Some posters suggested holding a cold water workshop. The Boathouse is doing that in a few weeks, free of charge, through the good offices of Randy Henriksen and his New York Kayak shop, which has arranged for an RN to speak and also demo dry suits and polartec suits, etc. Randy also has a presentation, which I have not seen, regarding assessing risks, equipment, skills etc. in some sort of index or matrix, I think. Randy said something in passing about equipment is not enough, meaning, I think, that cold water gear and safety gear are not enough. If so, I agree as this is the sage point raise by our own John Winters and the confidence it may give to do risky things that person is not skilled enought to handle...but that is another story...some passive safety aids like cold water clothing can't really hurt. Randy also with principals at the Boathouse, mainly Tim Gamble who is informally in charge of safety issues, have run several self- and assisted rescue classes free of charge over the summer after work. The mag staff did come to one of the rescue ones, which we were all glad to see them do as they did not have an inkling of what to do and had been going out for a year in all sorts of conditions without this basic skill. I did stress to the mag people I ran into last week that they should very much attend the free cold water work shop. One of them who seemed to be at least listening a bit said she would attend. The Boathouse does have some general rules posted but maybe they should be more stressed in big block letters. There is a general rule to wear a PFD, for example, and it is enforced with the public boat program but not so much with people in their own boats using the site for launching. We are tightening up specifically with the public boats in the public program; but the rest of the time there is no safety cop around. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Nov 02 1999 - 12:43:28 PST
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