Canoeing

Recently we've gone a little heavy on the West Coast articles here at PL. We thought it was time to check in with East Coast correspondent Jeffrey Cheatham, who filed this report from Rockingham, N.C....

There are few places more ideal than the Pacific Northwest in Summertime. The parkas are put away in favor of wet suits. The natives stop avoiding the water and start attacking it. Now, thanks to some of the guys at Mountain to Sound Outfitters and Sea Kayaker magazine (among others), there is a place to purge all that cold weather angst...

Right now there is an AIRE kayak stored in a garage or a canoe waiting in a barn that come August will be featured in the winning entry for the AIRE Video Contest for 2011...

The Canadian canoe community lost one of its most ardent supporters March 18 with the death of Canadian Canoe Museum founder Kirk A.W. Wipper, who died at age 87...

Legacy Paddlesports LLC announced today that Andy Zimmerman has decided to leave the company to pursue other interests....

As if Australia wasn’t enough. Now Freya Hoffmeister, the “Woman in Black,” is at it again, this time setting off in September 2011 to become the first person to sea kayak the entire coast line of South America.

What took the Mayflower just over 66 days took Polish paddler Aleksander Doba 103, but he did it...successfully paddling solo across the Atlantic and arriving on land -- beautiful, gorgeous land -- on Feb. 3, 2011, in the Brazilian fishing village of Acarau...

Stuart Trueman is hoping the third time is also a charm. Caffyn was 1st in 1983, then 27 years later Hoffmeister did it 2010. Now the Kokotat outfitted Trueman has decided it shouldn’t take another 27 before the continent of Australia is circumnavigated by kayak...

Nobody ever said that crossing the Atlantic by boat was easy. It took the Mayflower just over 66 days to complete that historic voyage. So when Aleksansder Doba set off October 21 to try and paddle 3,300-km across the Atlantic, he estimated the solo voyage would take him three months to complete...

Kayak surfers in Steamboat Springs, Colo., might have a little more time on their downtown play waves now. Bomber Gear founder Rick Franken and his 8-year-old son, Kai, won’t be surfing them at all hours anymore, as the paddlesports apparel company was recently sold to Confluence Watersports...

When Joe Jacobi won the gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with C-2 partner Scott Strausbaugh, it ushered in a new era fro slalom paddling in the U.S. Twice the stop-gap when USACK’s executive directors have stepped down – the first after Terry Kent left in 2000, and again last year after David Yarborough left office – now he’s made the move from interim to full-time executive director of the sport’s governing body and is reaching for gold yet again. PL catches up with him to see how he’s getting the organization stroking in the right direction...

Just a scant few months after the first year in eons without a September TAPS West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium event, three more paddlesports events north of the border are going by the wayside. Scott MacGregor, publisher of Rapid Media, recently announced that the company will no longer produce Palmer Fest, the National Sea Kayak Symposium or the Canadian Canoe Symposium...

No, that's not a typo. You can finally play Taps for Paddler, the long-standing member benefit magazine for the American Canoe Association. At it November board meeting, the ACA announced that it will “officially” suspend publishing Paddler and will have Canada’s Rapid Media, spearheaded by Scott MacGregor, satisfy its member magazine benefits...

Fluid Kayaks is expanding in the USA, and searching for reps.

Perfect for Inflatable Kayaks and Stand-Up Paddleboards, Metropolitan Vacuum Cleaner Company of Suffern, New York, has introduced a new generation of rapid-deployment Magic-Air Electric Inflator/Deflators.

Want stylish slip-on sandal comfort off the water as well as on? Slide into a pair of Chaco ToeCoops or PedSheds, slip-ons that will see you to your post-paddle PBR and nacho plate in style. Plus, the company honors a kayak instructor from Bainbridge Island, Wash...

From the banks of the Vaal River in South Africa, Fluid Kayaks has been raising the bar in paddle-sports equipment since 2002. Though originally known for whitewater kayaks, their latest offering proves they like to ride those other waves, as well. PL takes a look at Fluid's newest ocean kayak...

Canoeists and sea kayakers planning flatwater fall trips on Labyrinth/Stillwater Canyons of the Green River in Canyonlands National Park might want to start making a change of plans. On Aug. 20, a huge flash flood caused severe damage to the switchbacks on the road leading to Mineral Bottom, making the road impassable as a put-in or take-out....

There must be chumthing in the water. In the past two weeks, two reports of shark attacks on sea kayakers have surfaced like the culprits' dorsals in California. PL caught up with one of them, Duane Strosaker, for his take on nearly getting shredded ...

Paddling Life is on hand at this year’s Outdoor Retailer Summer Market tradeshow, to bring you not-in-the-industry folk up to speed on what’s going down. First installment: a look at products for the stockier set. Turns out that Morgan Spurlock, whose 30-day McDonald's diet documented the fast-food industry, isn’t the only one going super size. Paddlesport exhibitors are also banking on beefier consumers by churning out products that excel for XLs. Following are a few tipping the scales.

Chicago is known for its storied sports franchises, deep-dish pizza pies, and bone chilling wind. This August, however, the city and Lake Michigan play host to the fourth annual Chicago Shoreline Marathon. The event proudly claims to be “The only world-class race to paddle Lake Michigan and the shores of Chicago”.