As of September 1 2009, the Australian state of South Australia (SA) has made it illegal (punishable by a fine of up to $1250) to operate a kayak - "canoe, kayak or other similar small human-powered vessel (other than a rowboat)" in "unprotected waters". These are defined as being beyond 3 nm from most of the sea coast and beyond 5nm anywhere within two very large bays. Just for comparison, SA is about twice the size of California, but with a population about 25% bigger than Maine. Some of you may have been following Freya Hoffmeister's progress (she is currently repeating Paul Caffyn's great round-Australia paddle of 1981 - all 15,000 km of it). She is currently about 80% complete. As she enters SA waters, This will certainly affect her - as well, of course, any resident SA paddlers. I can foresee a revival of the sailing canoe in these areas ;-) (Better to be a sail boat that sometimes paddles ?) A (possibly well-informed) comment on Freya's site said : "This is not new legislation, as such. it is a new regulation, added to existing legislation, which required of kayakers only that they wear an approved type PFD. It has already passed through the parliamentary process, very quietly. in other words, they sneaked it in while nobody was paying attention. At this point, I can't tell you on what evidence the regulation was founded, or what kayaking body, if any, was consulted. We will find out, in time." This sounds like exactly what happened in my area of New Zealand - where we are fighting to overturn some silly laws on kayaker visibility that were also added to a law revision at the last minute - and with bugger-all consultation. Moral of the story: Look to your local legislatures and their ideas of how to protect you from yourself... Best Regards Paul Hayward, Auckland, New Zealand *************************************************************************** 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 Oct 08 2009 - 21:15:26 PDT
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