All the magazines have been guilty of being laissez-faire about PFDs. 1) For the longest time back in the past, Sea Kayaker seemed to be resisting having paddlers wear PFDs in the magazine's cover art. The covers were not fotos but painted art work and it seemed to be purer not to have that ghastly practical thing on the subject. It became quite an issue for some of us Northeasterners. Finally Carl White of Hopewell NJ, who also at one time edited the Anorak newsletter, sent them a few letters calling the editors to task for this. In the issue that Carl's letter regarding the covers was published, the cover was that of clearly an Inuit paddler of yore, i.e. pre-PFDs. I don't know if it was coincidental or being cute. Sea Kayaker certainly has a pro-PFD policy now albeit some of its ads lack PFDs, which is really hard for them to control. As far as I can see, most if not all of the magazine written copy and stories do have the paddlers wearing PFDs. 2) Canoe & Kayak when it was run by Dave Harrison featured his editor's column in each issue with a picture of him. He was never wearing a PFD in the foto. He was finally needled into redoing the photo cum PFD and recognized in an editorial the role model aspect. Again, ads may have people without PFDs and is difficult to control. I do work for C&K but have no inside info about policy but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that their instructions to authors stress that fotos have paddlers wearing PFDs and acting responsibly. 3) My own flirtation with the PFD cover issue. In terms of full disclosure, having pointed a finger at two of the mags, I must confess my own temptation. First of all there are fotos in my book that have people without PFDs that I really had no control over. These are stock fotos I needed and got from Klepper's files when I visited the factory. Germans were (are) loath to wear PFDs (more on that below in #4). Second, when it came to shoot a cover for the book I was up at LL Bean's SK symposium with the publisher. I asked Janice Lozano to do the photo (she is a partner with her husband Bill in the very successful Atlantic Kayak Tours here in New York that does trips and instruction and organized that superb BCU symposium here in late July everyone is still talking about). I found a couple of people to pose in a single and double folding kayak. But suddenly I, in my narrow focus, saw this all in polemic terms. If people were seen wearing PFDs on the cover of the book then it might be interpreted that folding kayaks are unsafe and therefore you should wear a PFD when paddling one. I said let's dispense with the PFDs. Janice, who is usually quite mild-mannered, said a quiet but jarringly firm "No" that brought me to my senses. I never said I was perfect or incapable of being stupid! :-) 4) Speaking of being stupid and back to the German mentality. In 1993, when I was visiting the Klepper factory, I had the chance to try out a then prototype model that became the Aerius 2000. It had been designed and made over the winter and paddled just once by the designer and no one else down in the Mediterrean. I was in Bavaria at the factory just after the local lakes had unfrozen of their ice. I was intoxicated with the idea of being the first person in a new Klepper model (the first in some 40 years!) on the very same waters that the first Klepper ever had been tested back in 1907 (also quite high on a big bratwurst lunch with plenty of beer). We went with the prototype to the Chemsee (a large lake near Rosenheim). When we were grabbing the boat from the factory, I started to search around for a PFD. The owner of the company, Herman Walther was indignant. "You will not paddle one of my boats wearing a PFD. It would be embarassing to me!" What could I say? The price of admission was no-PFD and this was an emotional priceless opportunity for me or for any folding kayaker. Next, I considered the temperature of the water. Let's see...lake unfrozen two weeks ago. What could the temperature be now? It had to be cold, real cold. Oh well I will just paddle it next to shore and inside the closed-for-the-season marina at the lake. We got there and I paddled around next to shore. Got some fotos taken. Then Herman insisted that I paddle about a mile or so across the lake to a fabled island. There I was. No PFD, no sprayskirt, no pump, no bailer, no paddlefloat, no cold water clothing (I had on borrowed raingear and some polypro plus plastic beach slippers), no signaling device not even a whistle. Name any safety device you can and I did _not_ have it! What did I do? Didn't I say earlier that I can be pretty stupid? I paddled across like an idiot! 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/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Sep 06 2000 - 08:05:10 PDT
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