Doug, do you still have any old copies of the OKABC newsletter you used to write for? I think they had some articles about death by Klepper. The owner of the Victoria kayak shop with the British philosophy would speculate about every accident that happened with a folding kayak. At one point he asked what it was about those folding kayaks that made them so dangerous. I think he speculated that it might be that the Kleppers were so wide they were impossible to right again once they had capsized (and maybe that, unlike narrow kayaks with tiny cockpits, they couldn't be Eskimo rolled). I think one of his examples was the death of one or two paddlers (I don't remember which) that happened in Atlin Lake in Northern BC. I recall another accident in BC in either the Vancouver or Victoria area that was written up in the OKABC newsletter. I don't recall if it was also a fatality though. Doug already mentioned the OKABC and SKABC wars back in the early mid 1980's. I think both organizations were started by competing British Columbia retailers, one was promoting British kayaks and the other, coming from the colonies, hated things British, especially what he considered their self-righteous and rigid attitude toward kayak instruction. To get back on topic, The anti-BCU retailer was also a promoter of, you guessed it, wide folding kayaks (which was probably the hidden agenda for OKABC's attacks on them). I'm sure there have been other fatalities in folding kayaks but I'm not recalling any at the moment. One well known instructor around here had an old Foldboat's frame coming apart early in his kayaking career when he was out in rough seas. His girlfriend, in the back seat, later told me that boat had gotten so flexible, as the frame was coming apart in the middle, that her partner up front kept nearly disappearing over the crest of each wave. A bear had obviously chewed on the folding kayak that Will Nordby and his brother (who related the story to me) came upon at a campsite in Glacier Bay. The (solo) kayaker (to go with the kayak) was no where to be found in the area, so they reported that to the authorities. The authorities shot the black bear they discovered in the area and found that it had eaten at least parts of the missing kayaker. It has been reported by some that bears really like to chew on the rubber in folding kayaks. Well, maybe that was just another red herring put out by the OKABC, I don't remember where I heard or read it first. Some folks I was paddling in folding double kayaks with in the Queen Charlotte Islands didn't even want to land in one area, Benjamin Point where a problem bear had been reported, because they were afraid a Klepper chewing bear might attack and destroy their kayak, if not them. I pointed out that there were no bears visible for several hundred yards over open ground so we would have plenty of time to land for a few seconds to exchange paddling partners and be gone again before any bear, even one charging full out, could ever reach us. We wanted to switch kayaks around because one paddler was sick. It had already been a long paddling day and given we had a sick paddler I had wanted to camp there at Benjamin Point. Everyone else, even the very ill paddler, wanted to paddle another five miles or so to the next camping spot. Later as we neared that campsite we saw a bear on a beach not too far from the beach where we finally camped. It could easily have been the same problem bear from a several miles away. We camped there anyway. It wasn't a really big bear (like the Klepper eating bear back at Benjamin Point had been imagined to be). It's funny how the unknown, but imagined, hazard can be so much scarier than a known hazard that is clearly visible. Matt Broze, another survivor of Y2K. www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** 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 Thu Mar 04 2004 - 20:15:25 PST
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