Peter, As for the foot gear part of your question be careful if you have long legs and big feet. Very likely your Wellies won't fit into the kayak if it is a narrow Greenland style boat. Our local club has a guy who insists on wearing his big rubber boots for winter paddling in his Romany. His solution was to cut out two big circles in the deck and cast fiberglass domes for the toes of his boots. Unless you want to deface your kayak by adding "breasts" on the deck you might want to try Chota boots as a compromise. They are neoprene dive boot type booties with a high upper that comes up over the calf. I agree with Dave Seng that a Gortex drysuit would probably be wise for that part of the world. It will be cool, very windy and according to John Turk there are parts on the west coast where they get 400+ inches of rain per year! Water temps likely will be very chilly as well. Even if you don't fall in the drysuit will keep you comfy during those lunch stops in the 40 knot winds 50F temps and horizontal rain. Any chance you could share some advice on getting maps, charts, kayak shipping etc. in that part of the world. Any Chileans or Argentinians on the list who could help us out? Do you have local contacts for getting your boat or are you shipping it from New Zealand? With any luck I will be part of an expedition leaving at the start of January and paddling for two months from either Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales through the Western Islands and Fiords to Seno Andrew, and then for the really crazy part - portage 12 miles over the mountain pass and down into Lago Argentina where the Mayo Glacier falls into the lake. Then head east down the lake and the Rio Santa Cruz to the Atlantic and circle back around through the Straits of Magellen. If we don't fall into a crevasse with our kayaks we should be able to complete a 1000 mile circumnavigation of Patigonia. Rod Johnson of Midwest mountaineering is the one that hatched this crazy idea. For now we just have Rod myself and one other who are firmly commited to the trip. Any paddlewisers with the free time and lack of common sense needed to be part of our expedition? Bill Newman *************************************************************************** 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 May 02 2000 - 09:09:59 PDT
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