My name is John Ware, and judging from everyone's ages I must be a middle age fart at 44. Some of my earliest memories are of sailing and napping on the floorboards of my father D scow sailboat on Lake Geneva, WI. My love of sailing and the water in general is based in 35 years of racing and pleasure sailing. About 15 years ago I was introduced to sea kayaking with an afternoon of paddling in my brothers kayak. Unfortunately I became an overweight load until a body reclamation project 15 months ago. Last August I finally made it to the range to fit in a kayak and as a reward I went out and bought the first kayak I saw, a Dagger Sitka and have been hooked since. I live in St. Paul, MN so most of my "experience gathering" has been on local lakes and rivers with several trips to Lake Superior before it turned from liquid to solid. Most of my paddling for the past 3 months has involved large amounts of chlorine in which I've perfected rolling on both sides, reentry and roll, and I've tried and accomplished the reenter - attach the skirt - then roll, which seems to be right at my limit of that "turning blue from lack of air" zone. To further immerse myself in the sport and hopefully not the lakes I recently ran for and was elected to our clubs board of directors so I need to do a shameless plug for our club, Twin Cities Sea Kayak Association and our new website at http://www.virtualmn.com/tcska. I'm looking forward to Spring and as many trips as my wife and daughter will allow me to take. I'm also looking forward to a new boat I ordered in December, a VCP Aquila, which is due in 6 weeks. This list and the people who contribute to it are a fabulous resource to everyone addicted to this activity. From equipment pros and cons to technique explanations it been a real education, thanks to all. jware -- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:56 PDT