One of the main (many) purposes for PaddlingLight has been to store a number of canoe plans and kayak plans. Most of the plans are free, but a few, my designs, are for sale. The revenue that I get from sales doesn’t add up to much. Last year, it was just enough to pay off old prototypes and make a new canoe prototype that I’ll test in 2012. The hardest part for me is figuring out how to make money or, at least, continue to make enough money to fund building more of these boats in the future and make it feel like my time isn’t wasted modeling these boats (because I can do other things that do make me money in the same amount of time).

Currently, I ask for donations if you use the plans to build a boat, and many people send me those donations, but when I look at the number of downloads compared to the number of donations, it’s like 250:1. I know lots of these boats don’t get built after people look at the free plans, but some do. I also like giving these away. So, I’m torn. I’m trying to evaluate my options going forward with the plans as I get ready to release several of Chestnut Canoe Company’s models. The Chum with a modified sheerline and extra tumblehome for solo paddling appears above.

I feel that there are a few approaches:

• Continue what I’m doing: giving the canoe and kayak plans away for free while asking for a $30 donation, offering electronic files with all the stations drawn separately for $30 or printed plans for $100 to $110.
• Switching to a pay-what-you-can model similar to what I use on my solo canoe yoke plans. I ask for varying levels of support based on what you can afford. If you can’t afford even the lowest level, I ask that you write to me to receive the plans for free.
• Use a new payment system. I’ll give away 1/4- to 1/3-sized, low-quality plans for free, charge $30 for electronic full-sized plans, charge $50 for electronic individual stations and $100 to $110 for printed plans.

I’m leaning towards the last two. What I’m doing now doesn’t feel that fulfilling for me, which I think is important. The middle option makes sure that I get something out of the arrangement. At the very least, I know who wants to build one. The third option still gets the plans out for free and people could probably pretty easily enlarge the plans, but they might step up to the larger sizes if they really want to build. Obviously, someone could just ignore my plans go back to the original source and spend around 10 hours per boat modeling and drafting to get around the last two options, but I guess that’s not the point.

At any rate, I’m not sure if this post will receive many, if any, comments, but I’d like your opinion about this.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Free Canoe Plans and Free Kayak Plans Update

Starting in the early spring of 2012, Andrew Badenoch is heading far north on a 7,000-mile, six-to-eight-month, lightweight journey and attempt to hike, packraft and fatbike a circuit that starts in B.C. heads north to Great Bear Lake, then the ocean, west to Alaska and then back to the starting point. On the trip, he’ll travel 7,000 miles, paddle seven rivers, consume zero fuel, paddle on two oceans, cross four mountain ranges and even visit ANWR. He plans on filming it to produce a documentary about the trip, and that’s where he needs your help.

To buy the data storage, solar power, bike hub power device, satellite equipment, food and other logistic needs, he’ll need $7,770. To raise money, instead of turning to bunch of sponsors, although he has them, he turned to Kickstarter, a website devoted to funding projects such as this one. On Kickstater, Badenoch has set up different levels of support. At each level, you get something in return. For example, at the $25 level you get a HD documentary download w/ bonus footage. At the $50, he’ll answer questions, and so on.

In order to get the documentary made, Badenoch needs the fundraising on Kickstarter to succeed. In order for it to succeed, he needs your help. If you have a few bucks, consider pitching in to make this expedition happen. As of Monday, he had 76 backers that pledged $3,871 of the $7,770 goal. He had 17 days to go to fund the trip. If he doesn’t hit that goal, he doesn’t get any of the pledged cash.

Here’s the link to his project: Fatbikerafting the Arctic

Here’s his film about the project:

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Fatbikerafting the Arctic

Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast, in the southeast corner of the lake, runs approximately 50 miles from the sand spit of Whitefish Point to the first safe harbor at Grand Marais, Michigan. As part of my Port Huron to Home trip in the spring and summer of 2011, I kayaked past this mainly undeveloped area. At the time, I wanted to paddle past it in two days to avoid getting stuck there during bad weather. In the end it took me five days, because of wind and waves. Out of the entire 800-mile trip, the Shipwreck Coast, also known as Superior’s Skeleton Coast, was the most hauntingly beautiful and monotonous section of the trip.

Small graves near where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.

I wrote this description of kayaking Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast for a magazine article:

Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast runs approximately 50 miles from Whitefish Point to Grand Marais, Michigan. Its unending flat sand beaches backed with a boreal forest so dense that you can’t see past the first row of trees extend for as far as the eye can see. Few roads reach the shore, and it has little development. It feels like the end of the world, and a newspaper article that I stumbled across at Crisp Point Lighthouse described it as the “Loneliest Stretch of Shoreline in America.” While the beaches provide great landing sites for kayaks in calm water, the exposed beaches, hidden sandbars and shallow shoreline turn into a sea of forth when the wind blows.

The prevailing northwest wind wails across Superior’s surface and builds waves that converge at Whitefish Point. Add in fog, crystal clear waters that rarely rise above 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the fact that all ship traffic must squeeze past Whitefish Point to pass into the lower Great Lakes and you have the ingredients for ship collisions, wrecks and deadly disasters. Over 300 of Lake Superior’s 550 plus shipwrecks occurred along the Shipwreck Coast. In 1975, the 729-foot Edmund Fitzgerald, Lake Superior’s most famous wreck, floundered here in 30-foot waves just before it reached the safety of Whitefish Bay.^[i] The coast is so deadly that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the U.S. erected and manned a series of life-saving stations along the coast. Daily, men walked the beaches from station to station looking for wrecks and survivors. I hoped to pass through the Shipwreck Coast in two days in calm weather.

Looking down the Shipwreck Coast from Crisp Point Lighthouse

When researching this area, I found a great description from  Lieutenant James Allen. He kept a journal during the Schoolcraft Expedition of 1832 to find the source of the Mississippi River. To reach the Mississippi, the expedition paddled, rowed and sailed across Lake Superior in several Mackinaw boats and birch-bark canoes. At the time, few, perhaps 1,000 American Indians, lived on Lake Superior’s shoreline.

 The whole of the coast passed to-day, presented a very plain bank of fine sand from twenty to a hundred feet high, and a continued forest of pine, generally small, but sometimes large and beautiful. A picturesque grove of white pine (Pinus strobus) of more than a mile extent along the lake, occurs about ten miles from our encampment. The growth is all large, and unmixed with any other trees, the pines straight, tall, without limb, and thickly set together, on level ground, as far back as wee could see.

We passed Twin [Two Hearted] river, twenty-four miles from Whitefish point. It is a small stream, and its mouth is so much filled with sand that it can only be entered by very light craft, and in smooth water. We have traveled to day forty-five miles. ^[ii]

I don’t remember passing the stand of pines described by Allen, but I expect that they had been logged by barons of the late-1800s. Closer to Whitefish Point, I did camp within a small grove of white pines similar to Allen’s description. I stayed there two nights to wait out a cold, rainy and windy day. The limbless pines provided no protection from the wind and my tent shook constantly. When I looked out the door a fine, airborne sand twisted and swirled around the tree trunks. The sand was slowly burying the trees and anything else around it. Nearby where I camped I found an outhouse half-buried in the sand.

Outhouse buried in sand.

After I finished kayaking the Shipwreck Coast, I met a National Park Service Ranger, who told me the story of his grandfather who worked for the U.S. Lifesaving Service or maybe the U.S. Coast Guard. Every day, he walked a desolate section of the coast. He would leave from one station and another man would leave from another. They’d meet at a shack located between the two stations. There they’d write their name in a log book to prove that they had walked the complete distance, and then they’d turn around and go back to their respective lifesaving station.

The park ranger, a weather elder with a big grey beard, remembered visiting the shack with his late wife when they were young. He reminisced about a photo of her crawling in through the window. The picture showed sand building up around the old hut. He tried to find it after his wife passed away, but found that it wasn’t there anymore. The sands of the Shipwreck Coast had devoured it.

My friend, Tim Gallaway kayaked the Shipwreck Coast a couple of years ago. Here’s what he wrote:

Unluckily, a strong east wind cooled the air as the day progressed, and I was going straight into it. The wind grew stronger all day. If I stopped for even a few moments I was blown backwards. It was miserable paddling. The wind fought me all day and the shoreline was an uninterrupted ribbon of sand. If the weather didn’t wear me down then the boredom and toil of paddling along the empty shore would.

I passed the mouth of the two-hearted river and camped east of the Crisp Point Light on a beach where cobblestones floated on the windblown sand like islands in a tropical sea. Black sand ripples flowed between the stones and sparkled in the brilliant sunset light. Driftwood abounded, and the only footprints I could find were my own.

The day was draining. There isn’t much more disheartening for a paddler than a solid, unyielding head wind. A climber or skier knows that the up-hill exertion will end and they will have gravity on their side for the way down. A kayaker isn’t so lucky. I was drained, physically and mentally, but I was making good progress. I would be off of The Skeleton Coast with one more good day’s paddle. ^[iii]

This was one of my kayak campsites on the Shipwreck Coast. Tim Gallaway also stayed at the same place on his solo trip.

An experience that sounds surprisingly similar to mine, windy and stormy. The one feature that proved to prevent the mind numbing feel of the coast was the driftwood, dry and bleached grey from the sun, stacked up all along the shore, but most was pushed up against the dense forest where larger waves from the Gales of November deposited it in years past.

Between the sand and the evidence of waves, the disappearing buildings and the lack of humanity, the Shipwreck Coast feels like no other section of the Great Lakes. While roads reach it now in a few places, I’m sure that most kayakers experience a shore that is little changed since Allen’s trip in 1832. That could change. When I paddled it, I noticed newer summer and weekend cabins tucked back in the woods. I imagine that much like the rest of Michigan’s coast, that the Shipwreck Coast will be developed with condos, hotels, cabins and summer homes. If you want to experience it as Allen did, you should plan to take a kayaking trip there soon.

^[i] Stonehouse, Frederick, Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast, Marquette: Avery Color Studios, 1994

^[ii] Allen, James, Journal and Letters of Lieutenant James Allen, Expedition of 1832. U.S. House Executive Documents, No. 323, 23d Cong., 1 Sess.

^[iii] Gallaway, Tim, PaddlingLight: THE SKELETON COAST: Paddling Lake Superior’s Desolate Southeast Shore, September 5, 2011

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Kayaking Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast (Skeleton Coast)

Last week, I wrote about the difference between an expedition, adventure and a trip. After many comments, I still don’t know if I have the perfect criteria for determining if a trip is an expedition, but I do think that we figured out that expeditions don’t necessarily need to be adventurous. In the comments of that thread, Roman Dial, author of Packrafting! An Introduction and How-To Guide, suggested that we could rank trips on a two axis chart. One axis would run between expedition and jaunt and the other between adventure and routine. I drew up the chart to see what it would look like.

On the chart, point “A” is something like a walk to the store, and point “B” is something like climbing K2. I find this chart interesting, because you can use it to figure out exactly what your trip is. If it has features of an expedition more than a jaunt, move point “C” towards expedition. If it’s routine, move point “C” downward. If it’s adventurous move the point up. At some point, you can determine what you think your trip is. It could be a routine expedition, an adventurous expedition, a routine jaunt or an adventurous jaunt (Or as William Latham and Roman Dial pointed out in the last thread, it might be a jaunty adventure).

Even more interesting to me is what kind of trip rests on the center intersection at point “C.” Logistically it might be expedition-esque, but it’s also has features of just a jaunt. Parts of the trip are routine, but it probably also has adventurous moments. It seems to me that seems like the perfect description of a long-distance trip, something like circumnavigating a large island or one of the Great Lakes or hiking a long-distance trail, such as the Appalachian Trail. Those trips have serious logistical challenges such as getting to the starting point, figuring out resupply on the way and living in the woods for months at a time. But, day-by-day they feel just like a day-long jaunt. There may be adventurous moments, such as getting caught on the water during a squall, but much of the trip is routine; you wake up, cook breakfast, break camp, paddle all day, set up camp, cook dinner and do it all over the next day. Then months later you succeed at your goal.

That intersection at point “C” is exactly the types of trips that I love to do. I think the appropriate term/category to call this trip type is a long-distance trip. I’d also venture that most of the trips that we have called “expeditions,” such as Freya Hoffmeister’s trip around Australia and South America or Renata Chlumska’s kayak and bike around the United States or many of Verlen Kruger’s trips, are actually long-distance paddling trips instead of expeditions.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: The Adventure Matrix: Ranking Trips on a Graph

It’s wintertime again, which means that I start to get all philosophical again. It’s probably from the lack of paddling. The only water time I’ve been getting lately is second rate, because it’s on the solid kind with cross country skis instead of the liquid kind with a kayak. Over the years, one topic that has interested me is a question of semantics and the intensity of multi-day paddling trips that we take. Truly, whatever the trip is, is whatever the trip is. But, I like to try and place a trip into some kind of category so that it registers in my mind correctly.

One way of categorizing paddling trips is to try and see if it’s an expedition, trip or adventure. To do that, we need definitions of what each of those categories are. That would seem like a simple task, but it’s surprisingly difficult and the definitions are shifty and often depend on the beholder’s opinion. Defining a trip is easy. Anytime you go out paddling, you’re taking a trip, but the others aren’t as easy to define.

What’s an Expedition?

It seems in the paddling world that an expedition is often called an expedition based on the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it principle, which I find rather suspect – not only because it’s a lame way to categorize something, but also because I’ve been subject to that kind of judgment before. When I was planning a 3,600-mile kayak expedition, I was interviewed by the editor of Paddler Magazine. In the magazine he mentioned that he didn’t think it was an expedition for petty reasons, despite the fact that it had never been done before and had an uncertain outcome with a specific goal and cause. Unfortunately, under that editor’s leadership the magazine failed a few issues later.

Merriam-Webster defines an expedition as:

a : a journey or excursion undertaken for a specific purpose

By that definition, if you take the trip for a specific purpose, the trip becomes an expedition. That specific purpose seems like it could be anything. Wikipedia notes that it’s often exploratory, scientific, geographic, military or political in nature. But, it could be a simple as completing a route.

One way to refine the choice was voiced by Jon Turk in Cold Oceans: Adventures in Kayak, Rowboat, and Dogsled. He wrote that the difference between an expedition and a vacation is that on an expedition you do everything you can to achieve the goal and on a vacation you do whatever feels right for that day. This seems useful to me, because when you combine it with Merriam-Webster’s definition you get a trip with a specific purpose that is the ultimate driving force of the trip.

For the definition of expedition to be useful in distinguishing itself from “just” a paddling trip, I think we need to add one more leg to it. The outcome should be in question, dangerous and difficult and it should take work to achieve it. For example, a 10-mile day trip down an oft-canoed river probably isn’t an expedition, because its outcome isn’t in question and it isn’t difficult. Do that trip in the heart of winter, and it just may be. I feel almost like I’m falling into the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it trap, but I think that we can trust the expeditioner to determine what is a difficult-and-in-question purpose.

With this three prong definition we get:

• a journey or excursion undertaken for a specific purpose.
• a journey on which you do everything possible to achieve the purpose.
• where achieving the purpose is in question, dangerous and difficult.

That’s useful enough for me to tell the difference between an expedition and a trip.

What’s an Adventure?

“I just had an adventure,” is a common refrain coming from paddlers returning from a trip. It seems like an adventure can happen all the time, but what exactly is an adventure? Merriam-Webster defines it as:

a : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks
b : the encountering of risks c : an exciting or remarkable experience

That sounds about right to me, although if the experience becomes routine it might no longer be an adventure. For example, a kayaking guide might take the same trip daily. It becomes routine and no longer an adventure for him, but it might be an adventure for his clients.

Adventures can happen every day if something remarkable happens. Once I met a movie stunt man in a fastfood restaurant who was on a journey to find his long-lost father. After listening to his gripping story about how he became a race car driver and then a stunt man to make his father see his name on the screen and about how his journey across the country to find him, I felt like I had just had an adventure.

Here’s the Tricky Part

When is a trip an adventure and when is it an expedition? And are many of the paddling expeditions really just paddling adventures? Let’s plan a trip where we will kayak across the north shore of Lake Superior. It’s going to take us a month, and we’re going to do everything we possibly can to achieve the goal. This paddle isn’t something to take on a whim. The shoreline is remote, rugged and Lake Superior’s water is brutal cold and the weather can change in a second. The risk is real and the route is dangerous. During the fur trade, many canoeists died along this same route. And within the last 10 years, an experienced kayaker died on the route and two had to be rescued via helicopter.

Our trip fits all of the points in both the definition for expedition and adventure, so we really can’t categorize it into a single category. By default, because we have a goal, it becomes an expedition, but this expedition that we just planned also happens to be a guided kayaking trip. It used to be performed by voyagers as a job. Surely a guided trip isn’t an expedition, because its outcome is seldom in question. Can our trip still be called an expedition when someone guides the same route, and it feels routine to him with an outcome that’s not in question? I don’t know for sure, but probably it could for us. But, that seems to make the expedition category somewhat arbitrary. I’m going to go out on a narrow and brittle tree branch here and say that we need to add one more prong to our definition of expedition. To become an expedition, it must also:

• serve a cause beyond personal enrichment.

If we add a cause to our definition of expedition, we now have a useful separation that doesn’t feel arbitrary when the same trip could be done as something routine without a questionable outcome. An expedition must also serve a cause. To be a noble expedition that cause shouldn’t just be tacked on. For example, adding “to bring attention to cause X” by climbing up Denali. Instead it should flow from the expedition. Our Lake Superior expedition might have a cause that could only be done by kayak. Our cause might be to increase scientific knowledge about water quality along the north shore. We would sample water daily. Or it could be to increase paddlesports participation or to increase wilderness protection.

By adding a cause to expeditions we get three distinct categories. Trips encompass both adventures and expeditions, but don’t need to serve a cause or have significant danger and risk, i.e. you can take a trip to the store. Adventures and expeditions are related, but expeditions have a cause and a purpose. That feels like a useful separation to me, and it might also downgrade some major paddling trips called expeditions to adventures.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: What’s the Difference between a Kayak or Canoe Expedition, Trip and Adventure?

I love to winter kayak especially when Lake Superior starts to freeze over in late February and early March. It’s a time of the year when other paddlers stay home bundled up in front of the fireplace, and it’s a time of the year that the shoreline changes almost everyday due to the varied ice patterns. When the water and air temperature starts to drop, it’s important to have the right winter kayaking gear, and I covered that in my winter kayaking checklist. One item that I left off the list is a Tuilik.

Note: Featured photo by photographer Paul Sundberg.

What is a Tuilik?

A tuilik (too-e-leek) is a combination of a hooded jacket and a sprayskirt. It originated in the Inuit culture and was designed to seal a kayak’s cockpit opening as well as to keep the kayaker warm and dry. The modern day equivalant is wearing a drytop and a sprayskirt. The Inuit made the first tuiliks out of seal skin, but modern tuiliks come in Gore-Tex and neoprene. For winter, you want a neoprene version.

Paddlers coming from a neoprene sprayskirt to a tuilik often note how much more free they feel in a tuilik. You’re able to twist, rotate and turn your body much more easily than with a sprayskirt. Tuiliks make torso rotation easier and can help you set up rolls more easily. Neoprene tuiliks are also extremely warm, which makes it a good piece of gear for winter kayaking.

Commercial versions of neoprene tuiliks, such as Brooks tuilik, often run around $400, but you can make your own for the price of a sheet of neoprene, a pattern, glue and a few odds and ends. Homemade tuiliks run around $150, but if you get a group together to buy neoprene, you might be able to get a sheet of neoprene for less than $40, which would drop the cost to somewhere around $60 per tuilik.

Wearing a Tuilik

Getting into a neoprene tuilik is never a pleasant experience to me. Unless you align the seams of the arms correctly, they’ll feel twisted the entire time you wear it, so as you put it on make sure that the seams run correctly up the side of your arms. Once on pull the hood over your head, the opening should extend down around your chin so that your chin, mouth, nose and eyebrows show. Your tuilik may have a string that’s designed to wrap around the top of your head to tighten the hood opening. On a Brooks’ tuilik, the string works best for me by not wrapping it around my forehead like shown on Brooks’ website. I just pull it tight and then adjust the neoprene down to my eyebrows and pull the opening a bit forward around my cheeks. That usually keeps most of the water out during a roll. Experiment to get the best fit.

Tuiliks for Kayak Kayaking

Although tuiliks are warm, they don’t protect you during a swim, so when the water is cold you should wear a drysuit or wetsuit underneath. During winter, I wear a drysuit with plenty of insulation and then the tuilik with a lifevest over top. This combo keeps me more than warm enough to roll even when the temperature hovers around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. On longer winter paddles, a neoprene tuilik may feel too hot, but it’s easy to do a roll and cool off.

Wearing a tuilik with a drysuit underneath feels a little bulky, but it’s not bad, and you’ll be happy for the extra warmth and hood in the cold. If you do any significant winter paddling or rolling in cold water, I highly recommend getting a tuilik.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: The Tuilik: a Perfect Bit of Kit for Winter Kayaking

For issue 28 of Ocean Paddler, I wrote an article about my approach to kayak expedition photography. In it I touched on the subject of how to pack camera gear for kayaking. I use a similar approach for canoeing. Essentially, my approach is based on the idea that if you can’t get to the camera, you can’t take the picture. There’s no ideal solution for every situation, but you have plenty of choices for waterproof camera cases.

In the above picture (staring left and going clockwise): Pelican 1020 case, SealLine Baja 5 HD, Pelican 1400 case, Aquapac SLR case, Aquapac Mini Camera with Hard Lens case. Cameras are a Canon S95 and a Nikon FM3a.

Hardcore Camera Protection

If you need the best camera protection, then a hard case, such as the Pelican cases, are the way to go. These cases protect your electronics from impacts and water. When sealed correctly they are waterproof, dustproof and airtight, which is more than dry bags will claim. The bigger sizes come with foam inserts that you can customize to fit your gear exactly.

Pelican cases make it very easy to get to your gear. You just unsnap the latches, lift the lid and grab your camera. In rougher water, it’s fast and feels safer than using a dry bag. Getting your gear back into the case is also quick and easy. You don’t feel like you’re fighting the case when you use these. The best way to use a Pelican case is to have it at your feet in a canoe or to have it strapped to the deck or between your knees in a kayak. That makes it easy to get to.

The downside is that you need large hatches to get the bigger sizes into your kayak. I find that they work much better for canoe trips than kayak trips (mainly because I have round hatches on my kayaks). The other downside is that they’re heavy. I have friends that use these cases to carry computers, sat phones and such, but they have kayaks with larger hatch covers. I typically carry a small one for my point and shoot, but don’t often use the larger one. The two that I bought are the Pelican Case 1400 Dry Box and the Pelican 1020 Micro Case. (Note: The links go to NRS. As of Jan ’12, they are on sale!) The 1400 has enough space for my camera and a couple of lenses. The 1020 fits my point and shoot perfectly.

The Verdict: Get a hard case if you need the best protection, quick access and have larger hatches in your kayak or are a canoeist, and if you don’t mind the extra weight.

Softcore Camera Protection

Combining a drybag, such as SealLine’s 5-liter Nimbus Dry Bag, with foam from an old sleeping pad yields a compact, lightweight, protective and waterproof camera bag — although no drybag is dry forever, they all leak when left emerged for extended periods. You can see an example of homemade paddling in the picture to the right. Cut a round piece that fits in the bottom of the dry bag and then cut a piece that wraps completely around the circumference of the dry bag. You insert the camera lens down and then put your shoulder strap on top of the camera to protect the LCD screen.

This arrangement makes it easy to pack the camera into a kayak with smaller hatches — it even fits into a day hatch — or into a portage pack and it’s much lighter than a Pelican case. It also easily slides under the bungee cords on a kayak’s deck. To use this case, keep it at your feet or under the seat in your canoe or between your knees in a kayak. When you’re ready for a picture, pull it out, unroll the top, put the strap around your neck and then pull the camera out.

The downside is that it takes longer to get the camera out of the bag than it does with a Pelican case. The other downside is that it feels a little fiddly in waves trying to get the camera out of the bag and it feel worse getting the camera back in.

The Verdict: Get a soft case if you need an easy-to-pack, lightweight case for your camera.

Waterproof Camera Case

Waterproof camera cases, such as Aquapac’s SLR Case or their Mini Camera Case, protect your camera from water by enclosing it within a completely waterproof case and let you shoot through a piece of plexiglass in front of your lens. These are the ideal solution for situations when you need to shoot while water splashes around your camera. Aquapacs cases are rated to 15 feet underwater.

To use, you insert your camera, close the unique snap closure and shoot away. It couldn’t be easier. In rough water, you know that you can get the shot without getting your camera wet. You can also use these underwater. I’ve used the Mini Camera Case while snorkeling. It was great fun. On the water, just let the strap hang around your neck (watch out for entrapment issues).

The downside to these camera cases is that they don’t provide protection against bumps and you need to make sure that you don’t scratch the plexiglass lens element.

The Verdict: Get a waterproof camera case if you need to take pictures underwater or in rough water.

Waterproof Camera

If you don’t want to mess with a DSLR or high-end point-and-shoot, because you don’t need that quality of images from your trips, then consider a waterproof camera, such as Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3 Rugged/Waterproof Digital Camera. While the image quality doesn’t add up to that of other point-and-shoots, and it falls flat when compared to point-and-shoots that can shoot RAW or even the lowest-end DSLR, waterproof cameras let you get the picture without having to worry about cases.

To use, just clip the strap to your life vest and tuck the camera into a pocket. To shoot, take it out and press the button. It couldn’t be easier. The other nice feature about these cameras is that you can attach a tripod to your kayak and film yourself doing rolls. While not doing rolls, I used a suction cup tripod from Kayalu Gear to make the video at the bottom of my Boundary Waters Routes: Sag and Seagull Loop trip report.

The Verdict: Get a waterproof camera if you don’t want to mess with camera cases.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: How to Pack Camera Gear For Kayaking and Canoeing

It’s winter in the northern hemisphere and for those of us in the frozen tundras, that means that we have a few choices on what to do this time of year. To get a paddling fix, we can either winter kayak, head to the pool like in the above image or read a book. Included here are five books released in 2011 that deserve your attention.

A Book For the Canoe and Kayak Builders

Fuselage Frame Boats: A guide to building skin kayaks and canoes by Jeff Horton was the only book that I caught during 2011 for canoe and kayak builders. It’s somewhat flawed (see my review), but offers enough information to get the job done. If you follow the directions, you’ll end up with a Yost-style skin-on-frame kayak or canoe that costs about $300. That’s pretty cheap compared to plywood or cedar-strip kayaks.

For Learning Paddling Techniques

Canoe Camping: An Essential Guide by Mark Scriver was reissued in a new edition. While not a new book, it’s definitely worth reading and checking out, especially if you are just getting into canoe camping. He covers planning, packing, gear choices and more.

Adventure Books

Around Madagascar on my Kayak tells the story of a solo kayaking expedition around Madagascar. Talk about hardcore! His 3,100-mile adventure took 11 months to complete. He landed in heavy surf, traversed shoreline that isn’t hospitable to humans and had a hell of an adventure. Technically this was released in 2010, but the re-release was in 2011, so I’m including it. This one is on my reading list as I haven’t read it yet. The paperback is expensive unless you find it used, but the Kindle edition is reasonable.

Fearless: One Woman, One Kayak, One Continent tells the story of Freya Hoffmeister’s paddle around Australia. The 9,420-mile trip took a year, and on the trip Freya paddled through alligator-infested waters, made 300-mile crossings and generally experience everything bad-ass that can happen on a kayaking trip. I followed Freya’s journey on her blog and in Sea Kayaker Magazine. Now I’m looking forward to reading more about it when this book is released in late January 2012. In 2011, Freya started her next trip: a circumnavigation of South America.

For the Instructor

101 Games and Activities for Canoes and Kayaks provides 101 games that instructors can use to challenge students. They’re a way to have fun while learning on the water, taking the pressure off of learning and can make a boring class into something exciting that students will remember. In my experience, both kids and adults seem to get into games, and this book has 101 of them.

Do you have any books or suggestions to add to a winter reading list?

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: 5 Canoe and Kayak Books to Read in 2012

On kayak and canoe trips, I like to carry simple meals that require little prep and take up little room in the portage pack or hatches. Usually that means that I pack one or two types of lunches for a 10-day trip. By day 10 that can get a little old. Recently, I posted on PaddlingLight’s Facebook page asking for lunch ideas. The responses were varied, some elaborate and some simple. But all were less complicated than those found in a commercial paddling cookbook such as The Back-Country Kitchen: Camp Cooking for Canoeists, Hikers, and Anglers. The ideas were so good that I thought I’d share with the rest of PaddlingLight’s readers.

Main Dishes for Paddling Lunches

1. Wraps, summer sausage (or pepperoni) and cheese. To prepare: Pull a burrito wrap out of the package, slice summer sausage and cheese. Wrap it up and eat. To pack: To preserve the wraps in your food bag, wrap them around the outside of bag so that the wraps follow the contours. Options: On a cold, wind day consider cooking the wrap in the fire.
2. Wasa crackers, cheese, sausage and horseradish mustard. To prepare: Take a Wasa cracker, slice sausage and cheese onto the cracker and cover with a big helping of mustard. To pack: Wasa crackers are hardy, but take care when packing them. Keep them in that paper package they come in and pack at the top of your food bag. Many grocery stores carry horseradish mustard in plastic squeeze bottles.
3. Peanut butter, summer sausage and some maple syrup…all wrapped up in a tortilla. This idea comes from Sven Hoaglund. I’m not so sure about the peanut butter, but maple syrup on sausage tastes great. If Andrew Zimmern can eat bizarre foods, so can paddlers. It’s probably tasty.
4. Hot soup. To prepare: Kurt Penner suggests heating up soup at breakfast, storing it in a lightweight thermos and eating it a lunch. This is especially good on cold, rainy days. I like carrying along instant soup mixes, which makes the process as easy as heating water and opening a package of soup.
5. Fruit, pepperjack cheese and a walnut, dried cranberries and sunflower seed mix. Combined with a lovely crusty loaf of Italian or other good bread covered with olive oil that had herbs and pepper and garlic steeping all day. This suggestion from Tracy Prior Seffers would work best on shorter trips where you can protect the bread or on trips that you’re motivated to make bread the night before.
   
6. Four-oz bag of chicken salad with multigrain sandwich thins, a couple sticks of Polly-O cheese, some Spanish olives. To pack: Kayak Gus tells us that this combo fits inside a ziplock bag with a single-serve Gatorade drink mix and a Clif Bar.
7. Hummus with mini pitas. This idea comes from Agnes Jung. To prepare: Mix powdered hummus with water until the hummus forms a paste-like consistency. I find that mixing the hummus at breakfast and storing it in a plastic bag makes lunch prep faster.
   
8. Pitas! You can put lots of stuff in them such as PB&J, Honey, sausage slices, smoked salmon or tuna from a pouch, cheese, dried beef, etc. To pack: Pitas are fragile so store them on the top of the food bag. You could substitute burrito wraps for pitas and use all the same ideas.
   

Side Dishes for Canoe and Kayak Lunches

1. Fruits: Apples hold up extremely well in a pack and taste fantastic at lunch. They supply a crunch often missing from camping food.
2. Veggies: Carrots and celery both hold up well in a back, and you can dip the celery into a plastic tub of peanut butter with little mess.
3. Trail mix. My recipe for the best trail mix is one bag Peanut M&Ms, one bag mixed nuts without peanuts, one box of Goldfish crackers.
4. Cliff bars.
5. Homemade energy bars: If anyone has a good recipe, please, share! Via Facebook, Agnes Jung suggests this recipe for Healthy Carrot Cake Power Scuffins
6. Fruit cups but they get eaten early to lighten the weight.
7. Granola bars.
8. Gummy worms. Tim Gallaway says, “Nothing makes a day better like a gummy worm on a rainy day boating. Gummy worms aren’t just for boating though. We always get them for skiing. They’re great for a quick boost going up the lift.”

Any other ideas?

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: 8 Lunch Ideas for Your Next Canoe or Kayak Trip

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is a million acre wilderness area in northern Minnesota established to protect pristine boreal forests and historic and recreational canoe routes. It has over 1,000 lakes and 2,000 campsites. If you use a GPS unit, finding GPS data for BWCA campsites and portages was difficult. Now, you can get that GPS data for free. If you’ve read my Free Garmin Topo Maps article you know the basic procedure. If you don’t here it is:

An overlay of the BWCA GPS data on the MN map. Garmin's software can't overlay two maps so I had to do it this way to show the data, but your Garmin GPS can display both.

You need to download several maps to make this work:

• BWCA Campsite and Portages Map: This has all the portages and campsites as of 2009. This will change a bit especially after the Pagami Creek Fire.
• Minnesota Topo Maps: This gives you all the lake and topographical data needed for the BWCA.

To install:

1. Download both of the files.
2. Run both of the files. They are both .exe files, so on Windows, they will automagically install and you can find them in both Garmin BaseCamp and in Garmin MapSource.
3. Hook your GPS up to your computer and install them according to the instructions for the computer program you’re using. Essentially, select the map, highlight the area and push a button. Afterward you’re good-to-go.

This is a great resource for canoeists who use GPS units in the BWCA, but it’s not a substitute for good compass and navigation skills. If you don’t have a GPS unit and are itch’n to buy one, consider the Garmin eTrex 20 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator. It has a color screen, it’s expandable and it uses AA batteries to get 20 hours of battery life. It weighs 5 oz with the batteries.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Free Boundary Waters Canoe Area GPS Data: Campsites and Portages