C-Forum

The Atom is a great boat if you want a class IV river to feel like a class V. I much prefer to paddle a boat that makes a class V feel like a class IV.

I really liked my Prophet except that I was never able to pull off a combat roll. The center of the boat was too far out of the water when upside down. It didn't take me long before I sold it.

Jim

I've been buying ordinary toggle switches and coating them with ReRack which is used to recoat damaged dishwasher racks. I think that Liquid Electrical Tape would work even better. Don't forget to seal the end of the rubber boot. That's the point of a lot of leakage.

The best stuff for removing contact cement, by far, is toluene. It works much faster than MEK or acetone and doesn't melt your boat anywhere near as fast.

I never liked the plastic cam buckles until I switched to polyester 10K webbing from Strapworks.com. The cam buckles hold extremely well with the thicker webbing. I'm now in the process of replacing my airline buckles and Velcro fasteners with the thicker webbing and plastic cam buckles. But before ...

Wearing nose plugs ruins the picture of someone running a rapid.

Back in the 70s when I was a fairly new paddler I would read as much as I could about hull designs. I remember reading that the reason that the boat is wider behind the cockpit is that it made the boat go faster in shallow water. :o I couldn't figure how that made it any faster but I was new to the ...

Here's a suggestion that I picked up on some forum some time ago. After welding the crack cover the crack on the inside of the boat with layers of duct tape or Gorilla tape. After each layer heat the tape with a heat gun then roll all the bubbles out with something like a wallpaper roller. I hope th...

I'll be there, for sure!

The boiling water trick only works if the handle is held in place with glue. When I tried to shorten my Mitchell paddles it didn't work because they were held together with epoxy. I ended up cutting the shaft just below the handle then chipping the epoxy out with a 1/4" wide chisel. If your paddle h...

would anyone have GPS data/POI's for put ins/take out's for the key areas ?

If you have a Garmin GPS receiver send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you all of my east coast river waypoints.

Jim

I'm interested. I live in Connecticut which is 7 hours south of you. If you would like, you could leave Thursday afternoon and spend the night at my house. We could then head south Friday morning.

Jim

Aquaseal works great for all of my dry suit and float bag repairs. I recommend thinning the Aquaseal with Toluene so that the repair stays flexible.

Hint: After opening a tube of Aquaseal make sure that you store it in a freezer.

It might be the age thing but the most fun that I have is paddling a Paddle Cat as long as it's on a good river such as the Gauley, Upper Yough or the Grand Canyon. We laugh and cut up all the way down the rivers.

I'm a huge fan of the latex divers dry-gloves. I buy the extra large size and wear wool gloves inside. The down size of the latex gloves is that they can get holes in them from thorns, etc. To fix the holes use thin bicycle tube patches. When the temperature is in the lower 20s I'll use a NRS Toaste...