Recent content by riverstrider

I know a few people who's common-sense sectors in their brains are so poorly exercised and atrophied that it is a wonder they are still alive. It seems like you may not have that problem. So take any opportunity to get that boat out on something benign and safe, and/or paddle with others, when...

I love opportunities to paddle through forests, but there aren't any large flood control dams in RI so usually paddling through the trees means always being aware of current. There is a large swamp (the Great Swamp) that is cool to paddle through during flood conditions (which has occurred a lot...

Riding around with a canoe on a car always seems to invite questions, and it's always good when the question is actually about the canoe or canoeing. The most common question I get, whether the canoe is on the car, or in the water with no fishing gear in sight, is how the fishing was. I don't...

I put in about 20 years as a volunteer EMT-firefighter with 3 different services (2 ambulance squads and a fire station), which is as close to being a doctor I ever want to be. It was rewarding most of the time, stressful a lot of the time, but the pay sucked, lol! Those skills came handy on...

I am also a cloud watcher, and they rarely lead me astray in either predicting rain or at least predicting a change in the weather. And I now know that campfire smoke hugging the ground for a good distance means rain, probably heavy, is coming. I did not know that the first time I saw the...

I'd like to thank Kestrel for replying to this thread a few weeks back and bumping it up. Otherwise I may have missed out on reading one of the best trip reports I can remember! What an epic trip, with very good descriptions of what it is like to be living in nature instead of just with it. I...

I regret not being able to join you all on this one! Usually I can take a day off on short notice, but not this time. It looked like a fun trip!

A comfortable chair is a must for me. The only time I took less than a full-sized chair was when I packed a tripod chair (it still had a seatback, but no arm rests) as part of an ultra-light 5 day trip that included the Mud Pond Carry. Man (at least this man) does not live on water alone. So I...

I don't think there is any ice left in RI...not that there ever was much this year. I imagine things are similar in most of CT, and certainly in SE Mass.

Expecting 1-2 inches of rain tonight and tomorrow, with some winds. Normally a nothingburger, but this will be enough to flood everything again...there's nowhere for the water to go. And the temps: 46, 39, 56, 21, 19...RI weather be throwing temps out there like the daily lottery numbers.

My immediate canoe tripping dreams involve retirement so that I have more time to do it! I have a little less than 3 years before I can retire (at age 59, which is pretty good), so after that, river gods willing, I'll be able to focus on some of my bucket list trips, like the BWCA, Voyageurs...

That is a real good price, and I think you will be happy with that boat. To get back to your question about the oil-canning, I'm not even sure if the hull is warped or not. It just appeared to be in one of the pictures in the way it reflected the light. It could be totally fine. If not, you...

2-3 inches of rain or more overnight and warming temperatures pretty much got rid of the 7 or so inches of snow we got last Sunday. Oh well. More rain this weekend, then perhaps some snow coming up next Tuesday. It's a good time to stay off the rivers in RI...they're mostly in flood now. Again...

I have a 1989 Rx Explorer that is in worse shape than that one! It's tough to tell if those are surface scratches or true cold cracks. If they are cold-cracks, I agree with pblanc...some G Flex and maybe a fiberglass patch will be a strong repair. That bottom hull is not in bad shape at all...

I'm with Gamma on this. I dress generally for the season, and if there is some question I stick my hand in to feel how cold it is. If it is a big enough lake that there could be a thermocline, I take that into consideration.