Equipment Outfitters

While storms generally affect large portions of an area and are usually forecast in advance, the powerboat skipper should be aware of two conditions that can affect his well-being and safety on a more local scale: fog and squalls. Since these weather conditions can be isolated and very localized, they may be unannounced on VHF weather forecasts. The best way to cope with them is to anticipate their arrival. Read the rest of this entry »

What to Sleep on

In a caravan, you’ll simply sleep in a bed. But for those who prefer the adventure of sleeping closer to Mother Earth — without sacrificing too much by way of comfort — there are a number of options.

Inflatable air mattresses come in single- or double-bed sizes. They hold a fair amount of air, so you will need some sort of pump to fill them. As they tend to be sturdy once inflated, they can usually be left that way. The top and bottom are kept in place with connecting strips inside, also determining the shape. Long-lasting under normal use, they are not designed to be used as a trampoline. Read the rest of this entry »

Floating about the clouds without a care is a feeling that many would like to be able to enjoy. In fact, of all the extreme sports, this may be the one that has the most universal appeal, in its less extreme forms of course. By that I mean ballooning for relaxation, and not the limit-testing stuff like altitude record setting or distance record setting. Recreational Ballooning is an easy sport to try out, as most regions of the world have commercial operations of some sort. Read the rest of this entry »

Just about every kid has attempted to jump their bike off something when they were growing up. Those that didn’t certainly never became extreme sport athletes. The small and cruiser-style bikes of the Sixties and Seventies began a shift in how people viewed bicycle riding. Kids found that they were quite maneuverable, and the smaller wheels and fatter rubber tires made them more capable of enduring the thrashing a hard-riding kid could deliver. These new bikes redefined what could be done, and soon kids jumping things found they could jump bigger things, and could ride on softer surfaces, and the idea of dirt racing and jumping just kind of evolved naturally. Read the rest of this entry »

The Obstacles—riders now weave their way through a series of turns that lead them over several obstacles (jumps), ranging from fairly easy to difficult and technically challenging. The jumps are designed to challenge a rider’s ability to the fullest, create close racing, and maximize airtime. Jumps come in many sizes and are linked to create varying degrees of difficulty throughout he course. The jumps are categorized as:

• SINGLE JUMP – rider jumps 20-60 feet (6-18m) onto a flat landing
• DOUBLE JUMP – rider jumps off one obstacle and lands on the far side of the next, usually covering 20-70 feet of terrain
• TRIPLE JUMP – rider must get through three consecutive jumps and may choose to jump them as sets of two and one, or as a group of three (launching over an entire triple requires the rider to catch up to 25 feet (7.6m) of vertical air over a distance of 75 feet (23m) or more. Triples are real crowd pleasers) Read the rest of this entry »

Skateboarding Stunt and Cruiser

Mounted to every deck is a set of “trucks.” Trucks are the steering and axle assemblies on which two wheels are mounted. Trucks are available in a variety of widths. Skateboards all have four wheels, two on the front trucks, two on the rear trucks. Wheels are available in a wide array of widths and diameters, and also in different compounds. Compounds vary by their hardness and traction. Generally, harder wheels offer less traction than softer wheels. Each skater has their own preference when it comes to wheel size and compound.

There are two basic types of skateboards: stunt boards and cruiser boards. Stunt boards are designed to be agile and easy to throw around when performing tricks. Stunt boards are either “old school” or “new school” designs and are used to skate street and vert. Old school boards are wide with longer, wider tails than tips. New school boards are narrower and with symmetrically shaped tips and tails, however their tips are longer than their tails. Old school boards generally use wider trucks than new school boards. Cruiser boards are a lot longer than stunt boards, and tend to use wide trucks for added stability and tracking at speed. Read the rest of this entry »

The hydrofoil, a wing that creates lift in water, is not new, and hydrofoils are commonly used on powerboats today. They are even used on sailboats to minimize resistance and set speed records, which is itself an extreme endeavor. However, it wasn’t until 1989 that a hydrofoil attached to a chair became commercially available for athletes seeking a new tow-behind water challenge.

The air chair, as it has become known, was designed by a couple of friends on the Colorado River, one of whom was the co- creator of the kneeboard (a waterski that the rider kneels on) and a hot dog waterski pioneer, Mike Murphy. Murphy’s friend Bob Wooley became fascinated with the concept of riding a performance hydrofoil, and after several months of experimentation attached the foil to a “sit ski,” a seated version of a waterski. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting technical

A decompression chamber—a large tank that can compress the air inside to several atmospheres—is commonly found on vessels used as dive-support stations. Divers experiencing the bends are placed inside the decompression chamber and then quickly “returned” to the appropriate atmospheric pressure they were under in the water before the too-rapid ascent began. This allows the diver to complete the necessary decompression time and can halt the effects of the bends.

Diving using normal air mixtures— equivalent to the air we breathe every day— limits the depth and duration of dives. The deeper the dive, the less amount of time can be spent at the maximum depth. Knowing what the maximum lengths of time are for each depth is critical for diver safety. Read the rest of this entry »

The mysteries of the sea have driven many to brave the ocean depths to experience first-hand what it feels like to live beneath the water’s surface. Those who pioneered modern scuba did so at great risk—our bodies were not meant to breathe under water, nor were they meant to breathe under the pressure of millions of pounds of liquid. As you go deeper into the sea, your body is no longer able to use the air you breathe as effectively as above the surface. As a result, hundreds of diving fatalities occur each year.

MAN’S SEARCH for a means to breathe underwater can be traced back to the ancient Romans, when early divers used a floatation device to support airhoses attached to leather helmets to provide oxygen. It was not until 1819 that deep-sea diving became a practical reality, when German inventor Augustus Siebein developed the bulky brass dive helmet linked to an air compressor back on the ship. Read the rest of this entry »

Breathing stopped

If a casualty stops breathing for any period longer than a very few minutes, he may die, or if alive still suffer irreversible brain damage. If a casualty is not breathing it is vital that mouth-to-mouth or mouth-tonose resuscitation commences AT ONCE, and is continued until breathing re-starts. Be prepared for this to take some time. With any casualty check for chest movement, or a sensation of breathing at mouth and nostrils. A mirror may help here, as any breath will fog the glass. If there is no breath, commence resuscitation at once.

The action for mouth-to-mouth is as follows:

1. Lay the casualty on his back and tilt the head back to open the airways.
2. Check mouth for obstructions and remove them.
3. Pinch the nostrils together and place your mouth over that of the casualty to make a seal. Read the rest of this entry »

Shell clothing

A full set of ’shell’ clothing, giving protection against wind and water, is essential in winter. People maintain that with the waterproof protection of shell clothing, you can wear down garments and thus keep them dry, and in theory to a certain extent you can. However, I have tried this out in prolonged bad weather, and in practice you still get wet, if not from rain, then from condensation. Condensation is the real enemy of the winter camper.

Porous materials like GORE-TEX may well provide part of the answer to the condensation problem, for they permit body heat to evaporate and yet prevent rain droplets from beating through. Read the rest of this entry »