One man's rush to jump on the kayaking bandwagon

Due to the unfriendly weather, this year's Quiet Boat Parade is canceled.

Due to a crazy work schedule and a lot of travel, it's been a couple of months since I've hit the water or updated this site. I feel like I've missed too much.

Salt Marsh Kayak had it's last race and then closed it's rental facility on Wrightsville Beach.

Padddling.net redesigned their site. I hate it.

It seems that Epic Kayaks and Confluence are joining Current Designs, Necky Kayaks, and Point65n Kayaks in moving their kayak production to China. On one hand, this is horrible. On another, maybe they will actially be able to build a decent fiberglass/composite kayak. Maybe I've just had bad luck, but from my experience, no one in the US, UK, or Canada can make a fiberglass kayak without some kind of construction flaw.

I'm in a business meeting on the 8th floor of an office building that overlooks Lake Union in Seattle. Even though it's raining, I can see people out paddling. Kenmore Air is at it as usual. The the meeting is going very well and I'm doing a lot of the talking, but I'm finding it hard to pay attention. The water is taunting me. This is the 3rd time in 3 months I've been in Seattle and haven't had time to hit the water.

Nothing makes you feel like you're going somewhere like ending somewhere other than where you start. Almost all of my paddles start and end at the same place. Today was not one of those days. Heath and Jean dropped me off about 10 miles away from the house. It was a great day. The weather was great. Including a couple of stops for food and taping up the blisters, I covered the entire 12 miles in a little under 3 hours.

Pat and Kara came down to the beach for the weekend. We did all the usual things. We swam in the ocean during a thunderstorm, ate way too much fried seafood, and survived a death march paddle. I thought it was a nice short paddle. It seems that it was a little long for them.

Its been almost 2 years since I last paddled Jean's bathtub. Despite it's obvious shortcomings as a kayak, it's a blast to paddle. For some reason, my Explorer was not very popular with the crowd. It seems that the seat is uncomfortable. Who knew.

We saw the usual dolphins and drunk boaters. At one point, I could see 18 kayaks in the channel. Either Wrightsville beach is becoming more popular with kayakers or the entire sport is growing more than I ever thought possible.

I thought this was too funny not to share.

As many of you know, I have a thing for search engines. Cuil, the new search engine built by a few ex-Googlers, seems to still need some work:

It also seems to have something against Valley.

I'm sure the lack of results for the Aquanaut is due to being completely overwhelmed on their first day. I'm sure this will be quickly fixed. Dora's Explorer may be a little harder to fix.

Chesapeake Paddler's Association forums are now being indexed by the Kayaking Search Engine.

During a recent trip to Bryson City, NC, I warned my wife not to let me get near a whitewater boat. I'm pretty sure it would be love at first paddle. Compared to sea kayaking, I see a lot of upside to WW kayaking. Instead of buying expensive rack gear and struggling to get my sea kayak on top of my car, I can throw my WW boat in the backseat. Instead of the letdown associated with realizing that my car is 10 miles away and I'll be paddling against the current, I would rarely loose sight of my car. Instead of seemingly endless stretches of waves and swells and no choice but to paddle through them, unless I'm upside down, I can stop paddling at any time. I may even be able to grab onto a rock or tree. I may even be able to paddle a few feet, climb out of the lake and rest. In WW kayaking, a long paddle is only a few hundred feet, not 15+ miles.

I didn't go WW kayaking, but the family and I did go rafting on the Natahala river. It was my first time and it was a lot less exciting than I expected. We also had a bit of a mutiny on our boat. It seems that the crew lost faith in our captain's ability to steer the boat. If I were to offer any advice to those that have never gone rafting before, if you have any paddling experience at all, skip the group experience and get a single raft. It looks like a lot more fun.

We spent some time at the shop at the Natahala Outdoor Center. It has a lot of whitewater gear in stock. I finally picked up a decent quick-dry paddling shirt. I was able to try on helmets and figure out just how big my head actually is. (It's not as big as my wife says it is.) Since the extended family has many photographers, we all took quite a few photos of the whitewater action.