Re: [Paddlewise] An introduction

In a message dated 9/19/00 10:01:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com writes:

<< Folding kayaks are largely overrated.  Tales of their utility and 
pleasures are largely the result of owners who have paid mucho bucks and want 
to justify the huge outlays they have made.  They know the boats are slow, 
cumbersome on the water, weigh too much, will fall apart at the sight of the 
first wave and are a horror to assemble.  Since I own three I do more 
justifying than the average folding kayak owner who had the good sense to 
quit after the purchase of the first one.  Take it from an authority, don't 
buy one.  About the only good thing about them is that they come with 
sponsons already so you don't have to buy them from that Canadian zealot to 
make your boat safe. ralph >>

Your need to understate the problem, quite obvious from the above, Ralph, is 
undoubtedly a result of your inability to overcome your unsuppressable desire 
still to rationalize your own addiction. The problem is actually much worse 
than you make out: 

Two world wars, I believe, cannot have come close to producing the death toll 
in Europe that resulted from the use of folding boats pretty much exclusively 
until the late 1950s / early '60s, a lot of this use being on white water as 
well as on the calm and otherwise benign North Sea. 

Ugly brutes like the Moell kayak domniated the extreme white water scene and 
are a clear example of the very worst excesses of this murderous type of boat 
(see www.mariangunkel.de/moell.html). There are pictures in "Der Hadernkahn", 
which show hundreds of folding boats lining certain stretches of river every 
Sunday (people worked on Satrudays in those days and were thus too busy to 
undertake highly dangerous things like paddling in "rag boats") ... lined up 
like Lemmings about to topple themselves off top of the cliff. You can all 
but sense the author of the book shuddering with horror as he describes these 
pictures and the relief that he feels later in the book, when he is able to 
declare the appearance of safer, more robust boats. 

Let us be thankful then for the clearly imminent final demise of folding 
kayaks! Arctic skin-on-frame boats, which disappeared after a mere few 
thousand years of use due to their fragility and ill-suitedness for real use, 
show them the way.

The other Ralph
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