Many kayakers, like myself, have benefited from the personal encouragement, guidance, and instruction of more experienced paddlers received when we were newbies first getting into the sport.  Those “mentors” helped us avoid getting into serious trouble, picked up our spirits when we despaired over learning a difficult skill, and pointed us in the right direction [...]

I’d like to applaud some paddlers I know, who shall remain nameless just in case this embarrasses them.
One former and future student of mine is taking a refresher course this summer wanting to especially learn his rescue and recovery skills.  He was already signed up before a recent unexpected capsize reinforced the need to be [...]

If you are interested in becoming a kayaker, but don’t know exactly how to get started, here’s a 4-step process that you can follow.
Step 1. Decide what kind of kayaking you want to do.
In other words, what kind of water do you want to paddle on?  Knowing where you are going to paddle will help [...]

The paddling season has definitely arrived in the upper midwest.  People are buying boats, signing up for lessons and trips, and looking for people to go paddling with.  Here are just a few local events coming up in the next few weeks that may be of interest, especially to new or aspiring paddlers.  I know [...]

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of female paddling students and customers ask about ways to find other women to paddle with.  This seemed to be an especially difficult problem for recreational kayakers since the recreational paddlers are less likely to be organized into clubs, and they just seem to lurk in the weeds [...]

Recent cold weather has many of us putting away our boats for the season.  It’s time to figure out how we can occupy our time until the sun warms up the water again next spring.  Here are some suggestions.  You might be surprised at how quickly the winter will pass if you can stay busy.

Buy [...]

Over the years working at Laacke & Joys and being a kayaking instructor, I have been approached by a number of women with the problem of finding other female kayakers with whom they can get connected to do some paddling.  It seems to be especially difficult for the recreational kayakers who just want to paddle [...]