In a message dated 1/28/2003 5:28:33 AM Eastern Standard Time, reiter_at_fodderty.u-net.com writes: > ... So any views or ideas about the most suitable (affordable) first kayak > for a young'un? And if anyone has any good advice about teaching > youngsters, that too would be great. ... Nick, I was inducted into (sea) paddling in a folding tandem over thirty years ago, was immediately hooked and have been unable to fight off the addiction ever since. My rugrats, my son's eight and my daughter is currently half his age, are suffering the same fate. Our family barge is a folding triple, with plenty of room for the kids in the forward cockpit. They seem to learn a lot about paddling merely from observing in those big boats. My son is still a little too small for my sixteen foot Yare (tortured plywood) and for the full sized singles in my fleet, but he has his own twelve foot folder and has taken to it very nicely! His sister still gets a little frustrated when she needs to concentrate on paddling straight for more than about three minutes, but when they work that boat together, they amaze me with their apparently natural ability to cooperate (oh, if only they displayed this on other occasions!). Letting them learn by playing -- under my eagle eye of course and with but a rare suggestion (!) thrown in -- seems at this stage to be the most productive way for them to acquire their initial paddling skills; that seems to have worked for me, too. My nephew, aged twelve, last summer readily extrapolated my brief propulsion explanations, truncated by him paddling a fourteen foot folder off into the lake ... he came back with a huge grin! Another addict in the making ... I believe it was Seakayaker magazine that ran a pretty broad section on "kid sized boats" a few months ago, perhaps someone on the list will remember when that was. My own potential recommendations might (!) just be slightly biassed towards folders, so I'll abstain. :-) Best regards, Ralph Ralph C. Hoehn Ralph_at_Atlatl-Kayaks.com / Ralph_at_PouchBoats.com www.Atlatl-Kayaks.com / www.PouchBoats.com phone: +1-203-324-0901 *************************************************************************** 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 Jan 28 2003 - 05:58:49 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:03 PDT