Larry C wrote:
Legally, I doubt that the title matters much. Even as "trip
coordinator" you will have acquired certain duties, but as long as you
are within the realm of "reasonable and prudent", the liability just
isn't an issue. The real reason that liability isn't much of a concern
is that most clubs and very few members have deep enough pockets to
make lawsuits very attractive. In some sense, the availability of
liability insurance on a club trip probably increases the likelihood of
being sued, although I still can't find a case of a paddling club being
sued by a member or participate.

I agree with you and fortunately, it's never happened to us. I only know
of a couple of injuries in the club's history and neither of those was
during an "official" activity. Neither was particularly serious and
neither person required professional medical care.

To respond to Brian. 1. I've had pretty good luck on the whitewater
side. Most of the instructors are very competent and pretty good
teachers. I'm only certified in SWR, and while I sometimes disagree
with subject matter and teach methods with some instructors, I have a
lot of respect for the ability of every ACA SWR instructor I've met.

I can't comment on the whitewater side of things, since I'm not into it,
but I would think that the nature of the activity dictates that to be an
instructor, one has to possess significant skills. I expected that on
the sea kayaking side, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
Apparently, one can be certified as an "open water" instructor without
actually paddling on anything other than flat water, unless that's
changed in the last three years. Apparently, there is no requirement to
demonstrate skills in actual, typical open-water conditions, which is an
utterly outrageous situation. In my mind, "open water" means one needs
to be able to deal with wind, waves, rocks, surf and other boat traffic.

We went through something similar to what your club experienced in
another club I paddle with on occasion. A group concerned with
liability decided that we needed to "Certify" trip leaders.
Unfortunately, the people that proposed this rule weren't leading trips
and those of us that did were often not local to the main body of the
club and didn't really feel like driving 4 hours to take a seminar to
teach us something we had been doing for years, especially since it was
being taught in many cases by people that had little experience leading
trips. I refused to take the seminar for years, I'm a certified SWR
instructor, if that ain't good enough then I just won't lead any
trips.
I've tried to get that changed for a number of years, but with no
success so far.

We actually have our own trip leader training program that's designed
the suit the needs of the club. It's quite different from ACA/BCU
training and isn't meant to be a substitute for other instruction. We
concentrate on organization, situational awareness, teamwork and weather
assessment, which are not the types of skills taught in most paddler
training. The only "hard skills" we teach are tows, rescues, close-in
boat control strokes, launching/landing, etc. As I like to put it, our
program is not designed to produce great paddlers, it's designed to
produce great paddling experiences for the trip participants. This
program suits the needs of the club and is actually more extensive (40
hours) than the training the guides for local businesses receive.

There was a cadre of people in the club who pushed hard to make ACA/BCU
training mandatory for trip leaders. Some of the same people started the
risk/liability debacle. We hired a couple of professional risk
consultants (one of which is a well-known paddler/kayak store
owner/attorney) who ultimately gave us some very good advice, much of
which has been implemented. However, it nearly tore the club apart, many
members left and our trip calendar has suffered greatly. We're still in
the process of recovering from it.

Perhaps the best advice they gave us was that whether we implemented
their recommendations or not, we should keep doing what we're doing, as
it's good for the paddling community as a whole.

Nowdays I paddle mainly with a highly disorganized but fun club.

I see more and more of that, and it seems to be a natural progression,
especially among "serious" paddlers. As paddlers become more experienced
and skilled, it's natural that they want to paddle with their peers. You
can't push your personal limits when you're leading a bunch of beginners
on a trip. This leads to another observation of mine, which is that
clubs are at their best when they're serving the needs of
beginner-intermediate paddlers. They're the ones who need the structure
and the increased safety that results from it. They benefit most from
pool/lake skills sessions, navigation clinics and other typical club
skill-building activities.

While it's obviously necessary to have skilled paddlers in a club to
lead and teach the "newbies", there's often not much in the way of
activities for them specifically, as the risk of higher level trips can
be too high to accept. Most of the more experienced paddlers in our club
stay with it for the purposes of giving back to the sport what others
gave to them when they were neophytes.



On Oct 31, 9:51�am, "Oci-One Kanubi" wrote:
Several of the clubs I'm affiliated with have shelved the concept of
"trip leader". �They are now called "trip coordinators" and their
formal responsibility ends when (1) the trip has been publicized in
such a way that any member who takes the trouble can learn about it,
(2) a rendezvous place and time has been established, and (3) the
shuttle has been organized and run.

When I organize a trip, after discharging these responsibilities, I ask
if anyone wants to volunteer to be probe boat and if two people will
volunteer to be sweep team (I don't organize trips on rivers where I am
not willing to be either probe or sweep, so the worst case is that I
probe and the rest straggle randomly behind). �Then I gather the group
together, count boats, ANNOUNCE THE COUNT so that everyone (this is my
story if I ever have to tell it to a jury) shares the responsibility
for keeping count of the participants, and briefly go over the simple
paddle- and whistle-signals, make sure everyone knows who the probe and
sweeps are, and tell them that if they fail to keep between the probe
and sweeps they cannot expect any help from the group. �Sometimes, if
it is a large group and includes paddlers whose skill-level I don't
know, I will ask everyone to pair off into buddy-teams so that if the
count ever comes up short everyone can check for his buddy's presence,
and we will quickly know who is missing, so that we can then get on to
"who saw him last, and where?" �Then, I count boats all-too-frequently
all the way down the river. �But I do all this in the capacity of
officious busybody, not as "trip leader".

-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
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Brian Nystrom wrote:
wrote:
Brian Nystrom wrote
[...]
Most of the other clubs in our area have eschewed membership in the ACA
PAC program and just go it alone. They rely on the principles of the
"Common Adventure Model" for liability protection. To date AFAIK, none
of the clubs or their members have been sued for anything that has
happened at any of their club functions, trips, etc., primarily because
their safety record is exemplary, as is ours. With the cost of insurance
going through the roof, I suspect that CAM is the wave of the future.
The question of insurance is the major issue. Our current club officers
are very nervous about going to a waver scheme -- feeling that they
would not provide any reliable protection for the club or the paddle
leaders.
The issue is how your trips are structured. If you have defined leaders,
they will have increased liability. If your trips are "let's get
together and paddle" affairs with no formal structure, they fall under
the auspices of the CAM. As for your club officers, depending on how
many there are and how many members you have, it may be cheaper to just
buy a personal liability policy for each officer than to pay for ACA
insurance.
I don't know if paddling is any more hazardous than playing
baseball. What do baseball clubs use?
I don't know. I assume that they must have some form of insurance, but
being a more mainstream activity, there are probably several sources for
it, unlike with kayaking.- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -