Planning a Kayak Trip
FloatingTrails.com
The FloatingTrails.com website is a free resource with an interactive map that provides sea kayakers with:
– locations to get on the water
– destinations to visit for day use or camping
– printable high quality marine charts
– animated tide and current displays
– ready access to weather/ocean observations and predictions- simple route planning
The site includes materials and descriptions contributed by a number of NSPN members, and is maintained by Joe Berkovitz. A video workshop explaining it is here.
Trip Planning Workbook
Joe Berkovitz and Bob Levine of NSPN and Margo Otway of BASK created this Sea Kayak Trip Planning Workbook used as the basis for an NSPN course first delivered in 2021.
This document contains material and exercises for a Trip Planning seminar, designed to be conducted in an online meeting format or physically present small groups. However, the material also works for self-guided study. That’s why we call it a “workbook”. It allows a course or study session to proceed at its own best pace for the participants, without a rigid organization.
The emphasis in this workbook is on real-world problem solving. While foundational ideas and techniques are presented up front in most sections of the workbook, the goal is to quickly prepare students for doing exercises, rather than exhaustively covering each topic.
This workbook aims to ground paddlers in most of the areas essential for planning a safe, successful and enjoyable trip on the ocean. Broadly, these topics are divided into three parts:
- Navigation: the space of land and water features where we paddle
- Environment: the behavior of the marine world as it affects us on the water
- Planning: bringing together knowledge of navigation, environment and ourselves to design a shared experience on the water