Bizzy little bee, ain’t I???
Fell short 10′ on pipe. Not miscalculated, just last second design change due to a tool not being up to snuff. Wanted to drill 1 3/8″ holes and run the pipe through the square stock, but my drillbit for doing that wasn’t able to cut the steel. Brand new step bit and it was either made wrong or already dull as a butter knife. (I’m gonna drop that it was ‘made in Chineee’ though it had an American region company name.) Because I had already cut those peices out, I ended up shy with unusable pieces left over.
And it can wait till Tuesday when I return to work. Still need lights, wiring and more paint, as well as end caps for the tubes. Want to replace the rubber while I’m dropping lucre on it; what I have are two mismatched tires, one of which is dry rotted bad.
So current roll out is 7 kayaks but when I get more pipe, will be 9. A small passenger van and a number of cheap kayaks and I have an outfitting service that is shuttle capable.
But I mostly want it for personal use with friends. I can carry 3 and me in my truck; 4 if they dont mind riding in each others back pocket, and gear tossed in the bed of the truck. Another truck and trailer combination is in service so one will be dropped empty at the take out, the other left empty at the put in while we do the river run. Get done, we all load up and go get the empty ‘hicle,,,,
That’s the plan anyways.
Prolly should consider a van for future monetary reasons,,, just not sure I wanna invest in what I call ‘milk jug kayaks’. If I were to do an outfitting service, I would want Jackson Rivieras as sit ons (sit ons are what most people just wanting to float a river prefer) and Pelican sit ins for those that want a “boat”. The type I prefer and use are not what you would call ‘newbie friendly’ and will run off newbs with a quickness. Recent experiance with this and I feel guilty for it. Friends from work wanted their cousin to try kayaking and my Serena was the only one available I felt comfortable enough to let them try. She’s very stable (by my standards) but she is NOT a beginners kayak.
Anyways, I was straddling the bow with said dude in kayak. No skirt because I didnt want the boy to feel trapped, and explaining wet exits tends to scare the bejeezus out of new paddlers. But while walking him through some stuff, me straddling the boat providing support while he got a feel for the boat under him, I warned him “ya gotta relax or you will be swimming in five minutes.”
Five minutes later , me standing waist deep in water and him a few yards off, ‘BlOOOP!!!” . He reacted so fast and the boat rolled over on him yet he never got his hair wet. He was out of the boat before it went fully inverted. Kudos to him though: he never let go that paddle. To toss it and try using hands to recover is instinctual in most people and has to be trained out. I’m a classic example. Its taken a couple years, but now I hold that paddle through it all and don’t think about it. (Learning to swim with the paddle helped me, I don’t know what other people use to train this)
To be honest, if I were to start teaching kayaking io beginners, I would want to teach them rolling skills FIRST then build up to the other aspects. And my understanding is that IS the way it was done in Greenland. Roll or die, and you mastered the roll before you left the shoreline. Many of the ‘sports’ they practice that aren’t obviously hunting oriented, are practical skills that revolve around the roll. Rope gymnastics as example.
But how many people are willing to do that first? Answer: not very many. Most people that are ‘kayaking’ these days are the type that would probably be more content in an inner tube with a cooler floating alongside. Or a Jonboat with a trolling motor and a cooler in the wells. And the fact that ‘fishing kayaks’ are all the rage and even Jackson Kayaks and others, usually dedicated to WW boats, have them in their lineup says tons about how the ‘kayaking’ US is evolving. Sea kayakers and White water kayakers are thin on the ground compared to the anglers these days. The law of supply and demand still apply
Not many people pursuing my type of boats nor the types my friends prefer. And even fewer serious enough to want courses on it. White water has more instruction than Sea kayaking but when you have to travel two states for a class, you can see how spread out the sport is. And granted, a lot of that has to do with the rivers. Here, we get white water with rain and most times, the creeks look more like goat paths. The ready to rin rivers are all distant and there is where you’ll find the instructors, suppliers, and hardcore. And a lot of cheap to you boats that “may have one last run in them, but don’t count on it”
Funny, i coulda sworn I started off talking about welding stuff, and here I am tossing off thoughts on kayaking in general.
Like Bruce so often says “Addicted “.
Yeah, I’ll accept that. Better than some others by far.
