ACA Paddle America Clubs
 

My local club seems utterly confused by ACA and their proposed rate
increases. Is this situation common to all paddling clubs?

ACA Paddle America Clubs
 

Disclaimer: I'm a member of one of the largest PAC clubs in the US, but
the opinions expressed below are my own and do not necessarily reflect
those of other club members or officers. That said...

wrote:
My local club seems utterly confused by ACA and their proposed rate
increases. Is this situation common to all paddling clubs?

Yeah, pretty much. It seems to me that they must have hired a former IRS
employee as a consultant with the mandate to "make the fee structure as
confusing as humanly possible". Frankly, when I see something this
unnecessarily complex, it makes me suspicious that the real motive is to
try to conceal the true cost from the clubs until it's too late. It's
not as if the ACA has been above concealing things from their member
club in the past. Remember the insurance debacle a couple of years ago?

The ACA is one of the most unprofessional, inefficient, bush-league
organizations I've ever dealt with. It seems that every year they come
up with grandiose plans for club services that never come to fruition.
Heck, it's taken them YEARS to get to the point where they can get
membership cards out in a reasonably timely manner, yet now they think
they can manage all of our membership mailings and fee collection?
"Sure, sign me up and I'll take some of that swamp land you're selling
too! What's that, my check is in the mail? Okee doke!" Of course, they
have no trouble at all reaching deeper into our pockets every year,
pretty much without fail. However, there's a limit to how much the ACA
is going to be able to get out of the PAC "cash cow".

IMO, the only thing they provide to clubs that's of any real value is
liability insurance (unless you're into whitewater, Paddler magazine is
a waste of good trees) and I'm not sure that it's worth what it's
costing us now. We've been forced to increase our membership dues
substantially over the past few years, due entirely to increases in what
we have to pay the ACA. That has undoubtedly cost us members to other
local, non-ACA clubs and we're probably one fee increase away from
reaching the breaking point at which point we'll just drop our ACA
affiliation. If they ever make their new Trip Leader certification
mandatory, that will be the last straw for sure.

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.

Is anyone from the ACA listening out there???

ACA Paddle America Clubs
 

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. I don't know if paddling is any more hazardous than playing
baseball. What do baseball clubs use?

ACA Paddle America Clubs
 

ACA Paddle America Clubs
 

Well, you might try our clubs model. We decided to forego the PAC
membership since most of it wasn't very relavent and instead became an
Affiliate member. No real advantage but it still gets you access to the
insurance program. Instead of trying to get every member of the club to
join, we just charge the event membership to anyone that doesn't have
an ACA number.

The only real strong point of the ACA is instruction and safety. Their
insurance program allows instructors protection that just isn't
available commercially. And if you do have an ACA certified instructor,
you have some clue to the level of competence that he has acquired.

We don't insure any club trips, although one club that I belong does
sometimes. As a SWR instructor, I follow liability issues fairly
closely. As far as I or my fellow instructors can find, there has never
been an incident that involved a club trip and an injury that resulted
in a lawsuit. IMO,
Liability in paddling clubs is an issue that tends to get blown way out
of porportion.

Larry

On Oct 28, 8:35*am, Brian Nystrom wrote:
Disclaimer: I'm a member of one of the largest PAC clubs in the US, but
the opinions expressed below are my own and do not necessarily reflect
those of other club members or officers. That said...

wrote:
My local club seems utterly confused by ACA and their proposed rate
increases. Is this situation common to all paddling clubs?Yeah, pretty much. It seems to me that they must have hired a former IRS
employee as a consultant with the mandate to "make the fee structure as
confusing as humanly possible". Frankly, when I see something this
unnecessarily complex, it makes me suspicious that the real motive is to
try to conceal the true cost from the clubs until it's too late. It's
not as if the ACA has been above concealing things from their member
club in the past. Remember the insurance debacle a couple of years ago?

The ACA is one of the most unprofessional, inefficient, bush-league
organizations I've ever dealt with. It seems that every year they come
up with grandiose plans for club services that never come to fruition.
Heck, it's taken them YEARS to get to the point where they can get
membership cards out in a reasonably timely manner, yet now they think
they can manage all of our membership mailings and fee collection?
"Sure, sign me up and I'll take some of that swamp land you're selling
too! What's that, my check is in the mail? Okee doke!" Of course, they
have no trouble at all reaching deeper into our pockets every year,
pretty much without fail. However, there's a limit to how much the ACA
is going to be able to get out of the PAC "cash cow".

IMO, the only thing they provide to clubs that's of any real value is
liability insurance (unless you're into whitewater, Paddler magazine is
a waste of good trees) and I'm not sure that it's worth what it's
costing us now. We've been forced to increase our membership dues
substantially over the past few years, due entirely to increases in what
we have to pay the ACA. That has undoubtedly cost us members to other
local, non-ACA clubs and we're probably one fee increase away from
reaching the breaking point at which point we'll just drop our ACA
affiliation. If they ever make their new Trip Leader certification
mandatory, that will be the last straw for sure.

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.

Is anyone from the ACA listening out there???

ACA Paddle America Clubs
 

Larry C wrote:
Well, you might try our clubs model. We decided to forego the PAC
membership since most of it wasn't very relavent and instead became an
Affiliate member. No real advantage but it still gets you access to the
insurance program. Instead of trying to get every member of the club to
join, we just charge the event membership to anyone that doesn't have
an ACA number.

The only real strong point of the ACA is instruction and safety. Their
insurance program allows instructors protection that just isn't
available commercially. And if you do have an ACA certified instructor,
you have some clue to the level of competence that he has acquired.

I would differ with that last statement somewhat, as I've paddled with
an ACA "Open water" instructor who is uncomfortable in 2' seas, has no
endurance and won't paddle within 50 yards of a rock, except when
landing. How this person ever got their rating is beyond me, but I've
heard of several similar situations.

We don't insure any club trips, although one club that I belong does
sometimes. As a SWR instructor, I follow liability issues fairly
closely. As far as I or my fellow instructors can find, there has never
been an incident that involved a club trip and an injury that resulted
in a lawsuit. IMO,
Liability in paddling clubs is an issue that tends to get blown way out
of porportion.

I agree. Our club has gone through a long and painful process of dealing
with problems caused by a few "Chicken Little" types that scared us into
getting overly worked up over risk/liability, despite the fact that we
had never had a problem. While there have been some positive changes
made due to the analysis we performed, overall it's done a lot of damage
to the club. Ironically, the people that screamed the loudest about
risk/liability have all left the club, leaving others to clean up their
mess.

ACA Paddle America Clubs, "Common Adventure Model"
 

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
--
================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
.. rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
.. Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
.. rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
.. OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters


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.

ACA Paddle America Clubs, "Common Adventure Model"
 

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 availablity of
liability insurance on a club trip probably increases the likelyhood of
being sued, although I still can't find a case of a paddling club being
sued by a member or participate.

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.

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.

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

Larry


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
--
================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Winston-Salem, NC, USA
. * * * * * * * * * *rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
. * * Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
. * * * * * * * * * * rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
. OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters



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 -

ACA Paddle America Clubs, "Common Adventure Model"
 

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
--
================================================== ====================
Richard Hopley � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �Winston-Salem, NC, USA
. � � � � � � � � � �rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
. � � Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
. � � � � � � � � � � rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
. OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters



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 -

ACA Paddle America Clubs, "Common Adventure Model"
 

I've been involved in 3 different lawsuits - 2 of which went to court
and none of which involved paddling. As long as a paddling club
doesn't charge to take trips, classes, whatever - just has a general
membership fee and none of the officers or directors has any monetary
investment, you're fine without insurance.

The real story is that there is no deep pockets to sue. The club has a
few hundred members paying maybe $20 each to belong. No lawyer is
going to take a case for that money. There is also no people to sue in
a club situtation. Sure you could try to sue the directors, officers,
trip leaders, etc but in reality that dog won't hunt. And lawyers know
it.

People are only too happy to sit on a jury and award huge payouts when
an insurance carrier or company is paying out the tab. Lawyers know
that. So go ahead - get club insurance - you're more likely to get a
lawsuit by buying insurance than by just going without as a volunteer
organization put together for recreation of its members and no profit
motive.

Dick Pierce, a paddler and Professor of Law at George Washington
University, pretty much agrees with my assessment though he won't tout
it publically. Read a book called "The Terrible Truth About Lawyers"
and you'll get a better understanding about why volunteer membership
clubs absolutely do not need liabiality insurance.