I started kayaking a year before Strange Magic and am a couple of years older than Paul. Advantages for kayaking - I came to it through sailing for decades and being lazy, learned how to "cheat". Use the back-eddies, both wind and water. It makes it easy to keep up with the 50 year old kids who haven't learned the "tricks" yet and possibly never will.

As for kayaks, seem to make a new at least every decade if not sooner.

For skill, I'd suggest getting a very tippy one for short paddles - should up the bracing skills no end. If too tippy, start with a few litres (3-6) of water in wine-cask liners as ballast, sitting just behind the seat.

Places I paddle, sheltered harbours and sounds or the open ocean.

Alex

Alex, what is your personal preference--sailing or sea kayaking? I came to sea kayaking via freshwater canoeing, though I've always loved reading about sailing, from Swallows and Amazons through Joshua Slocum, etc. So I built myself a little sailboat, a Barnegat Bay sneakbox, and sailed it a couple summers. But every time I went out, I would look around and say to myself: I could be kayaking out here now! and so I put the sailboat away, years ago, and it's not moved an inch since. Nothing satisfies my love of boating like sea kayaking.

P.S.: How is Christchurch recovering from the earthquake? Were you OK?

: though I've always loved reading about sailing, from "Swallows and Amazons" through Joshua Slocum, etc.

You've said it all. And I've still got copies of Arthur Ransome's books. Also Slocum, Alain Gerbault, Kipling, Capt. Raymond du Baty, Frank Melville, Weston Martyr, Uffa Fox,....

But sailing or kayaking? The ease of kayaking - throw some gear in and throw it in the water. At the end of a session, flip it over down by the beach and come back the next day and do it again. Sailing - rig it (how long?) sail, unrig (how long?)... Also so easy kayaking, to stop on a beach, pour a cup of coffee and sit back and watch passing dolphins like last Friday. Multiday tripping is also easier than dinghy cruising and anything bigger COSTS. Admittedly the last sailing trip was across the East China Sea to Japan but that was as crew and someone else was paying.

Earthquakes - we'd recently moved not far out of town and were only 16 km from the first September one - a bit of a jolt that one, 7.1 at 4.30 a.m. a bit of a "wake-up call" as they say... The February one, 6.3, that really did the damage in the city was 30 km away from us and felt like a normal aftershock though we thought it was probably under us or very near at the time. We were surprised later in the day when it came up on -
http://quake.crowe.co.nz/QuakeMap/Single/?Index=0
and to find how big and then later to see the damage on TV.

We weren't really damaged by any though the pantry walked out and fell all over the kitchen floor during the first one. That and the 3 broken bottles of wine...

Christchurch - years before it is back to a semblance of normality. So many broken though at the moment, half standing buildings. There will be lots of car parking spaces where once were buildings!!!

At least we didn't have a tsunami during it to contend with.

Alex

Glad you were only brushed by the quake. Someone has pointed out that 3 of the 4 corners of the Pacific Rim have had monster quakes in the recent past, and that it's now time for "The Big One" to hit somewhere in California, or the Pacific Northwest. We'll see.

Another pleasure of sea kayaking is to paddle quietly through a sailboat marina on a gorgeous day, and look at the boaters endlessly fiddling around with their craft's appearance, upkeep, whatever, all the while you're on the water and they're just sitting there, wasting precious time.

Books: If you measure how rewarding a book about being at sea is by how often you read and re-read it, then Thor Heyerdahl's classic Kon-Tiki is way at the head of the pack, in my experience. Every time I pick up the book and open it, I find myself reading it yet again, cover to cover--this has happened now probably over a dozen times since I first read it in 1950 or 1951. It is just that good.

Remind me to go somewhere else...!!! in the next few hundred years.




It annoys me that his premise was that colonization was or could only be from the west where as if any of the academics had ever done any exploring in a small sailing dinghy as kids they would have known you go out in the morning to windward so you can get home downwind in time for dinner. Same with kayaking, out against the wind, home with it.

DNA has since also proved the Polynesians came from Taiwan.

Alex

Alex, you're being too harsh on old Thor. His premise wasn't something he cooked up out of nothing at all; if you read his book, he spelled out his evidence (such as it was) for theorizing that Polynesia was colonized from South America, and went where his evidence took him. And the Humboldt Current and the prevailing trade wind took him on Kon-Tiki from Peru to the Raroia Reef and Polynesia. Of course we now have access, via studies of DNA, linguistics, radiocarbon dating, more archaeological sites, etc, etc, to data available to us that were unknown to Heyerdahl in the 1930s and 1940s, and so we have much better ideas of the origins of the Polynesians in southern Asia.

So I'm not "annoyed" at Heyerdahl's premise. Science moves on. But it's still a great, classic book about being at sea. You should read it, if you haven't yet; you'll see what I mean.

Possibly being a bit harsh. Someone else not too long ago tried to do the voyage again and finished up, if I remember correctly (from the book), on Easter Island.

Things that did come from the east were sweet potatoes, did the Polynesians sail there to collect them? It would seem so!

So who was it who wanted to hear from the older paddlers? Sounds a silly question, don't you know they'll drift off into some other discussion and and totally lose the plot, plot?? what plot???

Alex

If anyone is interested in Polynesia/America migration theories, Harold Stirling Gladwin's 1947 book Men Out Of Asia is the great-grandaddy of them all. Gladwin, an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist, postulates successive waves of migration across the Bering Straits and the Bering land bridge for almost all western hemisphere populations. But to account for the various civilizations of Mexico, Central America, and South America, he imagines the remnants of the fleet of Alexander the Great, under its admiral Nearchos, slowly working its way east over the centuries across the Indian Ocean, through Indonesia, and then on to populate Polynesia; thence on to bring the idea of pyramids, metallurgy, and bearded white gods to the New World.

Like Heyerdahl's ideas, the years have not been kind to Gladwin's notion. It's all nutty stuff, without a shred of actual, tangible evidence to support it, but a lot of fun to read.

Is old your mind or a number?

I am 38 years old. Do I qualify for this post? Not yet? Soon enough, I guess. Its great to see that there are so many paddlers that are "getting up there" in age and still out there paddling. What a great sport.

Cheers all,

Chad

Hey no one is getting up there. We just have more experience in life. LOL Plus we know we know we got there.

: I am 38 years old. Do I qualify for this post?

Should we ban the kids from posting to this subject?

: Not yet?

Not by a long way, you're only just over halfway there...

: so many paddlers that are "getting up there" in age

Either that or dead...

: and still out there paddling. What a great sport.

After the kids have finished with the adrenaline sports (WW, racing etc.), some still keep doing things other than taking to knitting and bowls. Some like Paul Caffyn (circumnavigated NZ, Australia, Alaska, Japan, Britain etc.) are still paddling round places like Greenland. He should be ashamed of himself, it shows we are still not knitting and bowling. I got a photo from him the other day showing him at the "Green Office", out surfing 2 metres swells on the West Coast of NZ.

Alex