All original material copyright 1997-2010 Michael J. Edelman unless otherwise noted. No material may be reproduced in any form without express written permission of the owner(s).
Site last updated June 17, 2010
Marian Gunkel has created a wonderful set of pages on the Pouch kayaks at http://www.pouch-inoffiziell.de/. Marian is a real adventurer and has a lot to offer on Pouchs and kayaking in general.
The Historic Canoe and Kayak Association is a group of British fans of kayaks with an interest in history.
Juergen Hoh, a paddler from Germany, has an excellent folding kayak web page at http://www.faltboot.de he and Marian Gunkel co-maintain. He's a very experienced traveler and has a lot of interesting information about kayaks and travel as well as links to a number of other European web pages. He's always adding to his page and I expect it to become a great resource for European paddlers. Update: I am informed it will soon have a report on a recent Arctic kayak expedition!
Even if you don't speak any German you'll find http://www.faltbootbasteln.de to be a source of fascinating information. There are pictures and text on folding kayaks, nearly fifity different folding boats (at last count), building tips, historical notes, motorizing folding kayaks, and a 1:10 scale Pouch!
But if you can read German, you'll find a great page
describing European kayaking trips for faltboot fans at :
http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=TourenÜbersicht&wikiid=429.
(The page is implemented as a Wiki, which means it's dynamic and is constantly
updated by a community of folding kayakers.)
There's more of interest for German speakers at Pluennencruiser, including Volker Born's cool homemade folding baidarka.
And for Polish speakers, Lukasz has created this excellent site (http://bajdarka.prv.pl) featuring his adventures in a Russian-made Svir kayak.
Tony Ford tells me that the Historisches Faltbootkabinett, Dirk Bredow's project devoted to folding boat history, has closed its doors and the boats have been redistributed, according to an article in Kanu Sport.
Richard Mitchell is building an interesting page on British made folding kayaks, and he has some good pictures of the Tyne and Percy Blandford designs at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~acsrrrm/kayak/. He's recently added some material on Nautiraids and Granta boats. His detailed pictures illustrating how Nautiraids assemble are an excellent resource for anyone interested in these boats.
Folbot was originally a British boat, before Jack Kissner
moved the company to South Carolina, and http://www.shorebase.co.uk/boating/canoes/toblof/toblof.asp
has some beautiful detailed photos of a 1970s Folbot that made it back
to England. Check out all the elegant modifications done to this one.
www.kleppers.org is a hobby interest page with a number of excellent scans of old Klepper manuals and advertising, as well as other Klepper info.
There's a very good set of pages on Asian kayak travel by a pair of folding boat fans at http://www.kayakasia.org Well worth looking at.
Bill Longyard has a fascinating page at http://pweb.netcom.com/~longyard/KayakinginEurope.html detailing his European travels in his Folbot Aleut, complete with some very original and useful modifications he's made to his boat and bags. He's just started selling a video guide to touring Europe via kayak which I bought on Ralph Diaz' recommendation, and I have to say I'm impressed with what he's accomplished. Bill has produced a very useful guide for the Europe bound kayaker, full of useful information specific to kayakers. There's no filler or duplication of material you can find elsewhere. Highly recommended..
Cliff Branham paddles down in Florida and his pages at http://lilboat.outride.com/have some useful tips, plans for sailing gear, photos and a discussion forum.
Dubside's web page is not to be missed, particularly if you're interested in Greenland-style paddling and commando camping in folding kayaks.
Gail Ferris has done some incredible voyages in folding kayaks and inflatables, and you can read about them on a page devoted to her travels at http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/Trips/Gail/GailFerris.html. (There's a lot of other information of interest to folding boat fans and kayakers in general to be found at Nick Guillemot's web site, http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com)
David W. Zimmerly's page describing his study of the many
and varied types of kayaks found in the Arctic regions can be found at http://www.arctickayaks.com/.
Good reading and background for fans of skin boats.
Mitch Singler visited
the Klepper factory museum and documented his visit with this great set
of images: http://homepage.mac.com/turninjapanese/MitchWorld/PhotoAlbum14.html
Ralph Hoehn, in addition to his commercial business with Pouch Boats, maintains a part of his web site specializing in home builders of folding kayaks.
C. B. Bassity, a writer and teacher, has great page on his history with Klepper Kayaks, including his introduction to Klepper as a child, and how he restored a couple of old doubles and equipped one with a new Long Haul hull.
Messing About in Boats is a thin weekly magazine about, well, messing about in boats. It isn't about kayaks per se, but kayakers will find much to enjoy in it. Regular features include ads for boats (including the occasional folding kayak), notes from builders and designers, stories of trips, historical reprints, the always engaging rants and ruminitions of Robb White, and tales of just messing about in boats. Those who miss Phil Bolger's regular column in Small Boat Journal will be pleased to see Phil's work appearing regularly here as well. The MAIB web site is gone (it wasn't actually maintained by MAIB) but I'm keeping this entry just because I think all small boaters should read and support MAIB. Send $28 to Messing About in Boats, 29 Burley St., Wenham, MA 01984-1943 for a one year, 24 issue subscription. One of the best deals in boating.
A lot of general boating information, including kayak-specific stuff, can be found at The Mother of All Maritime Links. (Thanks to Wayne Wegner for this suggestion)
The Paddlewise mailing list has a significant amount of
folder
related traffic, and it's a great source of general sea kayaking
information as
well. To join, send a message to: paddlewise-request@lists.intelenet.net
with a single line saying
subscribe id@host
substituting your own ID and host.
The Baidarka mailing list is for
people who are interested in building skin boats- and some of them
build folders. To join, send a message to Majordomo@lists.intelenet.net
saying
subscribe baidarka
List archives can be found in http://www.rtpnet.org/robroy/baidarka/
A good source for aluminum tubing and other metal and plastic parts for Baiddarka and Kayak builders is OnlineMetals.com and buying through this link will send a small comission to help keep this web site going.
Robert Gramaglia edits the Yahoo Folding Kayaks club forum. Not too much there yet, but he's working on it.
Mel Lammers hosts a devoted group of folding kayak fans at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bagboater. It's a mailing list and a few archive files of collected information.
Ralph Hoehn of Pouch Boats
has started the Foldingboats mailing list. To subscribe to this
non-commercial list, send a message to majordomo@pouchboats.com
with the single line subscribe foldingboats.
He also has a bulletin board covering many aspects of folding boats at
his site.
Australian Folding Kayakers
should check out a new Yahoo! group just for them at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/australianfoldingkayak/
For fans of Folbots, Here's a link to the complete Folbot Holidays book formerly distributed by Folbot. I'm told they still have quite a few copies lying around.
The Rocky Mountain Sea Kayak Club
(http://www.rmskc.org) is a very folding-boat oriented club in
Colorado that's been around since 1989. Just about every member owns a
folder, according to member Eric Nyre. (That's not surprising as the
club was founded by Mark Ekhart!) Judging by their web site, the club
is a very active one, with
a lot of outings in the many lakes and resevoirs in the area.
Gelina and Dave's page on their Folbot Pisces can be found at http://www.webkatz.net/kayak.html Some useful info for all Pisces owners.
Byron Weikel has a great web site describing his diving adventures from a Folbot. I used to have a link to a shorter version of his page, which disappeared, but Byron just showed up in the Guestbook with this link. Hi, Byron!
My friend Ann-Marie makes the most beautiful hand-dyed batik silk scarves and sells them for way too little at Etsy.com. Check 'em out.
Out Your Backdoor is a quirky 'zine published sporadically by the unstoppable Jeff Potter. The perfect antidote to the glossy outdoor mags. OYB is "the back porch of media", as Jeff puts it, about "fresh, homemade stuff for those who've been there, done that." You'll find plenty of outdoor interest on his web pages, as well as books published by OYB press. Jeff is mainly into canoes (and human powered land speed vehicles) these days but I'm slowly working at converting him into a kayaker.
Something for the fishermen out there: My good friend Dr. Eli Barlia has developed a really original and useful device for measuring water temperature. Check it out at Ecotemp. Eli is a skilled fisherman and a well regarded animal behavior expert who has spent a lot of time researching the behavior of fish. When he speaks, I listen.
For an entertaining look at one man's selection of the best tools and toys out there, see Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools. He even has a section on folding kayaks (which, I modestly note, mentions this page).
What to do when the rivers and lakes are all frozen over? Nordic Skating!
SmallBoatgps.com Here's a really excellent guide to GPS use for small boats from folding kayaker John Bell. Check it out.
When it's too cold, rainy, or dark to kayak you can entertain yourself by reading my blog about food and cooking. [n.b. oops- just fixed a brokern link!] It's really quite interesting.
Phil's Raid. Last year I took Rob, a co-worker, out for a paddle in one of my Aleuts and he decided to buy it. This year Rob and I took Phil kayaking in my remaining Aleut, and Phil was so geeked he had to have his own boat as well. I'm keeping the other Aleut, and Phil wanted a longer boat, so we found him one- the Raid I that Wayne Brunner was selling a while ago. The day it arrived Phil assembled it at home and took these pictures of him and a couple of friends assembling the boat for the first time in his semi-remodeled apartment.
Seahopper Folding Boats in the UK makes an interest line of folding dinghys that might appeal to fans of folding kayaks.
For something competely unrelated to kayaking, but related to the outdoors, see my page on choosing a first telescope at http://www.findascope.com
Moving away from boats, but staying in the realm of human power, Detour Publications is a bookstore specializing in sustainable transportation, including bicycling other options. (Special thanks to John Charlton for pointing the way there.)
Besides kayaking I occasionally go out in larger boats. The newest boat in my flotilla can be seen by clicking here.
Various interesting web sites on:
And for something totally unrelated to anything,
see
KittySaysMoo.com
or Wonderella.org.
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And for home builders- here's a great resource:
