Ralph wrote; > >At the risk of advocating yet one more safety device, I have the >following suggestion. Buy a weather radio. Cheap as $19 at Radio >Shack, and even the ones with bells and whistles (water resistant case, >emergency weather alert signal, etc.) cost at most $49. It is something >one can buy and is fun to use, so it should please everyone. Very >simple to use like a PFD. Even simplier actually. With your PFD, you >have to go through so much bother such as open the zipper, put your arms >through the arm holes, zip up and then tighten any side cinch belts. >With the weather radio just turn the on-off knob. (SNIP) A weather radio can be handy but (always a but) they provide wide area forecasts that may not be applicable in your specific area. This particularly applies in areas with katabatic winds, thunder storms, significant natural land features, and the possibility that a weather system may not move as predicted. Here is a quote from Jeff Markell's The Sailor's Weather Guide. "Thus even with the best available forecasts in our hands, you and I, from time to time, encounter the unexpected - unexpected that is if we ourselves fail to keep our own weather watch. This means training ourselves as weather observers in the manner traditional among seafaring people." I have travelled with a professional meteorologist and he always pointed out the weather forecasts were never intended for local use. Anyone who thinks even a MAFOR report suitable for local purposes has never paddled on our nice benign Georgian Bay. I have paddled during the summer with not one peep out of the radio about thunder storms but those big hot rocks in the bay generate nifty thermals that grow in to even niftier thunderbumpers. By all means, carry that radio but watch the sky, sense the temperature, check the wind. Observe the changes. After a while you may find you don't need the radio and $14.00 will buy a nice bottle of an unassuming but pleasant wine suitable for drinking on a cold night in the north in the company of a pleasant companion. Now, that's fun. 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 Tue Dec 15 1998 - 04:33:20 PST
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