Canoecopia Wrap-up!

As always, the year starts for us with Rutabaga's "Canoecopia" show held every mid-March in Madison, WI. This being our 4th year there, we have grown into a much larger booth. Here's what it looked like.

We had a nice Packboat-15 that Alv loaded us for sail demos, as well as a Great American Canoe that Tim let us use and stand on end for our "Cruiser" sail display.




The Folks from Rapid Media came by (The Reel Paddling Film guys) and shot a show-Promo video of us doing out thing. Check it out here!


Here are some more pics from the show...

Sail cleat installation = Hands Free Sailing!

We've put together a little video showing how to install these new (and cheap) cleats to hold your sail control lines (we call them sheets in the sailing biz.) so you are free to use your hands for steering, bracing or taking pictures.

Our sailing cleat accessory page is located here at WindPaddle Accessories if you want see whats all involved in the hardware.

Here's the vid...

Canoecopia

Just back from our 4th year at Canoecopia, earned another "Rutabaga" and had a terrific time! The new WindPaddle "Scout" was released and was readily accepted. We put a record number of sails into the eager hands of sailor/paddlers (ran out of "Cruisers" on day #2!).

Here's what our booth looked like. Thanks to Alv at Pakboats and Tim at American Trader Canoes for loaning us boats for our booth display!

Dry-land and On-the-water sailing demonstration.

New instructional video uploaded showing rigging and sailing examples. Here we demonstrate how to sail across the wind as well as coiling, dousing and launching while sailing out on the water. We mounted a camera up and behind the boat for a clear view of the sail.



Enjoy! Summer is coming!

Photos from New Zealand

Charlie who runs a mountain/ski/climbing guide service in New Zealand near Aoraki Mount Cook National Park (www.mtcook.com) sent us these photos from this summer, down under. Charlie skis, paddles, climbs.... essentially does all the fun stuff we do, BUT he gets paid to do it. Way to carve our a nice life in S. Island NZ!

Winter "WindPaddling" on the Columbia

With a nice blizzard going, it seemed appropriate to take a little "First of the year" sail on the kayak. So we knocked most of the ice off the boat, got out on the water and were rewarded with a fun, low-key off-the-wind sail in the snow, ending up with a glide through a flock of coots (Fulica americana).

Winds were light, about 7 knots. The boat slide through the water at about 3 knots. Air temp. 26, water temp 42.

Who are you calling an Old Coot?

New Year, New Catalog

Happy new year! We've just finished our 2011 WindPaddle Sails 2011 catalog and it is available to download from our website Here
. We made a few NY resolutions to get more detailed product information out this year. Our catalog will expand in the spring, and if you have an image taken while out "WindPaddling", send it to us! You might become instantly famous and find your pic in our publications! :)