BaffinPaddler - http://baffinpaddler.blogspot.com

Does a sea kayak have a sweet spot? I think so. Especially when you are doing the cowboy scramble. Ok, I'm in the water in a nice warm Canadian lake in July in my cute new Maelstrom Vital 166  sea kayak that I bought in May without really testing if I could get back into it unassisted. I just assumed I could. "Of course I can, I can do it in my Boreal Baffin in 5 seconds." I count. It's a game in warm flatwater when I'm doing it for fun and rescue practice. In the first pic above, look how far the nose is sticking out of the water. This sea kayak has one very upturned kayak nose!  The Malestrom Vital 166 is 21 inches at the beam and is 16 feet 6 inches long. The beam is the widest measurement across the kayak. That has to be at the cockpit. It's where we sit. Makes sense, especially after the Christmas holidays, we need to fit in there. Everything gets skinnier from there. Yes, after Christmas we work to get rid of what we gained, and from the cockpit...

Wow! It really pays to pay attention to your Web stats and see where your traffic comes from. I just noticed that BaffinPaddler made the list of  Top 50 Kayaking Blogs on KayakingBlogs.org and Guide to Online Schools.  How cool! Hey thanks! It's an honor to be reviewed and ranked. And a great motivator for a blogger. I'm a big fan of blogs and bloggers. And now I've just discovered yet another great resource of some kayak blogs I didn't know about that I can also share on my blog. Some of my favorite kayak bloggers are listed on my blog roll in the right column of my blog. There is a kinship amongst kayakers in general and with kayak bloggers in particular. It is great to stay connected to other kayakers this way. They are the ones who motivate me to get out there and discover something new and maybe paddle with some of them one day. This review is great for us bloggers..Looks like great photos and videos are an expected hit along with the stories and adventu...

Wrecking yourself is pretty easy. It can be sudden or come upon you over time from chronic overuse or stupid abuse. I’ve done all of the above with yoga and paddling . . . all things that are supposed to be good for you, right? All of the wrecking part was my own fault though. None of it was an accident. I’ve wrecked my back with yoga and I’ve rebuilt myself with yoga. I’ve wrecked my shoulder paddling and later found a path to rehab and prevention that included a Greenland paddle and yoga. A good combo! Don’t you just love sports! According to all the physios I’ve frequented, it’s those of us who do sports that they see most often. And it seems that shoulders and knees could win an award for being the parts of our bodies that we mess up the most often. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. The path to learning is sometimes long and painful. Some may say, “always!” But, it’s amazing what you can discover when you really need to. Misery does not love company – you will han...

I was looking for a little more information about the chines on the Malestrom Vaag 174 and the Malestrom Vital 166. I own a Vital. I was seeing different descriptions on the Web from a variety of sources about the chines of the Maelstrom sea kayaks, so I contacted the maker, Maelströmkayak , and got a nice response from Charles-Alexandre Desjardins, President. If you're interested to know more about the Maelstrom Vital 166 and Vaag 174's design, here it is from the source: "The Vitäl's chines are on the hard side. I personally say it's semi-hard chines. It's not a pure hard chine like the Nigel Foster's Legend for example, where you see the sharp angle between the hull of the kayak and its side. On the the opposite of the hard chine, there is the soft chine, where the transition is very gradual, no sharp angle, like the P & H Capella. The Vitäl 166 and the Vaag 174 have semi-hard chines. It's not a sharp angle but it's way more sha...