laneends wrote:

hammertym wrote: What would also be a good idea might be a site that is a green, amber, red light system for going out.... green would be days with less than 5kts an no changes scheduled... amber might be <10 kts with small changes and red would be anything else..... someone would need to maintain it and I'm not putting my hand up, but newbies don't understand what bad weather and inexperience combine to equal.

Not as simple as that every location is different, and varies hour by hour

That would be the problem - it's not just wind strength but wind direction is it against a tide flow - are they big tides with more flow - is the area reefy that turn a small swell to stand up

The variables are endless - on top of that who then is responsible ( or more to the point who get sued ) when a punter uses a site that tells him/her that it's safe to kayak and the conditions change to dangerous or conditions that this inexperienced kayaker can not handle

Experience is some thing that is learnt and comes with time in the saddle -

Yakking MUST maintain a low profile. Bring attention to yourselves and the potential dangers and you invite Regulation, regulation invites Council shiny bums to look at Liability Insurance which then leads to the MASSIVE cost to launch seen everywhere ' proper ramps are installed' these ramps are not for our convenience but as mitigation of potetial legal action.

Further, talk of the danger of this passtime within this forum only invites the very litegation you fear.

I spent 18 consecutive years launching at Bermagui and Narooma and never saw any decrease in the numbers of fools that read the magazines, saw the results and imagined themselves in those articles.

When you could not buy a sea kayak no one but adventue enthusiasts got into trouble in extreme circumstanes. If you have the market ruling greed prevails and anyone can purchase such an item for under a thousand dollars.

I also re did the boat licence test......what a joke, worst of it a) no practical and b) some took two hours to do the written!!!

No whilst retail outlets sell small unsafe toy yaks to the uninformed and or ego driven fools folks will lose their lives in accidents that put good samaratins at more risk!

IMHO

Hvalross wrote:Yakking MUST maintain a low profile.

Not going to happen when these clowns are on TV being dragged out of the water by the police either dead or alive.

The amount of cheap yaks on the market in the hands of the unwary has never been seen like this before. Hoping it will go away is delusion thinking.

The more yaks on the water the more people start thinking "hey I can do that". Altona is almost like a permanent advert for the sport at this time of year. To the layperson that yakker a km out catching big snapper in the $2500 hobie is no different than the 3m "ocean" kayak being sold on Ebay for $350.

Come the summer holidays there will barely be a camper without a little yak on the roof.

At some stage the coast guard and water police are going to get jack of it.

Hvalross wrote:
Further, talk of the danger of this passtime within this forum only invites the very litegation you fear.
IMHO

I'd happily invite any level of legislation of our sport as a result of the "talk of the danger of this passtime within this forum" if it leads to even one life being saved.

While we can sometimes go overboard on the safety aspects here (to the point where people often stay massively within their limits) overall I believe it's warranted as the risks are very real and some of our experience is better shared than each having to find out the hard way. Hopefully with that sharing of experience more will expand their limits while still staying well within a safe envelope. I've noticed that other kayak fishing forums don't have as much emphasis on safety but part of the explanation for this is the warmer water in many other parts of the country. End up in our water for long enough and it will kill you.

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

laneends wrote:

Hvalross wrote:Yakking MUST maintain a low profile.

Not going to happen when these clowns are on TV being dragged out of the water by the police either dead or alive.

The amount of cheap yaks on the market in the hands of the unwary has never been seen like this before. Hoping it will go away is delusion thinking.

The more yaks on the water the more people start thinking "hey I can do that". Altona is almost like a permanent advert for the sport at this time of year. To the layperson that yakker a km out catching big snapper in the $2500 hobie is no different than the 3m "ocean" kayak being sold on Ebay for $350.

Come the summer holidays there will barely be a camper without a little yak on the roof.

At some stage the coast guard and water police are going to get jack of it.

And sadly when they get jack of it it will be the folks that have the hours and sea miles that will suffer the most.......the clowns will depart to find another Big Top

Agree, and agree it won't go away........but, like guns, and I don't own any, but here folks are required to show ability or need to get a gun licence, then and only then can they purchase.......certain classes of firearm are forbidden........Its the structural model and the oversight that could be adopted for cars boats and jet skis should be in the class of Machine guns and Automatics.........forbidden!

Oops!

IMHO

Hvalross wrote:
Agree, and agree it won't go away........but, like guns, and I don't own any, but here folks are required to show ability or need to get a gun licence, then and only then can they purchase.......certain classes of firearm are forbidden........Its the structural model and the oversight that could be adopted for cars boats and jet skis should be in the class of Machine guns and Automatics.........forbidden!

Oops!

IMHO

Its when the sales of railbaza gun mount accessory soar you ought to worry

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!

FishnDive wrote:

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!

laneends wrote:

Hvalross wrote:
Agree, and agree it won't go away........but, like guns, and I don't own any, but here folks are required to show ability or need to get a gun licence, then and only then can they purchase.......certain classes of firearm are forbidden........Its the structural model and the oversight that could be adopted for cars boats and jet skis should be in the class of Machine guns and Automatics.........forbidden!

Oops!

IMHO

Its when the sales of railbaza gun mount accessory soar you ought to worry

Ho hum!!

I had a nast feling as I wrote there was bound to be one of the offshore yakkers that chased flying fish