On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Scott Hilliard <kiayker_at_sbcglobal.net>wrote: > How do we get the word out without getting the activity over-regulated? >> > > > What we need to do, in what has always been my humble opinion, is take the > focus away from the equipment and put back where it belongs - on the skills. > This does not solve the problem. They aren't buying equipment (just a $39 water ski wetsuit would have helped) AND they aren't taking lessons. Do they think kayaking is dangerous? Sure. Ask them? They'll tell you it is. Strosaker paddling to Catalina is clearly dangerous. But did they think a 1 mile paddle to Ram Island was dangerous. Obviously not. Perception is the problem. Expecting a college girl spending a week visiting a friend with a kayak to go learn skills sounds great but is, in my opinion, entirely unrealistic. Anyway, I think your focus on skills falls short. At the very least it should be a focus on both. A focus on skills might be fine in So. Cal. with 60F water or on the Gulf Coast or when you paddle in groups. But in Puget Sound - and in other areas with cold water year around - you need more than skills. Two expert paddlers at Plum Island who spent two hours in the water unable to get back into their kayaks might attest to that. In the end it was their equipment that saved their butts.. not skills. And that story is not - by a long shot - the only example. But besides all that, the suggestion to focus on skills faces exactly the same issue as a focus on equipment. Namely, how do we convince a person who just bought a $399 kayak at Wal-Mart to go take a $150 introduction to paddling course? He thinks he's only going to paddle it on the local lake until they spend a weekend at the beach next summer and someone decides to paddle to Ram Island. We KNOW they aren't going to buy a drysuit for $600. We are pretty sure they aren't going to buy a farmer john (or jane) for $120. And those only cost money. How can we expect them to pony up both money AND time for lessons? Will they buy a $60 paddlefloat and learn to use it? Probably not and my guess is that it's the "learn to use it" part of the equation that they balk at. So it has to be cheap, it has to be almost brainless to do, and it has to be easy to carry. Only a VHF handheld combined with a water skier type shorty wetsuit and a PFD meets those requirements. But that's hardly a new idea and, anyway, that's not working either. There must be a new idea somewhere. Perhaps if our economy weren't in the dumps the various manufacturers and retailers could use their various PR organizations to get the word out better. Especially to parents. Ads on buses. TV spots. Ads in boater magazines. I dunno. If I knew how to fix it then it'd be fixed by now. But I'll bet someone has an idea. Craig Jungers Moses Lake, Wa www.nwkayaking.net *************************************************************************** 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 May 18 2010 - 14:08:17 PDT
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