The Kayaking Popularity Explosion

Cheap Boats
I’ll admit I am part of the new wave. We bought cheap SOT’s for our kids for a beach vacation at the local box store. My wife is small enough and went for a ride on one. When she came back she said she wanted one too.



Fortunately we found this place and received advice on further boat purchases. We are lifers now with a stack of boats and gear in the garage and the cars now in the driveway.

more popular
The place I’ve bought my yaks from now has a group called WOW…Women On the Water. They have classes and are helping the women build their skills. The classes seem to fill up quickly. I did a float with them and it consisted of a group of women with different skill levels. Hopefully I’m not insulting anyone by saying this but I’m pretty sure most of the women were in my age range (53). I also feel like maybe its more popular because its hard not to share how relaxing it is. I’ve took several on their first kayak float…thats all it takes is one time and they’re hooked. How can you not enjoy getting out in nature, on water, away from everything? Most people seem to be unsettled and floating is so relaxing. After your initial expense of boat, paddle, pfd, all you have to spend is gas to get to your float point.

the boardNazi makes his guest appearance

kayaks
They are also forgiving for people that don’t take the time to learn to paddle.

Price
A Dunham’s flyer in or paper had a number of kayaks listed at very reasonable prices. Unfortunately, my wife saw this flyer and promptly informed me I could have bought a kayak there for less than the tax was on my recently purchased Swift Osprey carbon fusion solo canoe!!!

kayaking/prostate problems
Kudzu,



Lighten up!



I started kayaking (while continuing canoeing) 25 years before I developed prostate problems.



Dave

You made a good choice with the Osprey.
Don’t let your wife paddle it, or you might have to buy another.

Don’t call yourself a Nazi. You’re only
trying to improve the Forum experience, in your own way.

Osprey Choice
I did something worse than letting my wife try the Carbon fusion Osprey. I let my grandchildren try it. Now they want a black solo canoe just like Papa’s.

I only have one wife but I have 2 grandchildren!!!

DUUJ has not said one word since
starting this mess. But it has been a great chance for many to increase their grasp on the obvious.



Smell a troll odor?

So it goes.

Still no DUUJ.

Holiday weekend
Some people do go away for a week or two

around the holiday, so it’s no biggie…

GREAT discussion in my opinion.



Wish the ACA or Outdoor Industry Association

actually HAD real stats on current usage in the USA.

“DUUJ” hasn’t posted in the entire
thread. Probably a marketing parasite trolling for ideas.



There hasn’t been one new idea in this entire thread, and it all belongs on the Discussion Forum.

Waiting for the spate of similar posts
In the past, posts like the OP’s often accompanied a slough of other suspiciously troll-like posts in a spell of a couple weeks. Always posted by a no-profile or brand-new profile poster of unknown background.



I remember at least one other thread by DUUJ in which I thought a marketing troller was sniffing out the premises. Gonna do an archive search now…

But didn’t canoeing popularity explode
after the movie “Deliverance” came out in the 70’s??? (You can’t simply attribute it’s rise back then, to the way Ned Beatty took it in the behind…Squeal!WWWeee-ee!)



Fads come, fads go. All I know is all the amateurs are gone after Labor Day–And most will take the SUP crowd with them.

No, it didn’t. I lived nearby back then
and the main “explosion” was in cheap rafts and garbage paddles. The growth in whitewater canoeing around Atlanta was already underway. I never saw any indication that the moderate growth in canoeing was related to Deliverance.



Claude Terry and Doug Woodward were in our club. They were kayakers as much as canoeists. Payson and Aurelia Kennedy, and Horace Holden, were club members, and founded NOC on the Nantahala.



All the new ww canoeists I knew, back in the 70s, were well aware of how much skill had to be developed to paddle the Chattooga, or even the Nantahala. While we considered Deliverance a good book and a good movie, we thought Burt Reynolds et al were greenhorns who were taking stupid chances.

I believe Spiritboat is correct

– Last Updated: Jul-07-13 7:33 PM EST –

I have often read that the biggest canoe-sales volume that the Grumman company ever had in their history, by far, occurred right after that movie came out. I think the boom lasted a couple of years, but was most pronounced shortly after the movie first started playing. I can't say what other long-time canoe "standards" experienced, such as companies like Old Town, but that's what happened for Grumman.

I think what you saw is attributable to the fact that rank amateurs getting started with their brand-new canoe aren't likely to show up at the same places as the hard-core whitewater folks that you hung out with. That said, I think it was Bob (thebob.com) who once quoted some source that talked about several amateur canoers dying in difficult rapids shortly after the movie came out, with those rapids being the type where paddlers of such a skill level were normally not ever seen.

It is true.
I got into a Grumman for the first time myself back then. Age=16. Two week trip down the Delaware. The explosion I cited was in general canoe sales and popularity. NOT necessarily whitewater.



…And by the way, g2d: The name-dropping of your so-called legends impresses absolutely NOBODY.



Now squeal, wwweeee-wwweee-wwweee!!!

It’s not a matter of your being
impressed. It’s a matter of helping you to not repeat suburban legends. In this case, guideboat’s imagining notwithstanding, Deliverance pumped up the cheap raft industry, but not canoeing.



You think I didn’t know those guys personally? Seriously?