Over There

That's the title of a song popular during WW II. It mostly referred to England. During my training years I managed a trip to Europe and drove through a good deal of it (smaller than I had thought). In England, the fellow at the pub introduced me to the locals as some lad from "across the pond." Anyway, I just got issue 13 of Ocean Paddler...from over there...and was interested in some of the ads.

Over here, when we thing about over there, we think about NDK and Rockpool and the like. Reading OC has made me aware of other companies such as Tahe Marine (www.tahemarine.com) and the Italian company QAJAQ (www.qajaq.it), a bit of a pretentious name, if I do say.

Tahe has had some photo play in magazines mostly featuring a synthetic version of an Inuit kayak. It apparently has a skeg and bulkheads with two storage areas. I went to the site and found it a bit frustrating as there were no really good pics of this boat and, like the QAJAQ site, everything was in metric. I know, I know; but after all those years in medicine and a good math background, I still cannot think in metric. The one decent pic on the Tahe site shows a boat with a rudder. Go figure.

With the growing interest in Greenland style rolling and skin on frame boats, I believe there may be a big market out there for a glass version of the real deal. For now, however, my garage is full and my buy-a-kayak-fund is empty, and I shall stick with what I have...and keep reading those ads.

Paddle safe...

DS