Te Canaille wrote:
Brian :

Thanks for your opinion and view of paddlesport. Maybe you need to expand your horizons a bit. Paddlesport includes a wide spectrum
of instruction, not just moving water and rocky bottoms. There are many kinds of instruction that does not involve scratching hulls
and being hard on equipment. In fact, more of that than not.

Unless you're teaching nothing other than textbook strokes and braces,
your boat will get scratched up from instructing. For example, teaching
rescues scratches boats, albeit mostly decks. Teaching people in real
conditions (surf, rocks, etc.) scratches boats, mostly hulls.

They perhaps are not part of your world or your venue. I've been around
this for a long while and realize that many people tend to believe that their milieu is the only thing going and it is to them.
Most instruction does not involve basic river or white water, but is done in calm venues. I started out instructing moving and
whitewater and felt as though this was "the paddling world". Once I got off of rivers and went on to other things, I fianlly
realized that worldwide, most hulls are paddled on fla****er without rocks and hulls can and should be kept in good shape. I still
teach in venues in which I expect a hull to be scratched and accept that, but also teach in some where that does not happen and a
scratched up hull is a sign of poor control. Sounds to me as though you've had exposure to only certain types of venues and your
priorities are a bit narrow.

Well, your absolutely wrong, as I don't paddle whitewater at all and
rarely paddle freshwater. Nearly all of my paddling is along the New
England coast.

If you really think that keeping your boat pretty is going to impress
students, you're seriously mistaken. Skill and confidence are what
impresses students, not prissiness. If you think lillydipping around on
flat water is all there is to teaching, you're equally mistaken. Sure, I
teach basic stokes on flat water, but I also teach in the real world.
Teaching someone strokes or rescue techniques on a flat pond and
pronouncing them worthy is a serious mistake, as it doesn't prepare them
anything other than more of the same. In the training we do for our
club's trip leaders, we emphasize real world situations where you have
wind, waves, bad weather, rough shores and panicky, uncooperative and/or
injured victims to deal with. That type of realistic teaching takes a
toll on boats.

"a scratched up hull is a sign of poor control"? Do you actually believe
that? If so, you're the last person I would want to take instruction
from! A scratched hull is sign that a boat gets used and used hard. It's
a sign that the paddler pushes their limits in an effort to learn, or
puts themselves at risk in order to teach. You are the only instructor
I've ever encountered who worries about how pretty their boat is. That
should tell you something.

BTW, there's not much point in trying to hide scratches anyway, since
once the boat is wet, the water film masks the scratches.