Doug, I truly value and enjoy your feedback on these issues--it's too bad that this SK Message Board is not yet widely-enough known so that we could have some additional input from others, but maybe the very high quality of our discourse here will eventually draw others in......

I understand Matt's "psychological" explanation of the harsh criticism of those who get themselves into serious trouble on the water, but I favor the more direct notions, such as: A) many of these incidents are the result of being ill-conceived and/or ill-executed, and thus just plain violate our ideas of seamanship (it would be helpful to every sea kayaker to read Roger Taylor's marvelous little book The Elements of Seamanship; though written mostly for sailors, there's no doubting that sea kayakers could learn much about proper mariner mindset from Taylor); and B) people like me worrying about being, eventually, driven off the water by governmental regulations stemming from too much perceived foolishness out there by people in kayaks. I'd really hate that! For me, it's that simple. And that's something we can discuss--how real that danger is.

No danger of me not holding on to my convictions, and I entirely share your view that it would be great if Matt (and many others) could join us here. Matt probably doesn't remember me from Adam, but he and I do go back a while, to the mid-1980s when I edited ANorAK, the Journal of the Association of North Atlantic Kayakers for a season or two, and we had several dealings with one another. It was during that time that we published Matt's Sea Kayaking Safety, and also had some of our best discussions on wetsuit/drysuit use, and the differences at that time between East Coast/Great Lakes views as opposed to Pacific Northwest/British views about dealing with the cold water threat. Those were the days.....