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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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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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How to Install a Northstar Solo Kneeling Drop
Guest post from Cliff Fawcett. If you’re wondering how to install a Northstar solo kneeling drop, this is how I did it. I purchased my Northstar Northwind Solo with the standard (sitting) seat drops. If you’re not familiar with the term, the seat drop is the piece between the gunwale and the seat that determines the height of the seat from the floor of the canoe. This is what a standard seat drop looks like for the Northstar Northwind Solo. After paddling the Northwind Solo for the first season with the standard seat drops, I was interested in trying out the kneeling drops. Kneeling drops allow the seat to be…
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How to Store and Clean a Sawyer Water Filter for the Off Season
Over the years, I’ve used the Sawyer Squeeze Filter and the Sawyer Mini (Reviews: Sawyer Squeeze, Mini and the Kataydn BeFree). Usually during the first year they do great. The flow is good for the most part, and they work fine. Then winter comes, and they get stored. After storage, they never seem to work like they did the first year. This is especially true for the BeFree, which I’ve given up on completely after having a trip where it would take 5 to 10 minutes per liter. The Sawyer filters seem to do better after storage, but never get back to the flow rates I’d expect. This fall, I…
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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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Kayaking Accessories for Beginners
As a first time kayak buyer, you probably didn’t know or don’t know what kayaking accessories to get with your first kayak, and unless you bought from a knowledgeable salesperson, who also kayaks, he probably didn’t get you everything that you needed. The problem is two-fold: 1. Many salespeople don’t understand kayaking. 2. When you first start, the kayaking accessories just don’t seem necessary. A third problem occurs when you run into a salesperson that believes the second point. Although the first problem is easy to fix — just go to a different store — the second is much harder. To fix that second, you can take a sea kayaking…
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What I Carry on my Life Vest for Kayaking
What you carry on your life vest for kayaking varies based on personal choice and what you use your vest for. But, many beginners or intermediate paddlers skip carrying gear on their vest in favor of throwing it into a day hatch. That can be a bad choice. As the Coast Guard says, “If it isn’t on you, you don’t have it.” As an example of what to carry, I present to you what I carry on my life vest for kayaking. Vest fit is personal, but also a bit of a compromise with features. The vest that fit me best only had one tight pocket and made it impossible…
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How to Pick the Perfect Campsite
At the end of a long, hard day of kayaking or canoeing finding the perfect campsite can boost your morale and make the day’s effort feel more rewarding. With limited daylight and no desire to paddle further, and a just okay campsite at your bow, it’s tempting to paddle on just to see what’s around the corner. Follow the advice on this How to Pick the Perfect Campsite flow chart, you’ll find the perfect campsite every time you start to look. Click the image to view it larger.
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How to Install a NDK Kayaks High Performance Seat
If you own an older NDK (Nigel Dennis Kayaks), now called Sea Kayaking UK, you’ve probably experienced a broken seat. The older seats were fiberglassed into the kayak under the deck and that fiberglass would eventually tear away. The standard replacement was a foam seat, but now you can install a NDK high performance seat yourself. It takes about 2 hours to install a high performance seat, although it can take much less time if you’re used to repairing kayaks. Even if you don’t need to replace your old seat, you may want to consider a new seat, because they’re much more comfortable and the built-in back band is great. The…
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Print BSB Raster Charts the Easy Way: NOAA Charts for Free
For kayakers, buying multiple full-sized charts is not only expensive (at $25 a chart), but the full-sized charts are impractical for folding and carrying in a map case. I much prefer to use free NOAA bsb charts and print them on my own. I’ve written an article about how to Print Your Own NOAA Charts using a command line bsb converter, and I’ve also used an graphical interface for NOAA Marine Chart converting. If you have a lot of charts to convert, you can set up a script using the command line bsb converter to make quick work of it. If you have just a few, you can use the graphical interface…
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The Path to Torso Rotation
In kayaking, if you can rotate your torso, your strokes can become more effective. If you’ve ever taken a lesson or read a book on the forward stroke, you’ve probably heard “rotate, rotate, rotate” or some kind of encouragement like “show me your back, show me your chest” to force you to rotate. The reason for the emphasis is that torso rotation, done the right way, gives your forward stroke more power. It’s not just for the forward stroke though; almost every stroke, from sweeps, draws, rolls, etc., work better with torso rotation. To take advantage of the torso rotation, you have to be able to rotate your torso, and, although that…
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Guerrilla Camping for Canoeists and Kayakers
I awoke with a start, not due to loud rumbling, but due to the ground shaking under my sleeping bag. It was 3:30am and a heavily laden freight train was headed north on tracks located just across the river, less than 30 yards from my tent. We were guerrilla camping along the Tioughnioga River in upstate New York paralleled by a little used railroad line. It was the only train we heard or saw during our trip down river, but its timing was exquisite. After the train passed I snoozed a little and then got up to the sounds of wild turkeys coming off their roosts on the nearby hillside. …
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Stealth Camping: the Path of the Ninja Paddler
Many of the areas that I’ve paddled have built up shoreline with houses coming almost to the water and parks, if they exist at all, more than a day’s paddle away, or parks that don’t allow camping. During a multi-day kayaking or canoeing trip, if you want to camp in these areas, you’ll camp on private property at some point — known as stealth camping. In a few countries, such as Norway, you have the right to access, which means that you can camp freely on wildlands and other private lands. In Norway, as long as the land is uncultivated, you can pretty much camp there (see the Outdoor Recreation…
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How to Call Mayday When Kayaking or Canoeing
Hopefully, when canoeing or kayaking you’ll never get yourself into a situation where you need to call for outside help, but if you do find yourself there, you need to know how to call Mayday. A Mayday call is an internationally recognized distress signal used to signal a life-threatening emergency that, if heard, should trigger a rescue. Before you learn how to call for Mayday, you need to learn about VHF radios and if you don’t own one, you need to budget for one, because they are one of the items that any coastal kayaker and many canoeists should own. What is a VHF Radio? A marine VHF radio is a two-way…
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Organizing Camping Gear for Canoe Camping and Kayak Camping
Many checklists that help with organizing camping gear are broken down into categories that don’t necessarily reflect how we live our lives in our homes. For example, a checklist might break the list into paddling clothing, camp clothing, personal gear, group gear and personal items. At a glance, you can’t really tell what you’re bringing. Instead of using broad categories to organize your checklist, narrow your categories and make them reflect rooms in your home. By making them reflect rooms in your home, you instantly can link what’s in each category with what’s typically in that room in your home. Organizing Camping Gear by Category To make your camping checklist…
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