for dinner.

I've been kayak fishing with a friend from Marblehead for the last two summers. I'd definitely be up for some kayak fishing trips, and can contribute my extensive knowledge as to where the fish *aren't* in the Marblehead/Salem Harbor area.

If anyone wants to come inland this summer, I'd be happy to host an evening of paddleboard or kayak fly fishing for panfish and bass in our backyard pond.

What month would you suggest for an on-water Boston Harbor navigation paddle? I suspect everyone who has chimed in so far is comfortable with early-season paddling, but there may be advanced beginners who'd be happier paddling in warmer conditions.

I've floated the idea of a day-long navigational adventure during May's Jewell Island camping trip to a few people, since that would allow for a good mix of instruction and trip planning, on-water nav, and land-based nav.

Good suggestions. As a first step, I'm trying to gauge interest and see what level of detail there's the most demand for.

Here's another question for the group: If you were to attend a navigation workshop or on-water practice in 2017, would you prefer an introductory, intermediate or advanced curriculum for yourself?

I'm organizing a navigation workshop for NSPN, most likely on a Saturday in early April. I'd like to hear your ideas about what topics you'd like to see covered, what skills you'd like to improve, what kinds of exercises you'd like to do, and what kinds of navigational challenges you've faced in the past. You can reply here, or send me a private message.

I came up with mostly the same answers as Gary.

For #3, I took a different route back to Hell's Half Acre: cove to N of Potato, to S of Camp, threading the needle (high tide!) straight back to Hell's Half Acre.

I use a different technique for determining GPS waypoints off of a chart:

Find two chart lines that lie on either side of the point. Let's assume they are horizontal lines of latitude N44deg 08' and N44deg 09'. Take a plastic ruler and place the 0cm mark on the lower line, and rotate the ruler until the 10cm mark hits the upper line. (cm are unimportant, you can use inches or anything with 10 equal spaces). Now slide the ruler until it hits the point. Let's say it hits at 7.2 centimeters. That means that the point is 7.2 tenths of the distance from the lower line to the upper line, or 72%. 72% of the distance from N44deg 08' to N44deg 09' is a latitude of N44deg 08.72'

Repeat for longitude. Works best with UTM coordinates, since everything is in base 10.

Here's the view from #5. Blue line points to Camp I, red points to Devil I.

The other ambiguity in the original coordinates was the lack of datum. If someone had plotted those coordinates on a USGS topo map, they might have plotted them assuming you used the NAD27 datum, which was the the standard on all US maps up until 1983, and still shows up a lot in current maps and charts that were originally produced before 1983. The most notorious local example is National Geographic 2013 edition of their waterproof "chart" of the Boston Harbor Islands, which touts being "regularly updated" with GPS coordinates and a UTM grid, but you have to read the fine print on the back of the map to realize they are still using NAD27 (the North American Datum of 1927).

The lat/lon values reported by everyone's phones, and by most GPS receivers and software (assuming you haven't selected a different datum), reference the WGS84 datum. There's a significant offset between the two datums, which means if someone gives you coordinates in NAD27 and you interpret them as WGS84 (or vice versa), you'll be off by about 150 feet in New England. In several other coordinate systems (Massachusetts state plane, for example), they added in a huge fixed number to any coordinates expressed in the new datum, so that if you mixed up datums, you'd end up with results that were hundreds of miles away, making the error immediately obvious.

So, for clarity, I'd do everything that Gary suggests above, and then tack on "WGS84 datum" at the end, or "all coordinates in degrees and minutes of latitude and longitude, WGS84 datum" somewhere near the list of coordinates.

Bonus question #7: Gary's coordinates could lead you to four different locations depending on how you interpreted them. (I'm going to change his example slightly to make the second issue more ambiguous: “68.38.37W 44.07.15N” ). List them, and explain the two things you can do differently when writing or radioing latitudes and longitudes to avoid these errors.

It's looking like another warm Wednesday for paddling this week, and the foliage should be just about perfect along the local shorelines. Would anyone be interested in a foliage paddle along the Concord or Sudbury rivers in lieu of our regular Walden Pond practice? I'm up for anything, from a full-day, 20 mile downstream run, to a 2-3 hour out-and-back in the Concord area.

Here's the Walden calendar listing, which has a map and directions:

http://www.nspn.org/forum/calendar/event/1066-walden-pond-skills-and-stupid-kayak-tricks/

I'll be there at 2PM to join the rest of the gang.

Another balmy Wednesday awaits, and the surf report is showing perfect conditions at Walden Pond ahead of Hurricane Matthew.

I'll be there at 2PM to join the rest of the gang.

I will also be there this afternoon. What a great day to be on the water!

If at least one other person posts that they are going, I will be there working on speedy rescues from 3:30 til 6.

I am planning to be at Walden tonight to work on rescues. I won't be able to attend next Wednesday.

I will be at Walden tonight. I'm planning to work on rescues and rolls. Hope to see some others there!

Bill, I'm sorry to hear you ended up paddling alone last night at Walden. I had a dinner conflict last night and was never planning to be there. Earlier in the day it looked like plenty of people were going, so I didn't want to post "not-going" and scare anyone off.

It seems like attendance at our Walden sessions has declined from when I started showing up a few years ago. I'd certainly like to keep the weekly sessions going next year.

The "show and go" format only works well when enough people show up each week. When attendance starts dropping to 1-3 people each week, not knowing if anyone else will be there gives a strong incentive to not show up, and the downward cycle continues.

I'd suggest that we start encouraging everyone to RSVP for each weekly session, and if there aren't two RSVPs by 4PM on Wednesday afternoon, we post the session as cancelled.

For 2017, I'd suggest that we consider spinning the pond sessions off into a new meetup group, or open the Walden sessions up to AMC WW, AMC SK, or other local paddling meetups if there isn't enough interest from NSPN members to keep a weekly session going.

I'm heading over to Walden shortly, as well.