Last Sunday, when you saw the unrelated pictures from Martins Creek and Centralia — well, not really unrelated — you probably went to the nearest light switch and flipped it a few times just for reassurance.

That is, you should have. Not so long ago, when Californians flipped their switches, their houses remained dark.

On Sunday, we saw how explosives toppled a 600-foot-high smokestack for PPL’s useless coal-to-electricity plant at Martins Creek, along the banks of the Delaware in Northampton County. That plant was shut down in 2007 because of pollution.

In the Go Guide section of that same paper, we learned about a pollution problem that is even worse. Centralia, a ghost town in the hard coal region just beyond the Schuylkill County line, has been devastated by an underground anthracite fire since 1962. Nearly every resident of that town had to leave or die from the fumes.

Subterranean coal cannot burn without help, in the form of air from a labyrinth left behind by miners. Smoke still rises and the town resembles Hiroshima in 1945.

I have been to Centralia many times, and it does not represent the only evidence of damage from coal mining. Vast regions around Tamaqua were left looking like moonscapes, and many stream beds were coated with yellow boy, a by-product of mine runoff that chokes all aquatic life.

Yet today, people are pushing pie-in-the-sky ideas about making electricity with coal. The only way to get power from coal is to burn it. If you combine carbon with oxygen, you muck up the air, no matter how many smokestack scrubbers you install.

Wind power — being pushed hard by wheeler-dealers who make billions building windmills and by the politicians who do their bidding — is an even worse idea. As I have argued previously, the windmill scam would require the denuding of 250 square miles of mountaintop forests to produce as much electricity as one nuclear power plant on a site the size of a ball field.

That brings us back to PPL. I have praised that utility company so often you may think I’m on its payroll. Sadly, I don’t get a penny of payola, although I do have a financial reason for being fond of PPL.

As I revealed a few years ago, my monthly electric bills from PPL were averaging $41.37 at a time my daughter was paying around $300 a month in California.

For that, she could thank idiotic state utility industry regulation and hysteria over nuclear energy. In 1989, hand-wringing California voters shut down the Rancho Seco nuke plant because it had a reactor identical to the one that melted at Three Mile Island 10 years earlier. It did not matter that TMI was run by an inept company that engaged in criminal misconduct in connection with the 1979 accident, or that Rancho Seco had a good record. Meanwhile, regulatory insanity caused a financial calamity for all California utility companies. By 2001, off went the lights.

Lest our children wind up living in something like Somalia — a very realistic scenario if you smother enough life forms with yellow boy or stumble into an electric power catastrophe — we need to move in the opposite direction, which compelled me to visit the PPL people the other day at their lonesome skyscraper in Allentown.

No new nuclear power plants have been built in America since TMI, while France now gets nearly 80 percent of its electricity from fission. What, I asked PPL spokesman Dan McCarthy, is going on with plans (discussed publicly a couple of years ago) to build a new reactor at Berwick?

He gave me a ”Bell Bend project timeline” chart showing that applications have been filed for a federal nuke license and that ”investment partners” will be sought through 2011. Design certification is anticipated by 2012 and, by 2013, ‘’safety-related construction” could start. ”Project on line,” says the chart’s entry for 2018.

Those investment partners will be needed, McCarthy said, because the new 1,600-megawatt reactor will cost $15 billion. ”There are about three or four [nuke plants] that are further along than us,” he said, referring to Georgia and Maryland.

PPL already has two reactors chugging away at its Susquehanna plant at Berwick, and the new plant there would have the ”evolutionary power reactor” now being used in France. It is especially safe because it has double containment. (At TMI, single containment prevented any significant release of radioactivity, no thanks to the Three Stooges running that plant.)

Inevitably, there will be hysteria when those plans move forward, with some people predicting the sky will fall because of waste nuclear fuel, accidents or other woe.

When you and your children encounter them, invite them to move to Somalia, where there are no nuclear power plants to frighten them, or maybe to Centralia.

paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176

Paul Carpenter’s commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

MY RESPONSE TO DISSENTERS AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER:

I don’t often agree with Carpenter, but this is a great article. To the ostriches with their heads in the sand, consider this fact – currently PA has reactors in Limerick, Peach Bottom, Beaver Valley, Susquehanna, and yes, 3 Mile Island. Nationwide, there are 65 reactors. Nuclear power has been in use in the US since 1954, starting at the US Army post in Fort Belvoir, VA. In those 55 years, only one accident has occurred in the US, and in that accident there was no release of radiation. Worldwide, the worst accident was at Chernobyl. Both accidents were due to failure to follow mandates, poor government supervision, and human reluctance to follow protocol. Since those accidents, strict regulations are even more strictly enforced. Wind and solar are fine as supplements, but the average person cannot afford to power their home using the liberal pipe dream methodology. Perhaps in time solar will become more affordable, but now it is neither efficient nor affordable. Wind is a nightmare – too much clear cutting, takes the trees from mountaintops which will lead to massive erosion and mountain deforestation.
As for the fuel rods and other waste, there are programs that reconstitute waste into fuel for a second use. Think nuclear recycling. I for one would like to see that industry creating jobs in PA.

Let’s use our heads here folks. You were fed a lot of hooplah by the liberals in the media, but hooplah it is. We need answers for power now. Nuclear is the way to go.

FBI Keeps Tabs on TEA Parties

Thursday, May 21, 2009 2:25 PM

By: James H. Walsh

“The ‘TEA Party’ movement is an unhealthy mutation from public dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policies.”

— David Axelrod, Senior White House Adviser, April 2009

Since when is free speech, as personified by the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party grass-roots citizens movement, “unhealthy”? Since the leftward tilt of federal agencies accelerated during the first 100 days of the Barack Obama presidency.

Consider, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has moved far to the left on the political spectrum in record time under Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Consider also the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The once fabled and incorruptible FBI is showing signs of becoming a mere “yes man” for the Obama administration.

Evidence for the yes-man charge is found in a recent report by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment (I&A), entitled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The report names law-abiding U.S. citizens, who choose not to support the liberal agenda of the Obama administration, as prime subjects for FBI surveillance.

This Obama enemies list is a lengthy one, encompassing all “single-issue” advocates, including those who are pro-life, those who are gun owners, those who oppose illegal immigration, those who oppose “same -sex marriages” (such as Miss California), those who support third-party candidates, those who criticize free trade agreements, and, believe it or not, those military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and those veterans still around.

A citizen-taxpayer who falls into several of these categories is even more likely to be targeted. The FBI appears to be following, in lockstep, the DHS agenda, in complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the citizenry. Lest the DHS, A&I, DOJ, and FBI forget, the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms, the right to peaceful assembly, and free speech.

A similar DHS report, also prepared by the I&A, was withdrawn within hours of its release. Dated March 26, 2009, and entitled, “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” it was a dictionary of political incorrectness. Its senior author was transferred to the DHS Office of the Director of National Intelligence, perhaps to prepare more and more anti-citizen reports.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has chosen to stand with those who would denigrate U.S. citizens by failing to denounce the DHS “Rightwing Extremism” report. Instead he actively supports the goals of this controversial DHS report as well as those of the withdrawn DHS “Lexicon.” The question arises, Who is left on the left to watch those foreign nationals who have sworn to destroy the United States?

No congressional investigation is underway regarding the origins of the DHS report or the withdrawn DHS “Lexicon.” Apparently the DHS guidelines for these reports were White House approved.

The worst aspect of this sad state of affairs is that the FBI historically has been a strong, disciplined, and effective bureau that lived up to its motto of “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.” For a century, countless books, articles, news accounts, movies, radio, and television shows have documented the Bureau as one of the world’s leading investigatory agencies. Now in 100 days, its proud history of crime fighting, spy-catching, civil-rights protecting, and domestic intelligence-gathering has been downgraded to political pandering and bureaucratic one-upmanship.

Extremists on the far left and on the far right have long found fault with the FBI for alleged privacy intrusions, especially when agents investigated wrong-doing by groups such as the U.S. Communist Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Ask any federal prosecutor, FBI agents were renowned for the quality of their background work in obtaining criminal convictions. But covering taxpayer protests? Come on.

The DHS “Rightwing Extremism” report admits that the I&A has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists (a term used in the report despite Napolitano’s new-think definition of terrorism as “man-caused disasters”) currently plan acts of violence. The report only suggests that “the election of the first African-American president presents unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.”

Armed with this baseless and biased assessment, the FBI under Mueller swung into action to place the Tax Day TEA Parties of April 15, 2009, under federal surveillance.

Mueller alerted FBI field offices throughout the United States to verify the date, time, location, and organizers of each TEA Party within their jurisdiction and to supply that information to seat of government, that is, FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. This request was issued two weeks before the DHS report was leaked to the California talk show.

Subsequently on April 6, 2009, FBI Headquarters advised its field offices to conduct cover surveillance and data collection of the protestors attending each TEA Party. The director’s advisory suggested that the surveillances were to be discreet and outside the purview of local law enforcement.

At the same time, the official FBI Web site carried the National Terror Suspect Watchlist, including the Most Wanted Terrorists, 24 of whom are foreign nationals, ranging from Osama bin Laden through Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser. Each person on the Most Wanted List is under indictment by federal grand juries in the United States. Not one of them was a right-wing extremist, and not one of them would waste their time attending a TEA Party.

The FBI Web site also posts the Ten Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists, again all of them under indictment by federal grand juries. At the top of the list is Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth, a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) wanted for killing a police officer and may be traveling in Africa. The other Top Ten include two more BLA members, several Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) members, a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, and several other domestic terrorists, among them Puerto Rican nationalists. All of them are to be considered armed and dangerous.

Note that the Ten Most Wanted domestic terrorists all lean left of center, with not a rightwing terrorist or TEA Party taxpayer among them.

The FBI, by carrying out the DHS directives regarding surveillance of each TEA Party held in March and April, 2009, diverted valuable resources, and more will be needed to cover each TEA Party being planned for the Fourth of July. The FBI owes U.S. taxpayers a detailed accounting of the human resources and monetary expenses required by TEA Party surveillances. President Obama has pledged transparency.

It is time to reassign FBI resources from TEA Party surveillances to updating the National Terror Suspect Watchlist. Mueller and his agency continue, however, to show signs of political correctness. Has the Obama administration so intimidated federal career officials that agencies, such as the FBI, have lost all sense of direction?

Federal resources needed to combat Islamist terrorists are being wasted spying on law-obeying, taxpaying citizens. Enemy list surveillances are the building stones of a dictatorship. U.S. citizens, awake! Do not let future historians say that this all happened while we slept.

James H. Walsh is a former federal prosecutor and former Associate General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Research of ruins on seabeds and in lakes or rivers is increasing in Japan, where many sites are yet to be fully explored.

In Kushimoto in Wakayama Prefecture, the U.S.-based Institute of Nautical Archaeology held an excavation survey January and February of the Ertugrul, a Turkish warship that went down off the coast during the Meiji Era (1868-1912).

The 2,344-ton wooden battleship of the Ottoman Empire’s navy was on its return voyage after paying a courtesy call on Emperor Meiji in 1890 when the ship was caught in a storm, run aground and went down.

All but 69 of the 650 souls on board perished in the disaster.

The story of the brave rescue efforts by local residents remains a part of Turkish historical lore to this day.

The survey team, led by Turkish archaeologist Tufan Turanli, consisted of members from Turkey, Spain and Japan. The survey began in fiscal 2006.

This year, the team salvaged 3,513 items, including armaments, broken ceramic pieces, coins and a large cooking pot.

Turanli said at a meeting on the finds said that the team was able to salvage three times as many relics as last year. He said survey was providing valuable insight into the military during the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

He talked about the difficulties of underwater exploration–a single hour spent underwater requires 20 hours of preparation on land.

Since relics lying at the bottom of the sea for decades can seriously degrade when brought to the surface, they must undergo a slow desalination and conservation process.

Sinking below the surface

The Sone ruins at the bottom of Lake Suwako in Nagano Prefecture were discovered 100 years ago this year. Thousands of years ago, they were built on dry land.

The ruins in the lake date back about 10,000 years to the Paleolithic Age through the beginning of the Jomon Pottery Culture (c. 8000 B.C.-300 B.C.)

“The ruins are likely to have been submerged when the level of Lake Suwako rose, starting in the early Jomon period,” Satoshi Tanaka, a municipal employee of the Suwa city government, said. Last year, he organized a special exhibition of the ruins.

Tetsuya Mikami, a high school teacher in Suwa who compiled a report on the ruins, said, “Not many sites from the beginning of the Jomon period have produced relics of this scale.”

He hopes to isolate and drain water from the area containing the ruins to conduct a proper excavation.

Underwater archaeology became an active area of research in Japan starting in the 1970s, when the full-scale investigation of a sunken ship was undertaken for the first time.

The ship was Kaiyo Maru, a warship of the Tokugawa Shogunate that sank off the coast of Esashi in Hokkaido.

In a survey undertaken in 2000, the Agency for Cultural Affairs identified 216 underwater ruins in Japan.

“Research is yet to proceed fully and perhaps there are more than twice that number,” said Shinsuke Araki, a director of the nonprofit organization Japan Conservation Project. Araki is an expert on underwater ruins.

Although studying underwater ruins requires diligence and patience, there are quite a few advantages associated with the work, Araki said.

“In sunken ships, the living environment is preserved as is. They are like time capsules,” he said.

Also, wood articles that would rot on land often remain to some degree intact.

Treasures of Egypt

Underwater exploration is catching on with the public in Japan.

The graduate school of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology plunged into the water in April when it began offering a course on nautical archaeology.

“We are the first in Japan to set up a specialized educational system,” Akifumi Iwabuchi, professor of marine anthropology, said.

In June, an exhibition in Yokohama will open, featuring items excavated at underwater ruins of Alexandria in Egypt. “Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” is organized by The Asahi Shimbun.

Global interest in underwater archaeology is growing.

In 2001, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which took effect in January of this year.

The treaty stipulates that “underwater cultural heritage shall not be commercially exploited” and regulates the activities of treasure hunters.

Japan, however, has not ratified the treaty since “the existence of the treaty may affect Japan’s ocean policy,” according to Kae Oyama, an associate professor of international law at Chukyo University.

The UNESCO treaty gives authority to coastal nations to ban exploring and salvaging of ruins and relics located within a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or on continental shelves even beyond the zone.

While commending the treaty in general terms, Oyama said it needs to be examined carefully since “this treaty could become the model when international agreements are negotiated on marine genetic resources in waters beyond a nation’s jurisdiction.”

Japan has no law concerning ruins or relics located in its EEZ or on continental shelves beyond its territorial waters.

Araki of the Japan Conservation Project said, “The government should view cultural heritage as an important issue concerning the sea and formulate a comprehensive national policy.”(IHT/Asahi: May 15,2009)

May 18, 2009—The glittering “grills” of some hip-hop stars aren’t exactly unprecedented. Sophisticated dentistry allowed Native Americans to add bling to their teeth as far back as 2,500 years ago, a new study says.

Ancient peoples of southern North America went to “dentists”—among the earliest known—to beautify their chompers with notches, grooves, and semiprecious gems, according to a recent analysis of thousands of teeth examined from collections in Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (such as the skull above, found in Chiapas, Mexico).

Scientists don’t know the origin of most of the teeth in the collections, which belonged to people living throughout the region, called Mesoamerica, before the Spanish conquests of the 1500s.

But it’s clear that people—mostly men—from nearly all walks of life opted for the look, noted José Concepción Jiménez, an anthropologist at the institute, which recently announced the findings.

“They were not marks of social class” but instead meant for pure decoration, he commented in an e-mail interview conducted in Spanish.

In fact, the royals of the day—such as the Red Queen, a Maya mummy found in a temple at Palenque in what is now Mexico—don’t have teeth decorations, Jiménez said.

Other evidence of early Mesoamerican dentistry—including a person who had received a ceremonial denture—has also been found.

Knowledgeable Dentists

The early dentists used a drill-like device with a hard stone such as obsidian, which is capable of puncturing bone.

“It’s possible some type of [herb based] anesthetic was applied prior to drilling to blunt any pain,” Jiménez said.

The ornamental stones—including jade—were attached with an adhesive made out of natural resins, such as plant sap, which was mixed with other chemicals and crushed bones, Jiménez said.

The dentists likely had a sophisticated knowledge of tooth anatomy, Jiménez added. For example, they knew how to drill into teeth without hitting the pulp inside, he said.

“They didn’t want to generate an infection or provoke the loss of a tooth or break a tooth.”

—John Roach

Photograph courtesy José C. Jiménez López

Article from National Geographic

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government’s anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.” Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: “If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings.” It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher’s first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police!” Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”
A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya “Paki” and “bin Laden” during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: “Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don’t bother to prosecute. This is nonsense.”
Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.
Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children’s television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.
A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to “celebrate diversity”, the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.
There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.
Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. “What would Nelson have said?” is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together – and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day – they add up to a pretty clear picture.
Hal G. P. Colebatch’s Blair’s Britain was chosen as a book of the year by The Spectator in 1999.

— How to Choose a Kayak —
Choosing a kayak is like choosing shoes: you need to find the style that fits your needs and the size that fits your body. Some of the questions will educate you on many of the options available on today’s kayaks, while others will help you identify the type of paddler you are and therefore the type of kayak you might need.

What You Should Think About

Where might you want to paddle?

The type of water you wish to paddle will help you decide what type of kayak to buy. Think about where you want to paddle not just now, but also in the future after taking some classes to expand and improve your skills. Choose all that apply:
gentle rivers and small lakes
e.g. the Charles River from our Newton Boathouse
large lakes or protected ocean
e.g. Essex Marsh; or Squam Lake, NH
open ocean
e.g. trips to the Boston Harbor Outer Islands
whitewater rivers
e.g. Zoar Gap on the Deerfield River
Do you want to paddle your own kayak, or share a boat with someone else?
single kayaks (for one person) allow the freedom of paddling your own boat and have more storage space per person, plus you don’t need to rely on a friend to go paddling
tandem kayaks (for two people) tend to be more stable and cost less per person, plus they’re a great way to paddle together if the two kayakers are of different abilities.
How much storage space might you need?
Think carefully about how you see yourself using your kayak in the future, like whether you will mainly do day-trips or might like to kayak-camp regularly. Your storage requirements will be determined by how you use the boat.
many kayaks have hatches — storage compartments that are more or less watertight
kayaks designed for longer trips, like overnights, have more and bigger hatches
hatches also provide flotation when capsized to prevent the boat from sinking
it is much easier to perform rescues on kayaks with both front and rear hatches than on kayaks with only a rear hatch or no watertight hatches
Will you use your kayak for any specialized activities?
fishing
surfing
scuba diving or snorkeling
photography
paddling with your dog
What You Should Know
How does a kayak’s hull shape affect boat performance?
The hull shape has many effects on a kayaks’s performance, both in flatwater and ocean conditions. Two effects of hull shape that a paddler can readily feel are:
initial stability — how stable does the boat feel when it is flat on the water?
secondary stability — how easy is it to lean the boat on its edge, and how stable does it feel when leaned?
How does kayak width (beam) affect boat performance?
wider boats generally have more initial stability than narrower boats
wider boats are generally slower and less efficient than narrower boats
How does the size of the cockpit opening affect my paddling?
The two main classes of cockpits are “closed” and “open,” based on how firmly your knees are braced inside the boat. This decision is largely one of personal preference.
in a closed cockpit, the paddler keeps the knees under thigh braces, allowing better transfer of movement from paddler to kayak. In a closed cockpit, the paddler might feel better balance and “connection” to the boat, which allows more control and better performance.
in an open cockpit, the paddlers knees are not constrained, allowing easier entry and exit from the boat from land and in the water. Open cockpits are ideal for someone who wants to fish, take pictures, or paddle with their dog, because of the increased freedom of movement and additional storage space right in front of you
in our experience, capsized paddlers not using spray skirts have little trouble exiting either type of cockpit.

What materials are used to make kayaks?

There are three principle materials used to construct most of today’s kayaks. Your choice of materials is, again, a trade-off between several factors described below.
polyethylene
Inexpensive and very resistant to impact, polyethylene is used for most plastic kayaks and by Old Town in their Discovery and Guide series of canoes. The material is heavy and scratches easily. Because it lacks the stiffness of other boatbuilding materials, the shape of a polyethylene boat can become deformed as it ages. Choose polyethylene if you want to save money and are looking for high impact resistance.
thermoformed plastic
Lighter and stiffer than polyethylene, thermoformed boats are more expensive but have a longer life span and are less likely to deform. These boats approach the weight, look, lines, and lively performance of composite boats at a lower price. You’ll hear different manufacturers calling their thermoformed material by different names, like Trylon (Hurricane Aqua Sports), Airalite (Perception), and TCS (Current Designs). Royalex is another thermoplastic primarily used in canoes that is lighter, stiffer, and more expensive than polyethylene.
composite: fiberglass, Kevlar, and/or carbon.

Made using cloth fibers impregnated with resin, these boats are the lightest, stiffest, longest-lasting, and easiest to repair, but at 1.5 to 2.5 times the price of polyethylene. The greatest advantage of composite materials is their liveliness and performance, which makes composite boats a real joy to paddle. Paddle a composite boat and you’ll feel the difference.Fiberglass is the least expensive but heaviest composite material.Kevlar is stronger, lighter, and has greater impact resistance than fiberglass.Carbon fiber is the stiffest and lightest composite material. It has less impact resistance than other composite materials, and so is usually used along with another composite material in a hybrid layup like Carbon/Kevlar.
Why would I want a lighter kayak?

faster
easier to maneuver
easier to load on and off a car
easier to transport to and from the water
easier to carry when loaded with gear

In our experience, customers who purchase lighter boats paddle more often, because it’s less of a chore to load and transport their kayak.

Why would I want a stiffer kayak?

Reduced flex for greater efficiency
If the power from your paddle stroke causes the boat to flex, that energy is being wasted. Therefore, stiffer materials that decrease flex are more efficient and, consequently, faster.
longer life span. When boats lose their shape, they lose performance. Therefore, a boat made from a stiffer material will have a longer life span. In fact, it is common for 20-year-old composite boats to paddle just as nicely as the day they were built!

better hull shapes

Stiffer materials can be molded into a wider variety of shapes, allowing kayak designers to create exactly the lines and curves they need to produce a high-performance kayak (see “How does a kayak’s hull shape affect boat performance?” above).

Do I want or need a rudder or skeg?

All boats tend to turn into the wind (some boats more than others). Rudders and skegs help prevent this tendency, allowing you to keep the boat travelling straight when paddling in wind. Unless you plan to paddle only on flat-calm days, a rudder or skeg will be beneficial. There are important differences, however, which are detailed in the information below.
Whichever you choose, it is critical that you can paddle your boat without the aid of the rudder or skeg, if necessary. Rudders and skegs should be thought of as conveniences that can make paddling more enjoyable. Both rudders and skegs are retractable, so you can choose when to use them
a rudder allows direct control over steering using foot pedals that turn the rudder when you push them. In contrast, a skeg is stationary and does not allow direct steering. However, tracking is easily controlled by adjusting the height of the skeg: with less skeg in the water the kayak turns into the wind, and with more skeg in the water the kayak turns away from the wind. Because the skeg does not steer, the paddler must learn to lean the boat to make it turn because a rudder helps to steer a boat, ruddered kayak designs often track very strongly but are more difficult to turn without the rudder. Skeg kayak designs, on the other hand, are made to be easily maneuverable when leaned on their edge, allowing quick course corrections
a skeg takes up storage space in the rear hatch, while a rudder is mounted on the exterior of the boat. With proper maintenance, rudders and skegs are both very reliable
having a rudder or skeg is no substitute for good boat-handling skills

SCUBA DIVING SAFETY
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BUOYANCY CONTROL DIVE PLANNING – It Separates the Pros from the Amateurs

Buoyancy Control – The Keystone of Good Diving

I have long taught my students that there are two things that separate good divers from the pack. That is buoyancy control and dive planning. And there is more to both of them than you think. Read on and then gather up your gear and go out and practice because if the last time you practiced buoyancy control was during your basic course, I can assure you that your buoyancy control leaves a lot to be desired.Three Buoyancy Compensators (BC’s) to better buoyancy control.

That’s right, three bcs. First of all, there is your buoyancy compensator, which is what most people think about when we talk buoyancy. But there are two other bcs, Breath Control and Body Control. Let’s take them in that order.

Your Buoyancy Compensator

The buoyancy compensator is used for gross changes in buoyancy. These changes take place due to wet suit compression, compression of air in our bc, and changes in the weight of our tank as we use up our air. There are a few things that are important to remember about our bc. First of all it is not an elevator,! We do not use our bc to bring us to the surface and allow us to sink. We use our bc to maintain neutral buoyancy at all times. This is a very important concept. Let’s look at the proper use of a bc during a dive.

You add a little air to your bc prior to entering the water. This assures that after hitting the water, you return to the surface immediately. This allows you to make sure your mask strap is still in place, your weight belt is not sliding down, and you are with your buddy. It also allows you to signal the boat crew that you are ok. (Admittedly, some very experienced divers enter the water with no air in their bc and commence their descent immediately. But these are very experienced divers.) To start your descent, you should let all the air out of your bc and then using either a line or a surface dive, begin your dive. I prefer to swim downward on a slight angle, clearing my ears as I go. Remember, if you are descending feet first, the greatest drag created is by your fins. This will usually cause you to lean backwards and you will find yourself descending butt first! At this point you are actually falling through the water. If you can not clear your ears, it is difficult to stop your descent immediately. If you are swimming down, all you need to do is level off to stop the descent. Now, as you continue your descent, you need to add air to your bc to maintain neutral buoyancy or at least be close to neutral. Do not wait until you reach the bottom to start adding air. If you do that, then you need to add a lot of air to get it right. If you make big changes, then you can make big mistakes. Make small changes and you will only make small errors that are easier to correct.

Throughout your dive you will need to make changes as you change depths or as your tank gets lighter due to air consumption.

At the end of the dive, as you start your ascent, you must start letting some air out of your bc in order to maintain neutral buoyancy during the ascent. If you do not, the air in your bc will start to expand, your wetsuit will start to recover from its compression, and you will start to be carried to the surface by your buoyancy. This is not buoyancy control. If all of a sudden a boat motor starts or a boat starts to approach the area, you can not stop your ascent easily. If you were neutrally buoyant, you would stop where you stopped kicking. That is a controlled ascent.

It is also important that you know your bc. If you want to learn more about bcs, look at our equipment section for the piece I wrote on bcs.

The bottom line is: you let all your air out to start your descent, then you add air as your descent continues. As you ascend you let air out until you reach the surface, then you add air to keep you afloat at the surface. Got that?

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Your Body Control

Our second “BC” is body control. Understand that your body wants to go in the direction that the top of your head is pointed. If your point your head up, your body goes up, if you point your head down, your body goes down. That said, let’s explore body control.

Newton’s Second Law states that “For every reaction, there is a direct and opposite reaction.” First of all note that Newton said for “every” action. That means if you are at the surface and have let the air out of your bc and you expect to sink, that the best way to do that is not feet first. That is because every move you make tends to push you back to the surface. If you just move your legs to balance yourself, that action has an opposite reaction (pushing you up). If you move your hands through the water, there is an opposite reaction to that action. Your best bet is to do a surface dive and then the movement of your fins pushes you downward.

Remember as a kid, holding your hand out the car window to ride the air waves”. Tilt your hand up and it goes up, tilt your hand down and it goes down. Your body acts like that in the water. If your are swimming along and you tilt your head up, your body goes up. Therefore your body must be parallel to a depth if you expect to remain at that depth. The problem comes in the way we where our equipment. If we are wearing our weight belt around our waist, it is really in the wrong place. We should be wearing it around the center of buoyancy. For most of us that is probably 8 – 10 inches above our waist. Of course, it is not practical to wear a weight belt there so we wear it lower. But that pulls our legs down, which means our head is pointed upward and we go up. How do we deal with that? We add more weight! And our legs sink even more. We made the problem worse. This circle continues until we have add so much weight that no matter where our head is pointed, we are not going up! And now when we get to the bottom we need to add that much more air to our bc to compensate for this excess weight. Of course, that air goes around the top half of our body and compounds the problem. Our body control is not under control. At this point we are now pushing our body through the water on an angle and not in a streamlined head-first position and we are pushing our bc through the water half full of air. Try pushing an empty bc through the water and try pushing a bc full of air through the water and see the difference. So the amount of weight that you use corresponds to your body position as you push it through the water.

Notice the way a shark swims as it moves through the water. It is propelled by its tail (as we are propelled by our fins). When he wants to turn, he draws in a pectoral inward tilting his body in the direction of the turn. He then arches his back and glides through the turn. You can do the same thing. You want to turn? Drop one shoulder, arch your back, continue to kick and watch your body go through the turn. Your hands never leave your side. It is like flying. Practice it and you will be amazed at how effortless it is.

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Your Breath Control

We all know that every time we inhale we go up and every time we exhale we go down. So it must have some effect on our buoyancy. It definitely does. We can use that effect to our advantage.

When someone realizes that they are too buoyant, the first thing they do is reach for their inflator hose and bring it up above their head to dump air. Two other things happen at the same time. By going into a head-up position, they proceed to move even shallower and, secondly, they are now pointed in a position to move them even shallower yet. What they should have done is quickly exhale and held that breath out. Yes, I did say hold your breath, but I said hold it “out.” By exhaling you quickly get rid of several pounds of buoyancy. That buys you little time to get a hold of you inflator hose and dump some air. Remember, you don’t need to dump it all, just a little. You should just be a little off. Also, make sure that you use the rapid exhaust at the top of your inflator hose or the dump on the back of your bc to do this. If you are not sure how these work, talk to one of our staff and they will demonstrate it for you.

So, you can see that you can use breath control to your advantage.

The bottom line is that proper buoyancy control takes all three of these methods. And proper buoyancy control is not something that just happens. If you think that someday it will just come to you, look in your Day-timer. Someday is not there. But if you practice these techniques, take an advanced course, think about how your movements and prescence in the water translates, and you work on buoyancy for the next 25 dives that you do, you will never have to think about it again. And you will be part of that group of divers that every one admires because you make it look so easy. Go for it.

Dive Planning – It Separates the Pros and the Amateurs

I have long said that there are two areas where most divers don’t pay enough attention — Buoyancy control (see above) and dive planning. Most people look will tell you that they do plan their dive, but as you can see below, there is a lot more to it. You first started dive planning when you decided to get certified and made the calls to find out what steps were necessary to achieve that goal. In doing so you had made a critical evaluation – that you did not have the skills and the knowledge to be a diver. You made plans to change that. You need to continue to make that evaluation over and over again as your diving career progresses. You also need to make a few other evaluations relating to your physical condition and your equipment and your choice of dive locations.

You — Your Knowledge and Your Physical Condition
This is the tough one. Look in the mirror – you handsome devil (or devilette). You want to think that you are in as good as shape as ever and can still do all the things you used to do. I always say “I can still do all the things that I used to do, but it hurts a lot more (and a lot longer.)” The truth is that most of us are not in the same shape as we were a few years ago. (I know there are a few exceptions and I don’t really hate you.) Age and job stress do take a toll, sometimes subtly. You need to be hard in your evaluation of your physical condition. Is it time to get to the gym or back on the bicycle? Do you need to lose 10 pounds (if just to get back into your wetsuit)? Are you still smoking (you know it is killing you.)? What are you going to do to change these things. If nothing, then maybe you need to change the type of dives you are exposing yourself to. Unfortunately in diving today there are a number of fatalities caused by heart failure. In a sport only 50 years old, we are seeing a population that is aging. That needs to be considered in our evaluation of ourselves.
The other side of looking at ourselves is “What are our skills like?” Is this the year that we take the Advanced course, or the Rescue course, or maybe Nitrox or Equipment Specialist? Are you planning on becoming a Scuba Instructor someday and want to get moving on that path. If there is something you plan on doing “someday”, look in your day planner. You will notice “someday” is not in there. Maybe there will be one in your next life. Or just maybe you should sign up for that class NOW. Make a plan.
Now that you understand this part, let me say that you need to do it every year. I tell my students to look at it at the beginning of the year, make these evaluations and get it on their calender. You can click here to look at our course schedules and descriptions. Find out when the course is given and block off those dates.

Your Equipment
If you are a certified diver, you have probably have already figured out that diving is an equipment-intensive sport. Having the proper equipment (properly maintained) is very important. Remember that this is life support equipment. Again, from the perspective of the beginning of the year, we need to make some evaluations about our equipment and make some plans relating to it. First of all, do we have our own equipment. If you do not it will be hard to ever become a really good diver. If you tried to play tennis with a different tennis racket every time or golf with a different set of golf clubs each time, you would never get any good at it. Diving is the same. If you do not have your own equipment, read our piece on “How to Buy You Own Dive Equipment”. If you do have your own equipment, you need to decide if it is still sufficient for the diving that you are planning on their boat. doing. Does it need to be replaced, serviced, or modified. We have several upgrade programs available. Give us a call. If your equipment needs to be serviced, you need to get it to us in January or February. If you wait until April, (like all those other people who do not do any dive planning), then we are swamped with equipment that needs to be overhauled. Get it to us early. Get in the habit of bring it in January and it will be due for it’s next overhaul in January. Then we are not rushed trying to get it done in time for you. If you are planning on renting equipment, you don’t need to do it in January, but you do need to do it in advance of when you will need it. In advance does NOT mean two days in advance. It means more like ten days in advance. You might get away with two days, but don’t count on it. Sooner or later your luck will run out.

Where Are We Going?
Now that we know that we and our equipment are taken care of, we have to decide where we are going diving. Many people like to wait until the last minute to schedule their dives and trips. With the number of flight cutbacks since 9/11, you may find that you are unable to get on the flight you want or that the ticket price is considerably more. Neither of these are good options. Nor are either of these in our control. Sign up early. Again, you need to get these dates filled in on your schedule. You should look at the trips that you want to do, the boat dives you want to make, and the special days like Underwater World Day that you want to attend. Then you need to get these filled in on your calender. You see, if you don’t fill in your calender, someone else will fill in those days for you. Instead of going diving with us, you will be going to a baby shower. That should get you motivated to follow these instructions. If you have a dive planned, it is easy to say, “Oh, I would like to, but I made previous arrangements.” You can click here to check out our Travel or our Boat Dive schedules. It is also important to find out what special requirements are necessary for that dive. In the case of travel, is a passport required? Is yours current? Some places will not accept a passport that expires in the next six months. How current is yours? Diving locally? Outside the quarry you are normally required to have a dive flag. And some places, like Shark River Inlet, the Coast Guard prohibits diving before 5 pm (too much boat traffic) and nature prohibits diving anytime but slack tide. So advanced planning is important. Some dive boats require that you have a pony bottle to dive off their boat. Do you have one? Or at least have a rental reserved?

The Day Before
This is the time to perform some very important checks and it is very important that these checks be performed at the right time. If you go out after work on Friday night, come home at 11pm and find that your regulator is free-flowing, you are in trouble. We can be a lot of help at 6pm but at 11pm we are hard to find. So come home from work first and do the following: Put your regulator on you tank. Check the tank pressure (on both tanks). Just because your tank was full last week, does not mean it is full today. You may have a slow leaking neck o-ring or blow out disc. Your rotten nephew may have been over and played with the valve, leaving it slightly open. Or, just maybe, it was mistakenly not filled. We hate to think that those things happen but they do. Whatever, standing on the boat with a half of tank of air does not make for a good start to the day. Now go breath off the regulator. (Don’t just push the purge button.) Inhale and exhale. Make sure that your computer turns on. Go through your check list and make sure that you have everything. Then put all your gear except your weights and your tanks into your dive bag. Put everything together so you can grab it in the morning. Do NOT put your weights behind the door or the sofa so you do not kick them when you stumble in late that night. If you do, that is where they will be tomorrow when you go to get geared up on the dive boat. Remember that when you are loading the car in the wee hours of the morning, you are probably still half asleep and it is easy to forget something.

The Dive – Finally
Well, not really. We still have some planning to do. The first item on your list when you arrive must be the site survey. Are the conditions safe for the planned dive? Is the surf too rough? Or the currents too strong? Or visibility too low? The best plan might be to abort the dive right there and then. Don’t be afraid to do that. I have on several occasions. Then decide on the planned depth, time and general direction of the dive. Discuss what action will be taken if you are separated. Don’t assume that you know what your buddy plans to do. Then choose a team leader. This is the diver who will lead the dive. The buddy will follow. This will greatly reduce the chance that you will become separated. What often happens is one buddy sees something and goes left while the other buddy sees something and goes right. Both are thinking that the other will follow. Ten seconds later you are separated. The leader leads!!! This is especially important in three person buddy teams. The problem here is that each buddy thinks the other buddy has the third buddy in sight. In truth, neither buddy has the third buddy in sight. A very dangerous situation. It is the responsibility of the team leader to be sure that both buddies are with him.

The Missing Link See, you have to read on to what the missing link is. Well, it is the one action that nobody takes in dive planning – the debriefing. If you don’t talk about what happened you will see the same problems come back to haunt you again and again. Discuss those problems even if they are minor. it will prevent them from growing.

As you can see, the bottom line is that if you only spend a few minutes planning a dive, you are compromising the safety, fun and comaraderie of diving. So get your diving planning act together.

Jason Burkos

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