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KÜHL Sun-Protective Shirts Review
Being outdoors and on the water exposes us to harmful UV from the sun. The leathery outdoors person is a typical cliché, but if you spend a lot of time outdoors, that’s the look you’ll get. According the the Skin Cancer Foundation, “An estimated 90 percent of skin aging is caused by the sun. People who use sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher daily show 24 percent less skin aging than those who do not use sunscreen daily.” This doesn’t even touch on the health issues, such as skin cancer, caused by sun exposure. That’s where men’s sun-protective shirts and women’s sun-protective shirts come into play. They help…
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Nightcore P30i Review – an impressive wide-throw flashlight
Recently, Nightcore reached out and asked me to do a Nightcore P30i Review. The P30i is a wide-throw, long-range and rechargeable flashlight. The opportunity to do a review on a Nightcore product was exciting, because I’ve heard great things about the Nightcore NU25, a lightweight headlamp of just over an ounce that gained popularity in the lightweight hiking world. The P30i is a completely different beast and to let the cat out of the bag early, a flashlight that I’ve fallen in love with. Reviewing the specs of the Nightcore P30i makes it seem like an impressive flashlight. At the strongest setting, it outputs 2,000 lumens and throws up to…
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Big Agnes Seedhouse SL 2 Review: The Classic Tent
Review of the Big Agnes Seedhouse SL 2 Tent.
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Reviews of Boat Building Books
Concise reviews of 19, count them, 19 boat building books. This list will get you started building boats of your own. It's easy just check out my building log for my latest kayak.
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Review List
Books, Videos and Movies Building Supplies Camping Toys Canoes and Kayaks Clothing Paddles Paddling Gear Portage Packs Shelters Sleeping Bags Stoves and Cooking Gear Tents Water Filters and Treatments
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Fenix PD36R Flashlight Review
Having a bright flashlight with you on a paddling trip, especially when night paddling, can make a difference between being able to navigate and being able to be seen while on the water and not. In the U.S. if you paddle at night, the U.S. Coast Guard requires that you carry a bright, white light to point at other boats as needed. The ideal flashlight will be bright, light and watertight. To that end, I was recently able to checkout a new flashlight by Fenix. This is my Fenix PD36R Flashlight Review. The Fenix PD36R is an USB-C rechargeable flashlight with a maximum brightness of 1600 lumens out to the…
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NRS Boundary Boot Review
If there’s one thing about early season paddling it is this: your feet get cold. This is especially true if you have the wrong gear and keep sticking your feet into icy water. Over the years, I’ve tried different methods of keeping my feet warm and have settled on using a dry suit, warm socks and the NRS Boundary Boot, which is a classic piece from NRS. Every year, I think about writing a review for these shoes, but never get around to doing it. So here’s my NRS Boundary Boot review. The way that NRS describes the NRS Boundary Boot makes you think it is a shoe designed for…
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Northstar Polaris Canoe Review
This is my Northstar Polaris review — well, mini-review of the Polaris. Summary: If I could only own one canoe in the world, this would be it. Longer Northstar Polaris Review The canoe is a Northstar Polaris. I’m using one with their BlackLite layup, carbon fiber and Aramid with a resin coat on the outside. It has wood trim, which is an upgrade over the standard aluminum trim. The seats, thwarts, yoke and deck are laminated ash and walnut and the gunwales are ash. I ordered it with a kneeling thwart to use solo after the rest of the crew is hanging in camp and I need to paddle somewhere…
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First Look: MyCanoe Review
The MyCanoe is a foldable, origami-style plastic canoe designed for easy storage and transport. This 14′ 6″ canoe folds up in a similar style to the more familiar Oru Kayak, and it packs down into two cases. The first case, created in part by parts of the canoe, measures approximately 37 inches wide by 25 inches high and 8 inches deep. The second case is soft sided. It measures about half the height of the other case. Both cases easily fit inside the trunk of a compact car such as a Toyota Corolla. The entire package weighs about 52 pounds and has a claimed capacity of 400 pounds. I had a chance…
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Ranting about Painters — WITH a Paddle in IT!
Here we go again. It’s that time of the year when paddlers make silly points on the Internet. I never understand the silly need of people to comment about how a photo of a canoe or kayak that they saw on social media doesn’t meet their idea of what a canoe or kayak should be or some other silliness like that. To be completely honest (cliched phrase on purpose, because it’s like a cliche that you going to get someone who thinks they are the know-it-all paddler to comment on a photo that they have no knowledge of), I just don’t even have the energy to continue describing this type…
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Review Jon Turk’s Crocodiles and Ice
Jon Turk’s latest book Crocodiles and Ice [Buy from Amazon] takes the reader through a half dozen of his adventures starting from when he was a child cutting across an immaculate lawn on a shortcut to his grade school to a hike in the mountains in his late 60s. In short, it’s an autobiographical story of his life – of sorts. In it he describes why he chose the life he chose. He describes his motivations and tells us about some of his trips – while maybe not the defining trips of his life, they seem to have helped shape his life or help shape the narrative that he wants to tell.…
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Xshot Dome Port Review
Like many paddlers, I bought a GoPro camera. I used it for a season to shoot lots of video, but didn’t do anything with the video — because most of it was pretty boring. Eventually, bored of shooting action video, the GoPro sat in the corner of my office gathering dust. That is until I got my hands on an XShot Dome Port to review. The XShot Dome Port is a 6-inch dome port designed to allow you to use your GoPro Hero 3 or Hero 4 to get “half-and-half” waterline shots. This gives you a picture that is half above the waterline and half below the waterline. It also…
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Mythic Gear Drysuit Review: a Budget Drysuit
The water temperature on my home waters of Lake Superior seldom rises above 55°F. For most of the year, it’s much lower. It’s not unusual to have temps in the 30s even on the summer solstice. The warmest I’ve seen the big lake is in the 70s after unusually calm stretches of weather in August when the air temp reached into the lower-80s. It doesn’t stay that warm long. It can literally drop from the 70s to the 40s overnight. I’ve seen that happen several times when 5 to 6-foot waves mix the surface water with the colder water just a few feet lower. Because the lake is so cold,…
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Northstar Phoenix Mini-Review
I’ll admit it right up front: I’m a Ted Bell and David Yost fan. I used to own a Bell Magic and Bell Wildfire. Those canoes really paddled like Magic and were the best combo to own. The Magic was perfect for fast and light tripping in the BWCA and the Wildfire was a fun boat to take down rivers or just mess about in on flat water. I was bummed when I heard that Bell Canoe went out of business. And then Ted Bell got back in business under the name of Northstar Canoe. And then I ran into a perfect deal. The deal was a trade from my old…
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Watson’s Merino Wool Long Underwear Review
Starting in late winter and early spring, I’ve been testing Watson’s Merino 150 Wool Long Underwear. Watson’s, a company I wasn’t familiar with, is part of Chateau Lingerie, a company based out of Quebec, Canada. While I used the long underwear mainly for walking around and on photography outings instead of paddling trips, I feel like I’ve used it enough to provide an honest review. For canoeing, it will function basically the same as it does for wearing around. For kayaking for me, it’s all about whether or not it’s comfortable under a drysuit (see below). The two pieces I was provided with for review were the Merino 150 Long Sleeve Top and the…
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