>> > Jackie- > > Thanks for your response, and great ascii art as usual. One situation > that we may be faced with as our club grows is beginners who would like to > lead trips that are beyond their abilities as individual paddlers, let > alone as leaders. Does your club have a way to deal with this? This > possibility was raised by a member of another sea kayaking club in the > area who did have this problem come up last year... Hi Sarah, What did the other club do? How was it a problem? >> ********************************************************************** Since I was involved in this, I should explain. Last year my wife and I were the informal leaders of a small sea kayaking club that had no formal structure at all -- no officers, no bylaws, no elections, no dues, just a monthly meeting, weekly paddle and practice sessions on a city lake, and an occasional trip on Lake Superior. There was a person, whom I will call X, who came to meetings only when X wanted to find people to go on a trip. Otherwise, X had nothing to do with the club. Since X never came to our weekly paddles, we had no first-hand knowledge of X's skills. However, my wife knew X through other activities, and had heard that on one trip X in a sea kayak was unable to keep up with a person who was paddling a solo canoe. Furthermore, we had no knowledge that X had ever taken a sea kayaking class, knew how to brace, or knew how to do a group rescue. At one point X signed up for a beginning sea kayaking trip and then withdrew. When X proposed leading a kayak trip to Pukaskwa National Park on Lake Superior, my wife and I talked it over and decided that X probably did not have the skills to lead a safe trip. X had never been to Pukaskwa. Pukaskwa is a wilderness area with a scenic but rugged shoreline with long stretches where it can be difficult or impossible to go ashore in an emergency (see Bill Mason's capsize in "Waterwalker"). I have always had fair weather there, but one couple who we know has good skills was windbound there two years ago. We ourselves had a long hard slog through two- to three-foot clapotis one day that year, and I know someone else who capsized there later in the same week. Probably nothing would have happened and everyone would have had a great time, but we felt it was a risk we shouldn't take as a club. My wife called X to say we did not want the trip to be associated with the club and why. Ultimately, X abandoned that trip and instead led a couple of trips on more sheltered waters, though not for our club. Because we were not elected leaders, we were uncomfortable making this decision by ourselves. We would rather have had the authority of the club behind us. And because we had no formal trip guidelines, it was an arbitrary decision, though we felt it was a necessary one. For us the lesson was that we either needed to establish guidelines for trips and a more formal structure for the club, or to dissolve the club and join the Twin Cities Sea Kayaking Association (TCSKA), which we thought had already dealt with these issues. We chose the latter. Unfortunately, we were wrong, and these are issues we are grappling with today. Chuck Holst *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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