The retailers and 'jobbers' who rent 12 foot flat water boats and/or tacitly encourage use in coastal waters should be held partially accountable. Taking a 12 foot flat hulled, poorly tracking boat into 48 degree water with 22mph winds, dressed in cotton clothing with no plan for immersion response may speak to naive paddlers, poor decision making, or lack of ability to read conditions and translate these into highly probable, worse-case scenarios. I seen 'jobbers' on Peaks Island rent short, flat water pungo boats and cheap sit-on-tops to anyone willing to cough up the bucks and sign a general release... right in the vicinity of the pass between Peaks and Cushing. And I've paddle out to a couple of utterly incompetent paddlers on a rented-by-the-hour SOT who were drifting into the shipping channel, unable to correct s the afternoon breeze kicked up. A tow line got them back closer to more protected lee and shallower water. Ram ledge is not an adventurous trip from Peaks. It;s often where you can catch some nice, learning-level surf when the swell is in from the SW. And Cushing offers some great beginner-level gunk holing and rock garden play. Had these paddlers been connected in any way to Tom B. & Maine Island Kayak Co.(who do NOT rent kayaks to people), they'd be alive today. Will *************************************************************************** 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 - 16:38:21 PDT
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