Equipment Outfitters

Plotting

Having marked the courses between buoys, the “legs” of your intended trip, you will want to measure them. And, having measured them and added them up for total mileage, you will want to figure out how long it will take to make the trip. Since distance divided by speed equals time, you will first have to learn how to tell boat speed. If you know your speed and distance on a leg, you can compute time in hours. Read the rest of this entry »

Coastal piloting, or piloting, is basically the art of getting from here to there without going aground or getting lost. It requires a few basic tools—a compass, a chart, parallel rules, dividers, a sharp pencil— and a few simple, easy to learn skills. This kind of basic way finding allows you to range far a field, venturing out of familiar home waters and into new cruising grounds with a sense of confidence. Read the rest of this entry »

Charging down a hill at warp speed on a bike is a rush that most of us have enjoyed at some time. As bikes developed they headed down the path of tradition, and for a while, all a bike buyer could find was a road-racing-style bike or a cruiser. Road bikes were fine for speed and offered a broad range of gears. But road bikes offered little comfort and didn’t take very well to rough surfaces. Cruisers were very comfortable, but heavy and not geared very well. All that changed in the early Eighties when a Japanese bike company by the name of Specialized purchased a unique bike made in Marin County, California, and took it home for a closer look.

The mountain bike can trace its roots back to when a small and unknown group of riders in Marin County, California first began riding stripped down and beefed up Schwinns on mountain roads just prior to WWII. One can only assume that the natural propensity of extreme oriented riders continued to pursue downhill riding until a few notable pioneers of the modern mountain bike began simultaneously experimenting and redefining the equipment they were riding. According to one of those pioneers, Gary Fischer, the early Schwinn “Ballooner” Cruiser bikes everyone was riding were so heavy that they were pushed, not ridden, uphill. Fischer is reported to have been the first to equip a Ballooner with multiple gears, an act that made it easier to pedal uphill, but also added 25 lbs (11.35 kg) to their weight. Read the rest of this entry »