This is an old photo I found today, showing my two kids back in the winter of 2003-2004, paddling (sort of) the first W kayak (then called ‘W boat’) together in a small pond near the house we lived in, in West Newton, Massachusetts.
The one in the back is the older, who was eight years old back then, and the one standing in the front and pretending to be a pirate, or a viking, is the younger, who was about five years old.
It was their first time to paddle in tandem on their own, without an adult on board.
Later, in the years that followed, I tried many times to get them to paddle traditional kayaks, but they wouldn’t, because according to them, (quote) “these kayaks are crappy”.
Once, after nagging a lot, I managed to get these two to try a friend’s sit-in kayak – After all, being the children of a kayak designer, they had to know all about kayaks, right?…
They took turns paddling that small kayak (couple minutes each), and they got really mad at me, and I got mad at them, and that was the end of yet another lackluster ‘educational experiment’, in a series including having them eat spinach (it has a lot of iron, you know!..) etc.
You get the point.
As for myself, I’ve tried paddling all sorts of traditional kayaks, and I all I have to say is that these two were right.
Read more about the W Fishing Kayak >
