Re: [Paddlewise] Size of kayaking community?

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Blackburn" <digipixs_at_erols.com>

> For what it is worth, our local kayaking club, The Chesapeake Paddlers
> Association has about 550 or so members at present.  This number probably
> represents a good portion of the serious kayakers in our region, although
not
> all of the 550 are "serious".  When you consider that the Chesapeake Bay
is the
> largest estuary in the US, with temperate weather conditions and a long
> paddling season, that's not a lot of paddlers.  This is ture even if you
double
> or triple the numbers to pick up non joiners and people living far from
our
> membership base, which, I think, is concentrated in the northern half of
the
> bay.
>
> Extrapolate this to the country at large and 250,000 looks to be
overstated by
> maybe a factor of 10.

There are two things going here: 1) the size of the kayaking community in
the Chesapeake Bay area and 2) the national figures.

Regarding Number 1, I suspect that there are way more kayakers in the Bay
than just double or triple the CPA membership list.  I say this from looking
at local clubs in this area up here and knowing just how many people not
only are not members but not even heard of the organization.  If there were
just 1,500 (your outside figure) of kayakers in the CPA area then you would
not see as many shops and touring services doing business in the area as
there are.  But maybe all this hinges on what you term "serious."  Serious
is an elusive benchmark.  Usually people tend to consider someone as serious
who is of a similar level of devotion, gear, seasoning as they are.  But
there is a much wider band than that.

Regarding Number 2.  You feel that the 250,000 figure is off by a factor of
10.  That would mean that every sea kayaker buys Sea Kayaker magazine, which
is far from true.  Again just looking around at sea kayakers who I know who
are serious enough to paddle quite regularly in quite ambitious settings and
I doubt that more than 1 or 2 in 10 get Sea Kayaker or any paddling magazine
for that matter.

There is some happy set of figures somewhere between your 25,000 sea
kayakers figure and the 24 million paddlers that the ACA says are out there.

ralph diaz



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