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Kayak Skeg Stuck? A Simple Fix
If your sea kayak skeg gets stuck, use a cord to free it; alternatives include wire or household items. It's a simple fix that should be standard on sea kayaks. Act Now and Get the Fix.
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Custom NOAA Charts for Free
One of my personal dreams has been to have a free tool for creating custom NOAA Charts for sea kayaking. In the past, I spent weeks downloading charts, converting charts to an image file, editing them for printing and then printing a custom chart. Now you can bypass that by using NOAA’s Custom Chart tool. The tool itself is easy to use. I figured it out in a few minutes and had a custom chart of my home port printed shortly after that. If you want to watch a video, NOAA offers a tutorial video on how to make a custom chart. How To Make the Charts The basics of…
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Stabilize a Tippy Solo Canoe
It’s spring in the northern hemisphere and paddlers are itching to get out on the water. Recently, I heard a comment that someone found their solo canoe a bit tippy this spring. While that’s likely normal, there are a few steps that you can take to make your tippy solo canoe feel more stable. First of all, if the boat felt good at the end of the season last year, it’s likely going to feel fine again. You just need a little seat time. Go out and paddle it. Lower and Upper Body Separation If that doesn’t work to solve your tippy solo canoe problems, the main tip is to…
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Kayak Paddle Size
Kayak paddle size can be personal, but it’s an important consideration if you are going to get the most out of your kayaking. Many stores end up sizing paddles too long, and you want to avoid that if you don’t want to have to buy two paddles — one the right size and the other too long. The below image in this article is an example of a store that got it wrong. The problem with paddles that are too long is that they are harder to get into the right positions for some strokes — particularly any strokes that require a vertical shaft such as draws. Longer paddles also…
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7 Canoe Camping Tips
Efficient canoe camping comes with experience and seat time. By using these seven tips for canoe camping, you will have a solid head start. Packing and Portaging Use a portage pack (if you don’t own, then rent) instead of daypack or backpacking pack. Portage packs fit into the spacing between the thwarts and a yoke in a canoe. In a tandem you can put up to two in front of the yoke and up to two behind. Cooke Custom Sewing’s Pioneer Packs work perfectly for tandem trips. Line your portage packs with compactor or contractor bags. Twist the top of the lining bag closed and double it over. Then wrap…
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Meal Planning: Stop Your Crackers from Crumbling
If you’re a fan of Wasa Crispbread or crackers for your meals on a paddling trip, you’ve probably had crumbly crisps by the end of the package. This simply trick helps stop your crackers from crumbling when camping. On a camping trip, as you eat crackers from your Wasa Crispbread crackers package, the crackers start to sit more loosely in the package. That looseness allows them to move around too much. The movement causes them to start cracking, especially when under pressure in your food bag. When held tightly together, like in a new package, they maintain a structure that helps stop them from cracking. They key trick and the…
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DIY Lightweight First Aid Kit – How to make one
I typically find pre-made first aid kits lacking in some way. To get around that, I usually make my own lightweight first aid kit based on the sport, my training as a Wilderness First Responder and in Wilderness First Aid, and over 16 years of experience guiding trips. If you don’t have that training or experience, it might be a bit harder (and you should take a Wilderness First Aid course). But, you can still figure one out. As an example, I recently put a new one together to stash in my bike pack. I’ve have a day kit that I usually switch from pack to pack, but I have…
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How to Stay Clean While Camping
On day five, I crawled in the tent with my canoeing partner. We were halfway through our trip, and he smelled bad. I mean he smelled like a bucket of ripe clams left out in the sun on a beach in 100-degree weather for five days. I looked over at him and said, “Dude, you stink. Don’t you know how to stay clean while camping?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “We’re in the woods, of course, I stink.” And from that moment forward, I’ve made it a point to try and stay clean while camping when on adventures, and you can too by following these easy steps. Take a…
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NOLS Cookery Ration Planning
Exploring NOLS system of menu planning for an canoeing expedition across the Boundary Water. This article shows a NOLS plan for a twelve day trip, and discuses how well it worked.
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How to Cook Bannock on a Stick – Campfire Bread
Fresh bread on an extended paddling trip feels like a treat, especially after eating hard crackers, bagels or pitas for a week. One way to make this treat is by cooking bannock. For over a 1000 years, bannock, a simple bread made from the flour of a variety of grains, has filled the bellies of adventurers sitting around campfires. Its attraction is the simple base ingredients and its ease of cooking. A favorite way to make bannock is to cook it on a stick over a campfire. Preparation of the Bread Dough At home mix all the dry ingredients into a plastic bag. You can substitute or remove some of…
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How to Pack a Sea Kayak Part 1: Selecting and Packing Dry Bags
Despite their small size, most sea kayaks can carry enough camping gear and food for a multi-week kayak camping trip, which is one of the main draws of paddling a sea kayak. You can travel far away from the car and camp in comfort. How to pack a sea kayak is the tricky part. You need to balance the trim, accessibility, kayak performance and ease-of-access. Additionally, when you pack a sea kayak, you need to make sure your gear, especially your sleeping bag and clothing, stays dry. To keep the gear dry, you pack it into dry bags, which are waterproof storage bags. Dry Bag Description A dry bag is…
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How to Dispose of Fish Guts in the Boundary Waters
This is a picture of how not to dispose of fish guts in the Boundary Waters and Minnesota. You don’t just leave them on the ground at a campsite for birds and animals to get into. We found this pile on Saturday. It wasn’t really a pile. The skins and guts were scattered by animals all over the campsite, which caused the campsite to smell like dead fish. It was unpleasantness incarnate. I piled up everything for the picture. So, how to dispose of fish guts in the Boundary Waters and Minnesota? If you don’t want to read everything, skip to the end. The Best Way: Pack them Out The…
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A Simple Menu for a 12,000-mile Backcountry Journey
On backcountry kayak camping trips, a varied and robust menu seems a given. There are dozens of camping cookbooks devoted to the topic, and 100s and 100s of recipes and even magazine columns devoted to cooking tasty treats while on the trail. All that food planning and preparation takes time and effort, so you might be tempted to ignore all that advice and just pack mac and cheese. National Geographic Adventurers of the Year Amy and Dave Freeman did just that on their 3-year, 12,000-mile kayak, canoe and dogsled journey from Seattle, Washington to Key West, Florida. They ditched the fancy menus and simplified each of their daily meals to…
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Launching Your Kayak in Light Surf
One of the challenges for new kayakers is launching your kayak in light surf, especially if you haven’t had any instruction and haven’t developed a sense of balance or gotten your sea legs. A light shore break can feel mighty challenging if you’ve never paddled out before, especially one with a slight dumping wave. The viral video making the rounds on the Internet right now shows a man trying to get through the surf break on a sit-on-top kayak. He fails big time, ends up mowed over by his kayak several times and eventually ends up on the rocks. While the video is suppose to be humorous, it shows the…
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Navigation: Leave Your Compass at Home and Use Handrails and Fences
Although it’s best to always have a compass with you, if you have a detailed chart or map, you don’t always need to use it when you’re navigating. If you use handrails, fences (also call catches) and checkpoints during the day, you needn’t check your compass often. Handrails and fences are techniques and features that do exactly what they sounds like they do; you follow a handrail and a fence keeps you in. A checkpoint is just like a checkpoint on a road or race. It’s a known point on the chart. A handrail is a feature or landmark that leads towards your destination and one that you can follow or…
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