Every year there is a big “West Coast Sea Kayaking Symposium” up in Port Townsend Washington. The organization that puts this on , TASK, had a similar event in the San Francisco Bay Area the last two years. The local merchants complained that TASK did a poor job of promoting it, and TASK claimed that it wasn’t successful enough down here. Last year the local merchants took over the job of promoting it and felt that the event was more successful. But TASK abandoned it anyway and now it is being done totally as a local event.
BASK had a booth there last year and I volunteered to run it again this year. I also complained to one of the organizers last year that I felt there was an important topic missing from the schedule. I thought someone should talk about “Reading the Water”, the ability to look at the water and figure out where it is safe (or fun) to paddle. So I got volunteered to give a talk on the subject.
This year we decided to have a toned down BASK booth. This meant not having any poster papers mounted on our table to attract people. These foam-core displays did not stay up long in the windy conditions the year before anyway. Instead we simply had a few piles of fliers and handouts, and someone to man the booth. I got 4 other volunteers besides myself so we had two people on each day. Without a flashy display, even having someone hang around the booth all day was almost a waste of time. But the five of us each got a free pass to the rest of PaddleFest (a $80.00 value) and could go to all the talks, take all the mini-classes, and try out all the boats.
Even more than last year, I felt overwhelmed by all the boats to try out. I tried a few boats out anyway just to get wet and then forgot their names. The Prion Yukon kayak that I was interested in last year was on display, but I never saw one available for trying out near the water. One thing that I did find interesting enough to remember was all the new boats from FeatherCraft. This is the company that makes the best folding boats today, and I own a few of them now. But they have been busy designing inflatable boats recently and had quite a few of them to try out. There is a single and a double that I found to be too stable, slow, and boring. But then I saw this strange thing paddle by. It was sort of the shape of a Tsunami X1 (like Maryly’s boat) or a Futura racing kayak. Something about the materials or the color scheme definitely made it look like a FeatherCraft, even though it was an inflatable instead of their normal folding technology. It is called a “Jet Stream” and is a racing boat in their new “airLine” of inflatable boats. (Get it? Boats inflated with air that you can carry on an airplane? Nudge Nudge Wink Wink!) It had high volume bow, a flat area in the middle to sit in, a low flat stern with a rudder system. I saw no room to carry anything on this boat. The sales guy told me that you could deflate some of the internal float tubes and replace them with gear, but it still didn’t look like a lot would fit. I tried it out for a few minutes and found it interesting but not attractive to me. Perhaps if I was into kayak racing I would want to have one of these so I could take it traveling with me and keep in racing form.
When I started thinking about giving a talk on “Reading the Water” I imagined doing it with slides or with a digital projector and a laptop computer. These hopes were dashed when I found out there was no electricity in the park where PaddleFest is held. So I downgraded my ideas to using one of those big poster-sized notepads to draw pictures on. I had seen the speakers sketching on those the year before. Then when I arrived to give my talk, they didn’t have any of those large notepads this year at all! Fortunately I had written the talk to be completely descriptive without pictures and I was able to wing it by waving my hands in the air while I talked. Several of my friends attended and said that the talk went over well.