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Pastimes : Canoes, Hiking, the Great Outdoors -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Citron who wrote (237)	4/4/2002 10:10:21 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 325

Carrying in a backpack or towing behind a bicycle will probably not be very practical. Inflatables are the most compact boats, and even they are fairly heavy and fairly bulky. Aire (www.aire.com) makes very good inflatables. Stay away from cheap inflatables, they don't last. If most of your paddling will be on the local creek (flat water, I assume), why not try to find someplace on or near the creek where you could keep a boat? That way you could bike there, use the boat, and bike back without having to transport the boat. If you want to paddle on different bodies of water, you'll probably end up with a rack. There's a very inflexible relationship connecting hull length, speed, and tracking (the ease of keeping the boat in a straight line). The shorter the boat, the slower it is and the harder it will be to make it go straight, though rocker, or the curve of the bottom, has a lot to do with this as well. Slow means more effort for the same distance. White water boats are short, short enough to fit inside cars, but they are very squirrely to paddle and are really purpose-built for rapids. Most useful flatwater boats will be too long to fit in a car, unless you go folding or inflatable. It's always a good idea to talk to people who paddle on the same water you'll be paddling on, and see what compromises they've reached. Certainly if you will only be paddling on the Pacific once in a while, it would be better to rent a decent sea kayak for those occasions. Just be sure that you're comfortable with the basic self-rescue and safety procedures, and don't go out on rough water alone. If you want to take kids out, open canoes are great. Even a very stable kayak can get awkward with an active child on board. Whatever you do, don't save on the paddle. Cheap paddles are horrible things and will make paddling a lot less fun. Get a good one and enjoy.

To: Sam Citron who wrote (237)	4/4/2002 11:00:10 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 325

I see that Steve already made the comment that came to my mind as well. If I knew I was going to be paddling on a particular creek fairly often, I would see if someone along the creek would mind if I left my canoe or kayak there. People who have canoes out on their lawns would be a good place to start.. or farmers. On a couple of creeks where I've paddled, I've even seen canoes stowed upside down in large willow trees overarching the creeks.. obviously not the most secure place, but one of the canoes has been up in the tree for about 3 years now without being taken, so I suppose it depends on where you live (people around here tend to leave other people's stuff alone). What are the creeks and rivers like where you live? From my limited experience, it seems that a lot of the creeks and rivers come down out of the mountains and tend to be high volume in spring (some being very high volume, for that matter), but that most sort of konk out to being very shallow with a lot of gravel shoals by late summer. I would think you would want something fairly light for doing lift-overs to get past the shoals and gravel bars and around snags from the early spring run-off. As for going out on the ocean, I agree with Steve.. 2 entirely different crafts. I don't know what part of the north CA coast you're along, but I think you would need a very seaworthy kayak if you were going out in any of the areas I'm familiar with. As for kayaks suitable for creeks, my neighbour's son (who was very much into studying aquatic life before going off to university to do a biology degree), has paddled most of the local creeks around here with some small, cheap kayak that he bought years ago. Can't tell you what kind it was, but it was small enough that he used to stick it in the back of an old hatchback Saab and take off down the road with it sticking about 4 or 5 feet out the back. Re: Canoes, in case you're interested. I have a 15 foot kevlar-carbonlite canoe which is extremely light and stable (around 40 lbs), but with around a 700 lb. load range. I use it almost exclusively for travelling in creeks, swamps, and lakes. I do a lot of nature photography and am often out in my canoe all day, so I wanted something that could carry my camera equipment, lunch, extra clothes, binoculars and stuff, but still be light enough to paddle solo. This is just enough of a canoe that I can bring along my husband and our large dog as well, but it is primarily designed as a solo canoe.