Recent content by yknpdlr

Many marathon canoe racers I know will cut two criticallly placed tail bone holes about 3-4 in diameter in their seat pad for pressure relief. I have not done it myself, but it seems to be a very popular thing to do if you look at their canoes.

i do have a Rapidfire among several other solo lighwight canoes. But none are configured for kneeling in any of them, quite the opposite. All of my solo canoes (except the Hornbecks) have custom elevated sitting seats, Each about 1.5 inches above stock elevation, as is my preference since I...

Those of us who marathon paddle on the Yukon races (1000 miles) experience what we call "monkey butt", as your cheek halves rub and chafe against each other. for 18 hours/day. There is a cream made especially for that, but most any lubricating cream will work. In an older voyageur canoe with...

A couple of stories: #1. My son and his new wife came to my Adirondack Lake camp for a visit last year. She's from Texas where they both live now, and she is unfamiliar with small boating of any kind, especially with paddling canoes. So let's go out for a canoe paddle. She was very concerned...

Drifts. When I was growing up on the edge of lake effect snow from NY's broad oval shaped Tug Hill Plateau, the area towns had several large Oshkosh snowplows to push through the drifts. Next to my home one drift snow would often form a thick ridge across the road as high as up to the driver's...

East of Lake Ontario, I've had enough of 4'+ lake effect snow events for this season. Was glad to have missed any real effect from this Nor'easter. and that Lake Erie is frozen over and Lake Ontario has at least some coverage to cut down on the L.E. machine.

At age 74 I use a couple of methods. from a low dock or low shore bank, I brace my single blade across the gunwales with blade on the dock or shore. Both hands holding teh paddle shaft on gunwales. It takes practice with a Hornbeck or a skinny blackwater or a PB Shadow. One foot in, slightly...

At the time there were three weights. Two as listed above, standard and lightweight. Not shown is "camp weight" with thicker aluminum, as sold for rough use at youth camps and the like. I thiink most Boy Scout camps got the heavies. I really liked the lightweight, 10 pounds less than standard...

i got my first canoe when I was stationed in the Air Force in Columbus OH, 1975. I bought the lightweight Grumman, which made me very happy. Did not much like paddling in OH, the rivers were too small and flowed thorugh green mine polluted water on their way south. Unlike my home in the...

The Maiden flight and test of my ability to control my new drone to be used for monitoring vegetation growth in the small lake at my camp lake location in the western Adirondacks just after receiving my FAA sUAS (drone) remote pilot license. These are a couple of photos clipped from my first...

Although I have canoed since I was a Boy Scout, my adult time in the military kept it at a moderate level camping with a Grumman mainly only when I visited home, some with wife, 2 kids and a dog. Until work colleagues invited me at age 46 to partner in a woodstrip voyageur canoe project built by...

Depends on how accurate you care to be. What is your location accuracy tolerance? I doubt those cheapie plastic things will get you very close to any kind of accuracy you might find useful. If you want to be within as close as one nautical mile, your horizon elevation measurement must be...

It does take some practice. You need an accurate timepiece, knowledge of standard stars and how to recognize them, books of pre-calculated numbers, ironically called "sight reduction tables", plus the current edition of the Air Almanac with time and date. There is a list of 51 standard stars...

Do you consider the standby 'Whiskey Compass" as permanently unnecessary in every aircraft as well? If you should lose all electrical and backup power, which way is it to the nearest landing strip?

An old guide once told me to always carry 3 compasses. One as my own favorite primarry, a secondary in case something happens to the primary, and a tertiary to give to some poor soul I encounter who has lost theirs. I actually have given two nicer compasses away, one to a local guy who guided...