Big Boatin’ The Noli
We hadn’t done a Big Boat session in a while so Woody and I decided to make a trip up to the Noli and bring along some newbie long boat paddlers. Whitney has paddled a Pisgah once before, but Yonton hadn’t done the big boat thing before. We knew he would like it but pretty foreign to him.
We all loaded up in Woody’s reliable Buick LeSabre. Four paddlers four Pisgahs. The one thing we remembered a little late was the fact that when you paddle boats that are that long you actually do need a bow line. We drove up I-26 with the middle boats pointing more and more towards the sky. We tried retying but that didn’t help. We looked like the guy with the mattress on his roof trying to hold it on with our hands.
Whitney, Woody, and I have all been paddling long enough that we actually paddled whitewater boats that were nearly this long, but Yonton doesn’t have that much experience in the long boats. So we weren’t sure how that was going to go. We gave him a boat with a rudder figuring if things went really bad he could drop the rudder and guide himself home.
It was a beautiful day out there. January 28th and it was 60 degrees. The water was cold as hell but still and awesome day.
Here is the video. Its a 15mb video so it may take a minute to load.
Big Boatin’ the Noli Video Link, Click This
I will be posting video of the new Foot System and Adjustable Hip Pads later this week.
Shane