Re: [Paddlewise] bans on sea kayakers

>From: ralph diaz <rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com>
>4.  Security areas.  It is easy to forget that some places are protected
>for security or other reasons.  Here, the vicinity of the Statue of
>Liberty is one.  We are not supposed to get closer than x feet.  This is
>especially true around the back end or westernmost side where there is a
>landable beach of sorts.  I have had park rangers come running over with
>hastily shouldered rifles when coming close in that area.

Jeez Ralph,
I know my American cousins are trigger-happy, but what the hell is there on 
Ellis Island that requires the threat of deadly force to defend? Or is this 
one of those deals where if you tell us, you have to kill us? And whatever 
happened to that motto on Lady Liberty "give me your poor... your gasping 
kayakers yearning to take a pee?" (some paraphrasing may have occurred:-)

>Who
>else has seen such incidents or knows of such bans or restrictions?

When I lived in Toronto, I was paddling near the Pickering Nuclear Power 
Plant and I was buzzed good and close by a security boat. At the time, some 
folks were actually questioning the wisdom of generating wastes with lives 
measure in hundreds of thousands of years (and a study has shown that the 
Pickering Plant was being run with a sloppyness that would have appalled 
Homer Simpson). And I was obviously some kinda tree- or seaweed-hugging 
hippy, since I was actually sweating to move my boat around instead of 
burning hydrocarbon like a normal person would...

Philip Torrens
N49°16' W123°06'


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