laneends wrote:I think it important that even the most experienced put their hands up to having scary moments. Nature can exceed anyone's capabilities, experience and quality equipment simply increase your margin for error
Touring in sit-in yaks aside, my first yak was a little RTM of about 2.8m. I can admit I only had a life jacket due to my healthy respect for water from nearly drowning as a teenager, not because I knew it was a regulation. I was lucky enough to cross Rhino's path early in the piece and I'm pretty sure he directed me here. I upgraded to the Fish'n'Dive for more space more than fro knowing much about the requirements of the bay. I only planned on fishing Altona for flatties originally. I then got royally dumped coming in at campbell's when the weather blew up southerly (against predictions), a hastings trip also proved that paddling a barge wasn't the easiest way to get around. The outback came next and I was happy with that until I fished SWR in big swell and confirmed that I wanted to change yaks again after a couple of tuna trips pushing k's in the high twenties. At SWR I felt that both the Outback (and myself) were well and truly at the limit, but was happy to push boundaries in the company of other yakkers I trusted. For new yakkers to cross paths with someone more experienced early in the piece (eg Rhino's Oh Boy video) or to come across a good first yak at a bargain price to make them buy it over an ebay yak is realistically the best outcome we can hope for to prevent more deaths.
I think for a lot of new yakkers money is the biggest issue; people don't want to spend a lot before they know if they are going to like the sport. Its a false economy I know, (now with the hindsight of 5 yak purchases behind me
) Where money is the issue, and the yakker begins to find the limits of the yak one of two things happens:
1) upgrade
2) modification
Upgrades generally lead to a good outcome, number 2 is the worry. The mindset seems to be I want to go further but my yak is hard to paddle - put a motor on. This has been discussed at length before so I won't re-hash it, but when we talk about education newbies largely don't know this forum exists unless they have crossed paths with an experienced yakker and unfortunately they seem to get most of their info from the oracle that is facebook, that same source of info that turns over almost as many small yaks and watersnakes as ebay. If someone has a solution to that then you are better than me!