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Spring(?) Kayaking on Brule Lake in the BWCA
This spring has been slow in coming. In northern Minnesota, we’re between 14 and 20 days behind median ice out, and it’s wearing a little thin on the nerves. This week some of the bigger lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness finally started to go out, so with that in mind, Jeffrey and Michelle Forseth of Sea Kayak Safety and I went to paddle on Brule Lake. The put-in was completely ice free and it was 50°F, so we figured that we were golden, but as we paddled east along the shore, we started to run into ice and soon ice coated as far as we could see,…
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Kayak Outfitting Idea: Non-Skid Tape to Prevent Jammed Fingers
Last December, I read a blog post on Rouge Wave Adventures about how to performance tune a new sea kayak (the post contained many great tips, so I suggest you check it out). What I really liked about the post is that it suggested a new technique that solved an actual problem that I’ve experienced and you may have also. The technique was installing non-skid tape, such as Land N Sea Vinyl Traction Tape on a sea kayak to prevent jammed fingers. When getting out of the kayak’s cockpit, you often put your hands behind you and push on the rear deck to lift your rear. Now and then, when the deck…
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Dorcy LED Headlamp Review
Over the last few months, I’ve been using a couple of Dorcy LED headlamps that they sent to me to review. I’m a bit of a headlamp geek, so I’m always excited when I get a chance to use a new headlamp. But, I’ve settled into using two high-end headlamps that I really like (see The Petzl Zipka Plus vs. the Princeton Tec EOS Headlamp shootout), so I haven’t played around with any new lights lately. High-end headlamps aren’t for everyone and not everyone wants to dish out $40 for a headlamp. Some people would rather spend around $20. The problem with lights at that price is that they’re usually dim and…
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Why didn’t the kayaker cross the road? Ferry angles in kayaking
The Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys connects the Middle Keys to the Lower Keys. Under the bridge, the water is shallow, and it seems like the 1,000 square miles of the Florida Bay flows through the opening on the tide generating up to 4 knot currents. In a kayak, the current is swift enough to push you out to sea on an ebb tide or into the bay on flood. The common practice in a situation such as this is to find a ferry angle that prevents you from drifting out to sea and this is also a common practice with preventing leeway in cross winds. This is…
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Touring Sanborn Canoe Company’s Wood Shop
When I think of Sanborn Canoe Company, I think of handcrafted paddles steeped in the heritage of Minnesota’s canoe country. Their paddles take the names of some of the most scenic lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, America’s most used and loved wilderness area. And the owners are the same guys breaking their backs making the paddles. They’re the real deal that love paddling so much that they were willing to sacrifice steady 9-5 jobs to build paddles that can be trusted on long canoe trips. As far as the paddles that they make, they do both bent shaft paddles with modern shapes and traditional paddles. They also offer…
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Kayak Camping: A lesson in leaving no trace and how to poop in the woods
See that island in the distance? The one surrounded by mangroves. Unlike other mangrove islands, the center of this one was all sand instead of clay. It also had a sandy beach that faced north with a view to the distant Seven-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys and a view towards the setting sun. With the tide out, the beach extended about 100 feet. For sunrise, tidal pools formed in old coral reefs or limestone bedrock. The center of the island raised far above the tide. The open nature of the island meant that the breeze would help keep the no-see-ums away after the sun went down. It seemed like…
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Press Release: Attempt to Circumnavigate the World Suspended
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Unattempt to Circumnavigate the World by Kayak Suspended Grand Marais, Minnesota (April 1, 2013) — Today expedition paddler Bryan Hansel indefinately suspended his attempt to attempt a never before attempted kayaking route in the pursuit of becoming the first person in the world to circumnavigate the world by kayak. He was attempting the solo expedition to bring attention to the slowest growing religion in the world, The Church of the Latter-Day Dude. The expedition was set to start on the Great Lakes, travel to England via Greenland and Iceland. Then journey to the Mediterranean Sea to the Suez Channel and around India, with a short jaunt below…
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The Roadless Coast Kayaking Trip Documentary is Now Free
Today, the award-winning film Ikkatsu: The Roadless Coast available for viewing to the public. This is about a kayaking trip that documented the Japanese Tsunami debris along the Washington coast. Here’s the blurb from the movie: In March of 2011 Japan suffered a devastating earthquake followed by a series of equally devastating tsunamis. As the waters receded, an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris was washed back into the Pacific – all of which was destined to land on distant shores. In the summer of 2012 three professional kayakers, supported by a staff of mainstream scientists started an unprecedented journey; paddle the roadless coast of Washington to survey the debris on some…
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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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Solo Stove: a Lightweight Cooking Solution
I’d like to announce a new advertiser on PaddlingLight.com. Today, we added Solo Stove, a wood-burning backpacking stove that can also be used with alcohol burners as a backup. The Solo Stove boils a quart of water in about eight to ten minutes using sticks, twigs, pine cones or other burnable items. It weighs 9 ounces and fits inside a 4.5 inch by 4.7 inch pot. Both the pot and stove weigh just over a pound when taken together. This is only an ounce heavier than a PocketRocket stove setup (without the fuel) and it comes close to a popcan stove setup if you include the fuel for the popcan. On longer trips,…
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Press Release: Kayaker to Attempt to Circumnavigate the World for a Cause
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Kayaker to Unattempt a New Route for a Cause Grand Marais, Minnesota (March 2, 2013) — Starting on April 1st, 2013 expedition paddler Bryan Hansel will attempt a never before attempted kayaking route in the pursuit of becoming the first person in the world to circumnavigate the world by kayak. He’s attempting the solo expedition to bring attention to the slowest growing religion in the world, The Church of the Latter-Day Dude. Hansel begins his journey in the Great Lakes where he’ll paddle from Grand Marias, Minn. on Lake Superior out the Saint Lawrence Seaway. After reaching the Atlantic coast, he’ll head north and cross the gap between North America…
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Kayaking Norway’s Lofoten Islands
In 2008, a friend and I took a trip to Norway’s Lofoten Islands to kayak and tour the countryside. I wrote about the Fram Museum Kayaks in Oslo before, but I’ve never written about the trip itself. I usually write a bit more about the nitty gritty details of my trips, but this time, I’m mainly going to include photos and talk slideshow style, because the trip had its upsides and downside due to the nature of how it was designed by a tour company we hired — we didn’t kayak camp and we sometimes drove to new places to kayak instead of starting at one point and making our…
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Winter Canoe Paintings
Each winter photographers and painters from around the Midwest gather at the YMCA canoe camp Menogyn for the Grand Marais Art Colony’s Winter Arts Festival. This year, the art’s festival ran from January 25th to February 1st. During the week, plein air painters, Neil Sherman, Matt Kania and Tom McGregor painted canoes racked for the winter at the camp. The contrast between the white snow and blues, reds and greens of the canoes popped off the wall during the show that runs all of February at the Grand Marais art colony. (Featured painting by Tom McGregor.) I caught up with each of the painters and asked them a few questions: PaddlingLight: Canoes,…
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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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PaddlingLight needs your help!!! Big time.
I need your help to stop a proposed law in the state that I live that directly affects whether or not I can continue to publish and write on PaddlingLight as it directly impacts PaddlingLight’s primary income source. The law is called an Affiliate Nexus Tax and it’s an attempt to force out-of-state retailers to collect state sales tax. The sad part of this is that Minnesota might sacrifice 4,500 jobs and $300 million in income over a law that has already been struck down as unconstitutional in a circuit court in Illinois. More info below. What you can do is write the folks listed at the bottom of the article. If you don’t live…
