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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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Build Your Own Greenland-style Skin-on-Frame Kayak Course
This winter, you should visit Grand Marais, Minnesota, one of the best paddling towns in the U.S., and learn how to build a skin-on-frame sea kayak. In late March, North House Folk School is offering a 12-day course on how to build your own skin-on-frame kayak. At the end of the course, you’ll have a kayak that you build with your own hands and is ready to take home. I’ve built a skin-on-frame kayak before and it was a rewarding project, and I ended up with a fun kayak that I used for a number of years. The hardest part of the project for me was trying to learn everything…
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PaddlingLight was Philosophical about Paddling in 2012
PaddlingLight was Philosophical about Paddling in 2012! In past years, I’ve tried to stay much more focused on practical issues about building kayaks and canoe, kayak and canoe tripping skills and general how-to articles, but for some reason in 2012, I got philosophical about wilderness and paddling (Perhaps because wilderness is now under extreme threat in the U.S. This is the first congress to NOT protect any additional land in the U.S. in modern times). One of the nice things about blogging is that I set the sites agenda, and I usually set it on a week by week basis that depends on what I’m thinking about at the time, but as…
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This vs That in Kayaking
Over on PaddlingLight’s Facebook page, I posed a question and some thoughts about paddling sponsorship. Basically, I noticed that more sponsored paddlers are getting sponsored without having to go out on expeditions. I wondered what that does to the look and appeal of paddling (from a manufacturer’s standpoint, it may make sense this way: you get your gear out to the influencers; they influence the hard core paddlers who buy your gear; the hard core show it off to their friends who buy it; and then it trickles down from there). My thought was that I’d rather that sea kayaking look like National Geographic instead of some kind of extreme sport. That…
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Swag: Boombotix Boombot Review
Boombotix, an outdoor speaker company, recently sent me a Boombotix Boombot speaker for review. Now and then, I think it might be fun to sit around a fire under a dark sky while listening to some Trampled by Turtles, Bon Iver or maybe a little Neil Young. Or during a training paddling, listen to music via speaker instead of via headphones. This speaker offers a semi-waterproof way to make that happen. Here’s what Boombotix says about the speaker: The Boombot1 is an ultraportable speaker that offers incredible BOOM for the buck. The Boombot1 fuses Japanese urban design with acoustic technology in a palm-sized portable package. It works with ANY audio source…
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Living in the Last Scrap of the Golden Age of Wilderness Paddling
After reading an article on the potential sale of more than 1,800 hectares and 30 kilometers of undeveloped Lake Superior shoreline potentially to developers who plan to develop the untouched bays, it occurred to me that we, as in the kayakers and canoeist alive right now, might be living in the last scrap of the golden age of wilderness paddling in the Great Lakes basin. And, I wonder if there’s any stopping the development of the remaining undeveloped areas on the Great Lakes. And, I wonder, even with the current protections, if those will remain as more people desire their own little piece of the big lakes. Wilderness paddling in…
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Learn to Kayak Because Zombies Can’t Swim
I’ve gotten enough requests for the Learn to Kayak Because Zombies Can’t Swim t-shirt that I’ve decided to offer it from a print-on-demand t-shirt company. This means that if you didn’t get a chance to buy a Kayaker vs. Zombie t-shirt during the first run, you can get one now. You also have several options for the designs as well. I’ve included t-shirts that are similar to the original versions which have the North Shore Expeditions logo on the front and the Learn to Kayak Because Zombies Can’t Swim design (pictured below) on the back. I’m also offering t-shirts with just the Kayaker vs. Zombie design on the front. Even…
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Belcher Island Kayak Plans
The Belcher Island Kayak was collected in 1958 from Great Whale River where it was built by “Adlaykok” or Allaiquq. It appears as figure 46 in E.Y. Arima’s Inuit Kayaks in Canada: A Review of Historical Records and Construction, Based Mainly on the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s Collection. Arima notes that it was likely built for demonstration, and that its 22-foot length and 29.5-inch beam would make for a good trade kayak between the Belcher Islands and mainland. He also notes that it’s likely as much as a single paddler could handle by himself. The condition of the kayak was rather poor when the lines were taken. The bottom was collapsed and…
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Howl of the Wolf
Usually, I keep PaddlingLight free of controversial issues, but occasionally when something occurs that affects an integral part of the wilderness exploration experience, such as When They Want to Take Away Wilderness (read it before you vote this year), I feel like I need to write something to send out to all the readers and visitors of PaddlingLight (over 600 via email and rss and over 20,000 unique visitors a month). Now, Minnesota’s canoe country and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the premier canoeing destinations in the world, faces a threat to the wilderness experience. Today, Minnesota begins a 3,600-hunter, wolf hunt with the goal of killing 400 wolves a year. Once the DNR got…
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North Water Hydration Holster Review
When I’m out on a long distance trip, I like to hydrate by using a hydration pack, but for day trips and calm water, I prefer a water bottle. Keeping that water bottle handy without having to pop a sprayskirt is a challenge. While the deck bungees works well for some things, they don’t have enough holding power to keep a water bottle on deck. And I tend to stay away from storing anything more than spare paddles and a map on the deck, because it annoys me to have anything large up there. That’s why I like to use the North Water Hydration Holster. The North Water Deck Mounted…
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Ah, Matey, Drop the Kayak Sea Anchor (Drogue), We Be Waiting Out the Storm
The above illustration comes from E.Y. Arima’s Inuit Kayaks in Canada: A Review of Historical Records and Construction, Based Mainly on the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s Collection. It shows a group of kayaks rafted together, under sail, dragging behind them an inflated seal skin, which supported geese carcasses being used as a kayak sea anchor (in this case, a drogue as it’s dragging behind). The kayak sea anchor was used to allow the kayak party to sleep a night at sea as they crossed from thew mainland to the Belcher Islands. Modern kayak sea anchors or kayak drogues are a bit less sophisticated that a seal skin and geese; they’re…
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The Joy of Canoe
The ripples slap against the sea green hull of my canoe and the light wind rumbles in my ears as I paddle towards the clam, leeside of Devil Track Lake. Kneeling in the center of the canoe, leaning the boat to make it easy to reach the water, I take strokes only on one side of the hull. A bow draw blended with a forward blended with a “J” keeps the canoe going straight despite the wind. When my attention wanders, the wind changes my course and I have to pull harder on the draw and push harder on the pry until the canoe reclaims the correct direction. Whether I…
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Dreaming About Belcher Islands Kayaking
Today, I was going to write an essay about my view on rough water sea kayaking and whether or not this specific subset of sea kayaking really fits in with my view of what sea kayaking is and whether or not the continued emphasis on rough water paddling is good for the sport, but I got sidetracked, probably for the better, by the Google maps on GeoGarage while trying to identify several lights that I saw last night from across Lake Superior. What I saw on Google maps that blew my mind was the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, and the cool thing: the islands have a history of kayaking that goes…
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Twin Lakes Canoe Route Trip Report
Just 25 miles from Grand Marais, Minnesota, the Twin Lakes Canoe Route [pdf] offers canoeists a five lake adventure that unlike the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness doesn’t cost a dime and doesn’t require a permit. The US Forest Service describes the the Twin Lakes Canoe Route as a quiet, wilderness-like lake experience featuring five water accessed campsites, four portages and plenty of fishing. While we’ve day tripped on the lakes before, we never camped, so with only one night to spare, we decided to give it a go. The Twin Lakes Canoe Route Put-In The put-in for the Twin Lakes Canoe Route is 16.5 miles up the Gunflint Trail…
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Save the Boundary Waters From Cell Towers Letter Writing Campaign
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) is one of only two federally designation canoe wilderness areas in the United States of America. It’s also America’s most used federally designated wilderness area, an area that Americans set aside to protect and preserve under two separate pieces of bipartisan federal legislation. It consists over 1,000 lakes connected by portage trails within a million acres of roadless wilderness. It also has primitive campsites that allow canoeists the possibility of paddling for a month without seeing anything man-made intruding. Aldo Leopold argued that outdoor recreation is valuable directly proportional to the experience’s intensity, and “to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.” And it’s this reason that…
