Tee wrote: >#2 Does anyone kayak with their significant other fairly regularly? How >do you find keeping pace with one another? Do you enjoy it more or less >when you kayak with them? Do you prefer kayaking in your own kayak or a >tandem? Yep, as much as we can. We get in a half-dozen overnights, a couple week-long trips, and a couple dozen day trips as well, each year. Most of the time we paddle single yaks, and we are fairly evenly matched for pace for a two- three-hour paddle, although the male half has a lot more endurance. Sometimes we find I'm still feeling strong, and she is through for the day. If you are finding your male partner is always way ahead of you, sneak a drogue onto his tail! Or, hang in there until he ages some ... "old" bulls are lots more enjoyable than "young" ones, I've heard. <G> I almost always enjoy trips more when I paddle with my SO, because we enjoy each other's company, and have similar styles in the outdoors. She never paddles alone, and almost never with others, so I don't know if she would enjoy paddling with others more. I think if there were some women around here as strong and adaptable as she is to paddling, she would really enjoy group paddles with them. I know we both really like paddling with other couples, and she appreciates having another woman around to leaven the male ... "ambience." We have a double (Folbot Greenland II), and have done a couple overnights and several day trips in it. It has a downwind sail rig, which she likes a lot. We plan two weeks in it this summer, so I'll know more then. Although we both like the independence of using singles, there is something akin to ballroom dancing in the dynamics of paddling the G II, because it requires close-coupled paddling. I take the rear, so I have to match my stroke to hers. This took some experimenting with longer and shorter paddles to equalize our cadences. I like the rhythym of the double, and think longer trips will be fun. I have a couple weeks of prior sea time in a double on guided trips (and using group gear), which was not as much fun, because stuff was not fine-tuned well enough. A double will demand that the two of you truly work together, and your degree of success is probably a measure of something ... but I'm already in "Deep Trouble" with some other things I've said in this post, so I'll shut up on that! Good luck, Tee -- email us back and let us know how it all turned out! -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR sea kayaker/teacher *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Mar 24 1998 - 20:52:36 PST
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