Well that’s just the absurdist thing you’ll ever herd!
Discriminating customers
that book first class Titantic,
get overwrought in the deep thought
with life-and-death boats sunk pedantic.
And we, the prejudicial,
are never, really alone,
as stunts by runts in stunted punts
take back from dogs that bone.
Once their was a QCC, that wasn’t truly, Epic.
Once their was a QCC, that outraced seafoam.
Cheap little Pungo, do not cry.
Just muckle up with that Gray Thing guy.
I remember Jill and the riverside proposal below Alley Springs that was not meant for me!
Hubby and I have made similar progression in boats… And marriage. And canoe trips… 52 years and we are still paddling… We met in canoe class in 1963, And our first canoe a Grumman a wedding present. It was good enough for 20 years. Then in 1989 suddenly it got slow and heavy! Or did we get slow and weak and heavy? And where did the forty boats come from and go? We will die with twelve boats for our kids to deal with. Thanks PJC
The elite snobs will try to shame and make you feel guilty for risking your life and your family’s in a budget boat! They can’t rationalize that most people make reasonable decisions on what they buy and how it’s used.
P.S. My pool toy kayak is built like a tank!
Kim, I don’t write of it often but many years ago I, too, was married.
I’d owned a Grumman for many years prior, but my future ex-wife and I had our first real date on a river trip in that boat. (That first date was also the only time the Coast Guard ended up searching for either of us. They saw us hourly for two days, we waved back and forth each time, before they realized we were the bodies they were looking for. We were doing just fine. We didn’t know we were missing and had evidence to the contrary. I’ll spare you the extended story.) She was an experienced BWCA paddler when we met. Honeymooned in a canoe and celebrated each anniversary in a canoe. We got on wonderfully when canoeing and camping. She eventually decided to enter the Episcopalian priesthood - married to God and the church, you understand. She had to do what she had to do and I’m at peace with that. I’m a pretty nice guy, I guess, but I ain’t Him.
I still have the boat though. Still, no rec kayaks in either of our past…
I didn’t mean to suggest that nobody who starts with a rec boat goes on to other things. I merely took issue with the notion that “many many” do, or perhaps we need to define “many” and then we can take a stab at “many many” (is that twice as much as one many? Or is it many times many? or does the second many just serve as emphasis on the first many because there really aren’t very many?).
I am willing to wager that MOST (as in the majority, or the mostest) people who buy rec boats for their first boat never buy anything else.
Many, many is many squared. I think the sales figures will prove out that many many buy rec kayaks and do not move on to anything. They use them a few times and then hang them from the garage rafters or on the back of the garage and that’s where they ever remain.
Where I live some come out for some river float or another once a year. Each grand kid gets a dusty old rec kayak and a rotten orange horse collar PFD that gets jammed in the nose of the boat and never once in 30 years been around anyone’s neck. They put a half dozen or more in the back of the pick um up truck along with the kids and drop them off at the start. If parents/grandparents go along there is a need for a larger boat like a canoe to hold a few coolers of supplies for the 5 hour journey. Adults get mighty thirsty on the river.
All this could give rec kayaks a bad name I suppose, but none of these people have ever used the name rec kayak in their life they are simply kayaks and other than SOT that people rig for fishing that’s the extent of kayaks here. Many many many , many cubed will never look for advice on a forum like this or take a class and the guy that knows just a little more than they do is the local expert and he knows more than the guy at the sporting good store that mainly knows about guns.
So if someone is prejudiced about something it shouldn’t be a type of boat it should be about the lack of any kind of education dealing with something perceived as being as safe as sitting on your porch and until every few years when something really bad happens, then blame it on the river or the type of boat or just bad luck.
I absolutely agree.
The same as most people who buy a cheap tent and coleman stove never buy high end, but most people who buy a high end setup started with a cheap tent and stove.
For most hobbies, entry level is as far as most go, but the people that go to extremes usually start off with entry level equipment.
I live in Sandpoint ID, a small city, on a large lake (Pend Oreille). The lake circumference is about 110 miles and the maximum depth is about 340 meters (although I have not successfully grabbed sand from the bottom). We are a microcosm of recent kayak history in the USA and Canada.
Sandpoint had a kayak shop (essentially sea kayaks and gear) which succumbed to the onset of Rec kayaks. The Rec kayak is commercially successful (capitalism rules) and is typically what the newbie buys. A creek runs through our town into the lake and it is a wonderful place for Rec kayaks. There is a local sports shop that rents Rec kayaks and has a launch site on the creek. Typical renters do not wear PFDs, although I suspect the rental agency provides them.
The person who once owned the kayak shop now works for the city. One of his jobs is to organize a yearly 3.3 mile race on the creek, where PFDs are required. He doesn’t run the race on the lake because it is potentially dangerous. Any boat with paddles or oars can enter (including SUPs), but not pedal craft. In the past, the city also attempted to offer kayaking classes, but the interest was not sufficient to sustain this effort.
There are quite a few of us locally who have sea kayaks and some even travel to the ocean on occasion. I have instigated such trips in the past, mostly off Vancouver Island (now inaccessible). A few local kayak clubs rise up and then typically fail. I have not seen Rec kayak owners switch to more seaworthy kayaks, but have seen some newbies make the initial purchase of a sea kayak. It is possible that the initial purchase of a Rec kayak does not lead to subsequent purchase of a more seaworthy kayak. Perhaps the Rec kayak fails to ‘hook’ the new owner. I’ve seen no statistics to support these views.
Every boat I own is recreational. Not a one do I use to make a living. The thing is we have to pass a test to drive a car, but not a boat.
Let"s change the topic to flying recreational drones. Something I knew nothing about until last Christmas. Bare with me on this because this may be the future for boating.
Until now there was no license or registration required for small ones under a pound in weight (think canoe/ kayak here). There were a few rules You can’t fly in restricted air space, You can’t go above 400 feet of the landscape, You can’t fly directly over moving vehicles, or people (without their permission). that’s the basic ones.
Now by law you have too take a training test, no matter the age or experience. You are required to read the material, and answer questions about what you read. If you get the answer wrong then you just have to answer again until you get it right. You can’t fail it. You are emailed a certificate to print to have with you when flying a drone.
The object is to educate. To make all people flying recreational drones know the rules. Only FAA agent’s and law enforcement can ask to see the certificate. As of now there is no penalty for not having a certificate. It seems there will be a grace period, sort of like with the seatbelt laws.
I’m guessing at some point not many, many years from now someone will be talking to the salesman at “Big Box”, He will say “Yes Ma’am, that’s right your 9 year old daughter will need to take the “Safe Boating Test”, and then bring the certificate here before we can sell you the boat”. It may save some lives, but it may not stop many(?) from doing the same fatal behavior. At least it changes what we will say from, “They should have known better!” to “They knew better!”.
I plan on getting a drone certificate in the next few days.
True-ish. Sometimes people don’t know how much they like something until they’ve tried it. I think that’s when they then release their “serious” if they are that type of person.
I like the way you think.
Grummans were the cat’s meow. I guess my first one I bought was a “rec canoe”, aka cheap plastic coleman. I beat the hell out of it, treated it like a timex watch. Thinking back, I think it only cost something like 400 bucks and I beat every dollar out of it…and then some.
Yep! That’s the Jill I remember!
I miss seeing her, and paddling with her; she was always a “hoot to have around”.
Please, the next time you see her: tell her “thebob” and his wife JoAnne send her, and her husband best wishes.
We were on the river with both of them, the day her husband proposed to her.
Photo: long time pnet member"pjc, “the mad trapper”, and “Miss innocence” Jill. I love this photo of these 2 “characters”.
the nanny state would not be necessary if people engaged their brain before partaking.
Mentoring in person used to be the norm so that those new and unknowing could learn something . Now anybody can profess to be an internet expert
Stupid people does not necessitate government control of our lives. Stupid people have always existed. They have done stupid things that have caused harm or death. I believe Darwin speaks of this process.
There is no situation that warrants loss of free will.
Well we have stupid irresponsible retailers who peddle stuff with out knowledge. They could be better trained but corporate greed makes that not possible. The holy grail of American retail is MONEY.
It is a shame that no one goes to small paddlesport shops. Back when I started in the sixties and kayaking in the 80s you could only buy from a paddlesport shop and all the ones I frequented offered… hey…classes! And we never thought we were inherently experts from the start.
Um free will can kill you on or off the water. Your call. Its ok if you are smart enough to know that and knowledgeable to do a risk vs reward calculation.
Actually that is the only reason retail shops exist. They aren’t a hobby. They aren’t a government agency. They are a business. They generate money so that people can have pay checks.
This is no different than mountain bikes, skis or a honda 125 dirt bike being sold without training.
The popularity of paddle sports has gone up. That means more stores stocking the boats. I prefer to give my money to a specialty shop but the reality is that most people will go into their local sporting goods store or where ever they are sold and buy there.
On the contrary there are many, just ask the military. Nanny state is nothing but a pejorative used to describe the rules some of the spoiled kids don’t like. I am all for free will, and exercise mine daily. However, there are limits to that demanded by society. Like it or not we are a social organism.
Darwin indeed does address survival of a species based on it’s fitness given the niche it inhabits as a driver of evolution. Even if he didn’t have direct knowledge of how that happens through genetics. However, what was fit is constantly changing meaning the species either adapts or dwindles.
He doesn’t really address the survival of social organisms based on social behavior. Survival is based on a lot more than the genetic fitness of an individual.
One could argue that economic behavior can be fit or unfit, and lead to survival or not. The current economic behavior of humanity seems to be making much of life on earth unfit to survive. I wonder where that will leave humanity if we don’t adapt our behavior.
Getting off track somewhat, but still germane … My own personal opinion is that what we call “human Intelligence” is not a long term survival characteristic for our species. In fact, greed makes use of “human Intelligence” as one of its tools.
I like the way you think.