I got to thinking this morning after getting a Bliven post in which he chided me about my sling psychrometer and the dangers to nearby paddlers who might not be wearing their hard hats. In the past I have preached about avoiding accidents (frequently a euphemism for stupidity or ignorance) as opposed to learning how to extricate yourself from them after they happen. This fog thing is a good example. Here is little quiz. This is an honour quiz. Do not get help nor use a reference book . DO NOT CLICK on the little book in the lower right hand corner of your screen. That's cheating. How many of you paddle where fog can be a problem? How many of you know that you paddle where fog can be a problem? How many of you carry a sling psychrometer in your boat. If you do not have sling psychrometer do you carry an accurate hygrometer, a thermometer and the dew point charts? Do you know how an why fog forms? Now for a couple of fog stories. Some years back we paddled the north shore of Superior. Spent three solid days in fog. How did we navigate? We didn't. Couldn't see the scenery so we camped. A couple of years later I paddled the same shore. Had two days of fog along a boring section of coast. How did I navigate? Didn't. Camped and read John "Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards" (Some parts as boring as the scenery) Could have paddled using old paddling rule when traveling west to east on Superior, "Always keep the rocks on your left" but why bother? Many years ago paddled north shore of Georgian Bay with son. Heavy fog started rolling in. How did we navigate? Turned in to shore and stopped till afternoon. Cleared off into gorgeous day. Would have missed some pleasant scenery and my son explaining why his rock music was better than in my day. He thought Buddy Holly was a Christmas decoration. Last year fog set in on the morning I was to paddle home from the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Association's Spring meeting. One couple was going to the same put-in spot and had a GPS. They decided to paddle through the fog. Thought it might be a good opportunity to see how well a GPS works. It did and we got back just fine. Others arrived an hour later having paddled in clear conditions without aid of a GPS. HMMMM. What was the rush? Cheers, John Winters Redwing Designs Specialists in Human Powered Watercraft http://home.ican.net/~735769/ *************************************************************************** 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 Sun Apr 12 1998 - 05:03:30 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:29:55 PDT