Craig said on 4 November 2009 > If I won the lottery... somewhere in NZ... An endless summer Wasn't my intention to make anyone unhappy about their lot - just thought that if such an adventure was 'on the radar' for anyone, it might allow the idea to crystallise (how's that for a mixed metaphor ;-) around a specific week. A week of good paddling with a very diverse crowd of locals - who are frequently keen to steer visitors into their own favourite coastal gems - or just drag them along to be wowed... Mark said > Doesn't sound like much fun if you can't drink the first two days! Damn! It just never crossed my mind that such a hardened group of old salts could ever entertain such a misapprehension for a minute... After all, we are a country with some pride in our wine and beer ;-) There was also some history of making Whiskey (in the deep south), but I understand it was more for emergency use. Or perhaps any use turned into an emergency - I don't know. Coastbusters has evolved into the format of a (keep-your-clothes) dry Friday evening and mostly dry Saturday, followed by a Sunday on the water - principally for logistical reasons. It just minimises the kayak-handling & clothes-changing in what is a busy couple of days. To achieve 4 or 5 seating areas with data-projectors - to allow parallel streams of content - we make use of a school on the edge of a small lake. Its adjacent 'Waterwise' training centre for young kids gives us ample scope for such things as rolling demos and various sorts of craziness that involve a sub-set of the whole group. People cope with the day of 'dry' sessions by knowing that the next day - about 20km away on a stunning bit of coast - will let them 'do it for real'. Seems to work. The classroom and gymnasium sessions range from stories of adventures that most of us can only dream about - like Paul Caffyn's or Justine's - to more approachable 'holidays' on the Danube, in Baja, or New Zealand's Fjordland - that anyone can aspire to. In other streams, there are the usual range of technology or practical subjects from gel-coat repair & hole-patching to simple & advanced nav sessions, sailing rigs, SoFs, food, etc. If there's a session on GPS, the presenter will be a kayaker first and a GPS user second. Perhaps an airline pilot or a navy skipper or a Geocachng enthusiast - but someone who looks at the whole thing from a wet eight inches above the water. We've all endured too many talks from vendors trying to pretend a grasp of the kayakers viewpoint. Sprinkled into the travelogs and the geek-fests are some sessions putting our local governmental agency people (eg: Conservation, CG & safety) in front of a kayaking audience. These appeal to a number of paddlers - to get a briefing on 'where the agency is going' and to let them provide feedback on kayakers' needs & preferences. These work well. Add in a few by Orca researchers, sea-bird Profs, Physios or Yoga instructors (who happen to kayak) and you get an eclectic collection of topics that have people complaining that they couldn't get to all the ones they wanted to. Better that than bored ;-) Not very different from a very good club-night presentation - just a selection of about 25 of them in one day - with the presenters chosen for having something worthwhile to talk about - or being bloody good at it - or both. 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 Tue Nov 03 2009 - 18:29:12 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:38 PDT