I live in Dakar, Senegal and have been working with a fellow paddler, Ousmane Fall, who is a member of Senegal's national kayak team (they have 6 team members) to start a small kayaking center in Dakar. Ousmane has conducted a few training classes for expatriates using my Impex Montauk and folding Kahuna and two small plastic kayaks (old and not very good) we rent from a local dive club. Ousmane is not a certified instructor (there are none in Senegal) and the training is still pretty rudimentary, but there is a lot of interest in learning to kayak given the wonderful coastline here and the rivers that are all over the country. The classes (we give 3 2 hour classes for 4 students per class about once every 3 weeks) fill up within a few days and there are always people we turn away, regretfully. Now that Ousmane has realized the amount of interest in learning to kayak, renting kayaks to play around in the cove, and going on day trips, he is really anxious to set up a small kayaking center on the beach that his village uses for fishing and swimming. The center would be for profit since in Africa, a non-profit would probably have all of its money stolen. Ousmane hopes the center will help supplement the fairly low income the Lebu fisherman in his village earn fishing the coast of Senegal, and he hopes it will increase the interest in kayaking among Senegalese. He also wants to start training younger boys and girls so that the Senegalese team will one day be as good as the South Africa team. I've decided to try to help Ousmane get this started -- I also like the idea of getting people interested in the sport and his beach is just begging to be a kayaking center. But, I'm not so much of an expert myself. We have one major problem which is that there are practically no kayaks in Senegal (only a few sit-on-tops at the hotels) and shipping costs to Senegal are outrageous. We found one man who can make very simple fiberglass kayaks -- 14" with no hatches or anything else really -- even the foot pedals are just an iron bar that fits in holes in the fiberglass. He has 4 molds and they must be dozens of years old. We'd probably buy 2 small sit-on-tops (for kids) from him and 4 of the 14" sea kayaks to start with since they are better than nothing. The other issue is gear. I'll be home for vacation in May/June and hope to buy some used gear to bring back with me -- paddles, skirts, PFDs, safety gear -- again, shipping this type of gear would be really expensive so I hoping to buy what I need and carry it back with me on the plane. So, I'm in search of people who are much more experienced paddlers than I am to answer the follow questions and provide their advice on the project: - Do any of you know of any good training materials in French for Ousmane to improve his teaching skills? - Do you have any suggestions on where we could direct this kayak maker to update his molds for his kayaks to possibly get better kayaks from him? - Do you have any suggestions on where I can buy used paddling gear? - Do you any pointers on getting something like this started? Commons problems, mistakes? Things we should watch out for? What works? I'd be very happy to for everyone's advise on this -- please don't be shy! Thanks! Beth Payne Impex Montauk Dakar, Senegal *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
> I live in Dakar, Senegal and have been working with a fellow paddler, > Ousmane Fall, who is a member of Senegal's national kayak team (they > have 6 team members) to start a small kayaking center in Dakar. > <snip> > I'd be very happy to for everyone's advise on this -- please don't be > shy! > > Thanks! > > Beth Payne > Impex Montauk > Dakar, Senegal How's this for an outrageous idea? What about setting up a boat building centre as well, and build stitch-and-glue boats. If you've got fibreglass, then you must be able to get plywood. The boat building could be a profit centre as well, would provide income (I would imagine) to a few builders, and would be a source of supply for boats for the training centre. It sounds like a worthwhile adventure. I wish you the best of luck with it! -- Darryl *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
Beth Payne wrote: - > I live in Dakar, Senegal and have been working with a fellow paddler, > Ousmane Fall, who is a member of Senegal's national kayak team (they > have 6 team members) to start a small kayaking center in Dakar. Darry; wrote >How's this for an outrageous idea? What about setting up a boat >building centre as well, and build stitch-and-glue boats. If you've >got fibreglass, then you must be able to get plywood. G'Day Beth Payne, Darryl's idea makes a lot of sense to me - it would mean your boats wouldn't be so restricted in design and could be adapted for local needs and creativity. I wondered if there was potential for kayak building, which drew on local capacities and didn't have to access materials/templates that might be hard to come by? Could you describe whether Dakar has local boat builders and if so what they use for materials and techniques? Then maybe someone on Paddlewise could find kayak design and building instructions using these techniques, for translation into French. All the best, PeterO *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
On 23 Mar 2005 at 7:44, PeterO wrote: > I wondered if there was potential for kayak building, which drew on > local capacities and didn't have to access materials/templates that > might be hard to come by? Plywood, especially waterproof stuff, is a specialized material. Skin on frame designs use lower-value materials and are more suited to adaptation to local materials. > Then maybe someone on Paddlewise could find kayak design and building > instructions using these techniques, for translation into French. That's a lot of work. It would be easier to find existing texts in French. I haven't looked much, but I know that there are centers of kayak building enthusiasm in French speaking areas like Quebec, Belgium and France. Qajaq USA's web site has folks posting from these areas. Nicolas Bertrand is particuarly active in the Montreal region: <http://www.wazop.net/nicolas/categorie.shtml?c=Kayak>. Searching the web for French language sites is likely worthwhile. It's also a good idea to search on the Canadian Museum of Civilization's web site. They provide many documents in both English and French. For modern kayaks, France's web sites would be the place to start. Try http://www.google.fr/ and search on local web sites only. Mike *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
There are lots of local boat builders who make the traditional wooden fishing boats -- these are very simple boats and from what I can see they literally start with logs -- I'll try to find out specifically what type of wood and glue they use. Their boats don't last long, but I think its because of the type of wood they use -- labor is a lot cheaper in Senegal than materials, which can be quite expensive if imported. I just ordered two books from Amazon on making wooden kayaks that I'll show to Ousmane and see whether the boat builders in his village can make these types of kayaks -- it would be really great if they could build kayaks and sell them as well -- much better than the fiberglass kayaks. I'd welcome any plans anyone has available and will get back to you on what specifically is used here to build the local boats. Beth *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:41 PDT