Rick Sylvia's comment (back channel) about being a rookie and not wanting to hold up the group has prompted me to voice my thoughts. A few months ago we talked about leadership and about people with different paddling skills, stragglers, and those of independent minds who take off toward the horizon. I haven't had time to write up the Lake Kissimmee State Park TR, but we found a good way around the above problem. Of the 8 campers, 4 had long glass boats and the other 4 had recreational boats that included a Sevylor inflatable and a real rookie on my other Hobie SOT. After some discussion, we came up with a plan that worked well. We divided the group into the A Team and the B Team. The A team was going to go all the way, and the rest of us would just putz around and go partway up the creek and return. Unfortunately (long story), the A team got bogged in the hyacinths and had to abandon their boats and hike out. Fortunately, a ranger passed and two rangers in trucks drove them back to get the boats. (This is the condensed version). The point is that (although it was getting darkish and I was getting a wee bit concerned) I knew that they were all pretty competent, experienced people. I also learned that it is strongly advisable for the trip coordinator to designate a leader and a sweep for each team. For the Florida reunion I will be coordinating with the Paradise Paddlers club out of Key Largo (affiliated with Florida Bay Outfitters) and other paddling pals from the area. A good mixture of boat types and abilities. I will be proposing a similar arrangement of perhaps a day trip that would include everyone for the Indian Key and Lignum Vitae and then perhaps on the 2nd day two trips where the A Team could perhaps tackle something more adventurous. I'm sure Floridian P'wisers Bob Denton and Pat Moss will be game to work with the A Team arrangements. My very wild, pulled out of the air guesstimate is that with the, so far, 8 visitors and local paddlers we should have a group of at least 20-25 people at the events. Monica has said that the Paradise Paddlers would host a dinner or something at the campground. sandy kramer miami *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:18 PDT