Wes Boyd wrote: > > >Nice post, Rick. I was moved by your comments about the Shumans. I haven't > >had time to read the La Nina article yet, but the idea of being guided by > >the "weakest" member of the group strikes me as so fundamentally right, I > >very much like your comment that is should be the basis for all paddling > > Right on. I've paddled with groups that will go off and leave a slower > paddler. Needless to say, I don't paddle with them any more. Not only is > it discourteous, it's downright unsafe. If people are paddling in a group > to have the benefits of the safety of a group, and don't get it, then > they're better off planning to paddle alone, and adjusting their risk level > appropriately. Quite a few paddlers treat a group paddle as a group put-in. Everyone starts off at about the same time but then some race off. Obviously some spreading out is okay if off on the side of a bay or river and conditions are calm. But if spread out an effort must be made to at least stay in some pods in which experienced/skilled paddlers are with less experienced ones for emergencies. However when it comes to crossings of traffic lanes or paddling into windier areas beyond headlands, or other situations where worse conditions are anticipated, then the group needs to pull together. The latter is common sense but I was once on a group paddle, a commercial one, in which the leaders were so rah-rah and intent on moving fast that the group got quite spread out during a crossing. Rather than wait for everyone to catch up and cross as one large pod, the leaders raced off. They were fast, athletic types. Unfortunately, others with less skill/strength attempted to catch up and followed leaving kayaks strung out like shooting gallery ducks. I was in the last quarter of paddlers (we had stopped to look at an historically significant structure a few minutes before). A large cruise ship was heading out to sea. With the line of "ducks" arrayed across his bow, it had no where to go and actually stopped dead. We saw the middle paddlers right in the ship's path. Instead of proceeding we turned 180 degrees paddling away to show the skipper we had no intention of following our foolish companions into his path. (If we had just stopped it may not have made our intention as clear as doing the 180.) I have never before seen a cruise ship forced to stop. Even though I had no part in the action that caused it, i.e. the lack of the group leaders attention to waiting for all to cross together, I was scarlet-embarrassed. 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_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jul 13 2000 - 11:51:21 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:27 PDT