Bradford wrote: >>>>>>>As many of you already know, the tidal shorelines in Washington are private property, all the way to the water's edge. Makes it difficult to get out of your kayak.<<<<<<< This is not correct for many if not most of the beaches of WA. And where Bradford is correct, it is usually the average high tide line (approximately the log line) that is the border between public beach and private property. So the public beach is legally available to kayakers for landing most of the time except high tide. In fact, I think most of the beaches below the high tide line are public in WA. The Dept. of Natural Resources has some booklets for the San Juan Islands (and also a map of the islands) and the Straits of Juan de Fuca (and maybe more) that show which beaches fall into which category and even with arial photos of where the boundries between the various "jurisdictions" or "types of ownership" are. I think the title (or subtitle) of the booklets was "Your Public Beaches". Of course, the upland property owners often believe (or pretend to believe) that they also own the beach. This (and the need for shoreline toilet facilities) has caused kayakers to be seen as undesirable vermin in the San Juan Islands. As a result residents have done what they can to reduce the number of put-ins available for kayakers in those islands whenever they could. They have been quite successful in that endeavor. Most of the traditional put-ins near ferry docks that were available in the 1980's have been eliminated so paddlers need to drive on the ferries rather than just wheel their boats on them (as we used to do) in order to get on the water from all the islands except San Juan Island. On San Juan Island (the last time I tried anyhow) one needed to wheel ones kayak a few blocks to a marina to launch. This has been quite a disappointing experience for me When I started paddling most residents considered the few kayakers as interesting visitors. This probably has some parallels with the European invasion of Norht America and the changing attitude of the Natives as numbers of Europeans increased and began abusing the land and competing for resourses. I recently saw a great poster of famous picture of Geronimo with a grim expression on his face and a rifle under the caption "Fighting Terrorism since 1492". Matt Broze 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 Fri Jun 01 2007 - 11:38:59 PDT
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