Planning for Baja

Last year in July I won a drawing for a trip for two to Baja to kayak with the whales for 6 days. I was totally excited about this because I had heard very good things about kayaking in Baja at a festival I had gone to. So now it was my turn to live the adventure and I am totally psyched. I put off the dates until this year in the hopes of using the trip as a mid-winter get away. Which means that my travel dates are fast approaching and it is now time to prepare in earnest.

Having had time to think about the time off and the scope of the trip, KayakerBoy and myself decided to upgrade to the 10 day trip to get more out of the adventure and the time off. This does require a little more planning to make sure we have the right gear and enough of it. So far from what I have read, the day time temperatures will be warm, but the evening temperatures will be colder. It was recommended to bring a 20 F sleeping bag. It is entirely possible to go swimming during the day or enjoy a nice sunny hike, while at night wearing fleece and wind shells will probably be required. Especially for me since I get cold easily.

The kayaking trip will be taking place on the ocean with beach side camping. While some gear will be provided, for the most part, we will have to provide our own sleeping bags, clothing, and paddling gear. A ground sheet is also highly recommended to keep the sand off the gear. Somehow I doubt that will be possible as sand has the uncanny ability to get everywhere no matter how careful I am. Case in point, I dumped out a ton of sand from my duffel, I think the only stuff in there was from pool sessions or stuff I had cleaned up from the Assateague trip. Oh well.

As it stands, I have semi dry pants (which might be over kill), a spray jacket, neoprene top, sun top and woolen layers for layering underneath. I will have to find some hiking pants and track down a swim suit of some sort as well as figure out what sleeping bag to bring. KayakerBoy has rain pants, and a spray jacket as well as polypro layers and hiking gear. I think we will both bring our Exped Down mat simply because the Neo Air is very delicate and we would rather not pop an expensive mattress because of beach sand. Plus the kayaks should be able to handle the extra weight. Best to save the ultralight items for backpacking where the weight savings is better appreciated.

I'll be posting a bit more detail on how we are packing and planning for this trip in a later post. Especially once we manage to hammer down what it is we really need. Stay tuned for that and a post trip summary of what worked, what didn't and what we did.

Kayak Gear Reviews

I have been wondering for quite some time where one goes to find good impartial reviews on kayaking equipment. Maybe I am spoiled by what is offered for backpacking reviews (backpackgeartest.org) but I really wanted to find a site that offered the same types of reports with good quality writing. I wasn't able to find something that met my standards and as such felt the best way to go was to build my own site to generate that which I was looking for. As I am currently involved in the backpacking site I figured this would be fairly easy. I actually did get permission before going ahead with the site which I feel was a good thing to do even if I was worried I might get shot down.

KayakGearReviews.org
As such KGR was born and after much work and planning went live on June 1st. The site had been available for a bit before that but the backend was in a lot of flux as I was installing and removing programs to get what I wanted. I feel that I am very close to the final product that I want and am lacking on a few things. The smallest of those things is a mailing list for future use. I foresee a use and I think now is the time to get a mailing list installed and working rather then trying to work out bugs later. The next thing is actually a small piece of programming in order to get the files to sort correctly. I am sure it is a small matter to fix but right now I can't really wrap my head around what needs to be done so I am sitting on it. The biggest thing that is missing other then people and visitors are reviews. The site desperately needs more reviews of gear in order to become the resource I want it to be. I really can only write so many reviews before I run out of equipment to write about. I have roped only one person in so far and hope to rope in more people. I think once I get more people going on this endeavor it will grow without too much help from me.

Summer OR Show
With the birth of this new site comes the need to get not only people on board but if it is possible to get manufacturers interested in the site, then maybe it might be possible to get manufacturers interested in possibly giving gear to the site to have reviews written about the gear. I hope to establish good quality reviews that are impartial and useful. Since I will be going to the Summer Outdoor Retail Show in July, this is a great time to approach manufacturers about the site and get the name out there. Then hopefully get a few manufacturers interested in what we could possibly offer.

Community
KGR isn't just about the reviews either. I really wanted to have a way for people to show off a little and discuss what is going on in the paddling community. As such I set up the site to have a forums and social pages for people to use to form an online paddling community. I am not sure if this will work, but I feel that if manufacturers start giving the site gear, then maybe people will be interested in working on the site and will form groups and interact with each other.