Got this via Paradise Paddlers, a club we belong to out of Key largo and Florida Bay Outfitters:
If anyone can help with the issue below please respond to the contact provided.
The FWCC Office of Recreation Services is trying to design accessible paddlecraft launch sites and would like input from some paddlers with disabilities.
If anyone knows of someone who can help the FWCC ORS out, please end the information to PJ Jones directly at the contact listing below:
PJ Jones, M.S., Trails Specialist
Office of Recreation Services
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
1239 SW 10th Street
Ocala, FL 34474
pj.jones@myfwcc.com
OFFICE: 352-732-1225 X139
MOBILE: 352-209-0595
I hope there’s some among our P-NET crew with knowledge and/or experience with disabled paddling, or perhaps knows someone who’s so familiar, to assist the FWCC in developing disabled-accommodating sites to provide greater exposure and the same opportunities for enjoying the water as they -perhaps for the first time? -get out, get in or on, and
PADDLE ON!
-Frank in Miami
Talk to these folks
At Atlantic Kayak Tours in downstate NY.
http://www.atlantickayaktours.com/
They have disabl3ed ramps, in fact were the first in NY to be so equipped if I have that right, since the center actually has been granted a lease to state owned land to use. Bill and Janice run it.
Disabled type ramps have been showing up at some NYS Dept of Environmental Conservation launches too, particularly at a newer one on Schodack Island in Rensselaer County, but I don’t know how to get you thru the maze to talk to whoever is most directly involved in meeting these standards. Someone else n this baord may know.
I hope they listen to paddlers
Somehow the launch sites to access Biscayne Bay are of really poor design. Obviously designed by someone who has never had to lug a boat to shore or used any kayak/canoe made other than in aluminum or plastic. No bathroom facilities or washdown station.
THANKS, CELIA-I’LL CONTACT THEM
It’s good to see that not only are some of our recreational departments putting in decent paddlecraft launch sites -Beachcamper notes the relative dearth of them for all boats here on the shores of Biscayne Bay -but that some have even transcended the everyday variety and advanced the facilities to be inclusive for the disabled. That’s great!
Now, we need to have more paddlecraft launch/retrreive sites better designed & implemented for the majority of us, and have some of them strategically sited to provide access to our disabled paddling brethren as well.
Beachcamper? Be happy for the beaches and boat ramps we DO have…! When you tell a lot of folks that we kayakers have different needs than canoeists, they want to take a look at your canoe… Which is why there are a few new recent dock facilities, where the park folks talked to canoeists and didn’t really seek out we of the double-blade persuasion, and didn’t account for our needs. But there are some out ther, strategically placed arpound the Bay, where you can pretty easily get out on the water even if you ‘re NOT in a plastic boat. And heavy? I only with they’d account for many of our heavy SOT-toting cadre, when they put a drop-off about 75-100’ away from the launch site.
But as to the disabled, here in Coconut Grove, we have Shake-A-Leg, which specialized in sailing for the disabled. Theur boats are rigged to be, in particular, para-friendly, so that they can sail even with the loss of the use of their legs. And quads can be accomodated as passengers, so they, too, can enjoy the joys of the bounding main as it occurs in Central Biscayne Bay not far from Downtown.
They also have a kayaking operatioon there, but as to their capabilities & facilities, I am, I must rather shamefacedly admit, rather less fasmiliar.
But I think I’ll drop by there tomorrow to see what they have to say about getting their clients on and off the water easily and safely so the disabled, as well as the rest of us, can
PADDLE ON!
-Frank in Miami
Try contacting the ACA.
They have a couple of people that deal with adaptive paddling. I met one fellow last year at an inclusion workshop and he had all kinds of ideas about helping people with disabilities paddle. I used to have his email address, I can forward it to you IF I can find it.
Scott
A staging location where a van can be
parked next to a grass or sand slope into the water allows a person to unload and launch on their own. ACA has an adaptive paddling committee that could give some help.
excellent idea for launch and unload
my brother is a quad, c5-6, he’s the one responsible for my kayak addiction. our biggest obsticals are slopes. he has a chair that he only uses for yakking. but if we cannot gat the chair to the waterside , 2 people are nessacary to get him up the takeout. a great design would be a narrow channel with a pipe or ski rope handle overhead. Tee