Wes Boyd did a good wrapup of the genesis of PaddleWise in relationship to Tim Ingram. It is too bad that he (Tim, I mean) is such a pest. His product is not all that bad. Given some prepping of your boat and practice, it could be helpful in certain situations. I know that Feathercraft did provide the Sea Wings and fittings with its narrower, sponsonless Khatsalano to help in a self rescue. And, if someone is ill, lashing on sponsons to the boat could make a big difference in the person getting to shore on his/her own or in a tow. He first made a fool of himself on rec.boats.paddle by insisting that sponsons should be lashed on to whitewater boats!!! Then he latched on to WaveLength and basically destroyed it. The problem with WaveLength is that it did not try to keep him in check for a variety of reasons. That is why PaddleWise was born. I am probably among the very few who subscribe to PaddleWise who has actually met Tim. I ran across him several times at symposia and even broke bread with him. I knew his pre-sponsons when he had a small folding kayak company called SeaLight if I recall correctly and under his Georgian Bay Kayak banner. These were the funniest looking folding kayaks I have ever seen. Basically he offered 20 or 30 models, which was a joke really. He had a basic design and just added length or width to it and gave the models names like Manhattan, Timbuktu, whatever (the Manhattan was a real model name). The frame consisted of long aluminum tubes and the crossribs were of wood. He would cut it to your desired length and width. The skin was a wrap around one secured with velcro strips. I called the boats burritos in that they resembled the way you wrap that Mexican dish. You made the frame and laid it inside the skin which was fully open at top except the very ends. You then wrapped and overlapped the open top pieces to achieve a closed deck. The overlaps had velcro strips on their hems that accomplished closure. It never looked all that secure to me because the skin was mostly unfitted in its cut. Also the skin was incredibly lumpy...have you ever seen a smooth sided sleek burrito? :-) I have to watch what I say sometimes. I was giving a folding kayak presentation at some symposia or somewhere. As I went through a list of available foldables, I mentioned Tim's boats using my "burritos" comment (the boats were still be offered at the time of my talk). Someone in the audience suddenly got very agitated and quarrelsome. Seems he owned one! Boy, did I do my best diplomatic two-step to calm him down and get him to stop disrupting the presentation. More on Tim. When I met him he had his wife and two lovely daughters along. One was around 2 years old and the older one a bit older, perhaps 4. They all seemed sweet. Tim was affable enough but had a southern itinerent preacher look about him minus the black coat and hat (I see a skinnier Robert Mitchum from the movie whose name I forget, something like Night of the Hunter). Tim did have fire burning in his eyes though when he talked "sponsons" and I should have known then what would eventually transpire as it did later on the Internet and at symposia before they booted him out. People have berated him feeling Tim is just out for profit. I don't think so. He actually believes that sponsons are the salvation for all paddlers and wants you to have one. I suspect that he if could get someone to make them and distribute them freely, he would not insist on a royalty or anything. Anyway, if you are on any of the newsgroups and run across his rant, ignore it. All a response will do is perpetuate the situation by engendering his replies. And, again, thank the gods and Jackie for keep PaddleWise a Tim-free zone. 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 - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Feb 06 2001 - 11:10:28 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:37 PDT