Talk:Whitewater kayaking

Definition
This is very confusing, in Scotland whitewater canoeing means raceing down rivers (what the English call wild water raceing). Recreational canoeing on white water is called playboating.

Jonathan Riddell

I think it's accurate, I've never heard Whitewater racing/Wild Water Racing referred to as WW canoeing in England or Scotland, WW canoeing refers to running WW rivers (WWR is a tiny sport in comparison with only a few hundred ranked paddlers in the BCU WWR yearbook, tens of thousands of people do whitewater kayaking, meaning river running).

Playboating is different to either.

tebbb 17-04

There seem to be some regional terminology variations but I'd think the BCU(UK), ACA(USA), and other organizational usages should help clarify what should be said here. In the US the term "playboating" is clearly understood to mean acrobatic maneuvering such as flips and spins, usually in a very small planing-hull boat.

Galt 57 (talk) 11:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Why the link to the Little RIver gauge? There are thousands of gauges that are used for whitewater paddling and this one has no special meaning. I tried to fix that but someone changed it back again.


 * Actually, I don't particularily care about the USGS river gauge. What I reverted was you removing the USGS link and placing your own link, which looks a lot like spam vandalism.  If you would like to change the USGS link to a more general river gauge link thats fine.  However, wikipedia is WP:NOT a collection of external links so if you replace the whitewater videos link it is likely to be removed unless you can explain its relevance to the article. --Syrthiss 12:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

This page vis. Kayak
(from Kayak talk page): There is a lot of confusion and redundancy among the various kayaking pages. The History section here and the one in Sea Kayak overlap, but contain some distinct and some inconsistent information. I would like to re-organize all of the kayaking pages, and want to float some ideas and get some feedback here first. Disclosure: I am primarily a sea kayaker, though I did a fair bit of whitewater kayaking in the 1970s, when it was a very different sport than today.

One idea is to move most/all of the History to this page (Kayak), and then have two overview sections, one by type of construction, and one by use, with the second one primarily pointing to the more-specific pages. If a page doesn't exist, we could either stub it or include the info here. We would cover the primary design issues (which are covered in more detail in Sea kayak) here, and perhaps re-iterate key points in the individual sub-articles.

Another idea is to bulk the Kayak page up with most of the info on specific kinds of boats and redirect the individual boat pages there. I think this might lead to too large a page, but felt I should suggest it. There are probably other ideas as well. If you care, let's hear from you (on the Kayak talk page please)! -- Gnetwerker 23:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Usage of the term "boat"
I disagree that the word 'boat' should be used as an alternative to 'kayak', I believe that 'craft' is a far more technically correct term. MyNam e IsNotBob  01:58, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps technically correct (or not), but certainly not vernacular. Everybody says "boat". -- Gnetwerker 05:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I am a whitewater instructor, the most commonly used term is indeed boat. Obviously a commonly used term does not justify using it, but what does is the fact it is both the commonly used term and correct (a kayak is a boat). Also craft can mean any "craft" (in water, air or space), but boat is specific to water craft. It is interesting how those who appear to know little about a specialist subject are the first to object. Bennyboyz3000 08:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

First Image on page
I thought it was strange that the first image of an article on whitewater kayaking was of two men in a tandem ducky and not of someone in a kayak running a whitewater rapid. I have therefor replaced the image with one of someone whitewater kayaking. Although, this is a fairly modest picture, it is a more accurate portrayal of whitewater kayaking than the ubiquitous "waterfall drops" that appear everywhere on the web, yet are seldom encountered in the day to day experiences of whitewater kayaking. None the less, I am happy to see one of these pictures are also included in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angus.macnab (talk • contribs) 18:32, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I see you state waterfalls are rarely encountered in real life. As a 5 year whitewater instructor I must disagree. Obviously you live in a strange, tiny country; don't paddle interesting rivers (i.e. grade III and above); or paddle the placid, docile parts of rivers. I don't think I've ever been on a whitewater grade III river section without a waterfall and some good grade V+ sections, and I've paddled in 7 countries. Bennyboyz3000 09:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Page Name
It should be moved to Whitewater Kayaking with a capital K...DevAnubis 21:14, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree whole-heartedly, perhaps someone with a bit more time on their hands could help out. Bennyboyz3000 09:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The way the software is set up means that upper case automatically redirects to lower case if the former is not present, so as it is not a proper noun it does not need a capital letter.

Article merged: See old talk-page here DigitalCatalyst 14:53, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Whitewater is Class 2 and above
I changed the description in the top paragraph to exclude Class I water since I do not believe it is accurate to include this here. Class I rivers are not whitewater rivers and the topic at hand is whitewater. Galt 57 (talk) 17:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a fair point, I think the exclusion should be explained though, as I've been on plenty of rivers with long G1 stretches between rapids (the River Tyne springs to mind) --Nate1481 12:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Re read, you already did... --Nate1481 12:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Combine with Whitewater Canoe?
Someone has added a header flag on the article suggesting that the article could be combined with whitewater canoeing. I would see little advantage to this except for the disambiguation (e.g. I have been told that in Scotland a kayak is called a canoe). But gosh darn, why not go all the way and combine it all with boat? And a boat is just a vehicle, so combine it with vehicle. And a vehicle is just a...

Galt 57 (talk) 11:21, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Combining these articles would be a lot of work, but my experience is that C1, C2 (canoe) activities are identical to K1, K2 (kayak) activities. In slalom and rodeo competitions canoes and kayaks have separate categories, but the paddlers do the same things, run the same courses, hit the same gates, do the same tricks, etc.  When they run rivers and creeks, they run the same lines.  They often use the same boats, but with different internal outfitting.  One difference is that OC1, OC2 (open canoes filled with air bags) are very different from closed boats, and OK1, OK2 (open kayaks) hardly exist at all.  But among closed boats with spray skirts, the difference between canoe and kayak is mostly a personal preference for sitting with a two-blade paddle vs kneeling with a one-blade paddle. HowardMorland (talk) 12:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * If you talk to the average Canadian, they would not think of a closed boat if you say the word "canoe." Perhaps that's the view of a C1 enthusiast, but it certainly isn't for the common person with some familiarity with the canoe.  While there are certainly similarities in WW competition, there are a lot of people who do WW paddling without ever considering competition as a typical activity or as a goal in life.  They would consider WW canoe tripping to be the primary activity.  If this article is to be read by non-participants, I think they would be poorly served by seeing kayaking and canoeing merged.  I'd say keep them separate. --Michael Daly (talk) 07:45, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As someone who has both canoed and kayaked whitewater non competitively there is a great difference in the boats, how they handle and so on. I am talking about traditional "open boat" canoes. As well canoes and kayaks have very different histories and construction. From what I remember canoes were most often birch bark and open possibly used more southerly, whereas kayaks were closed, skin covered (there aren't many trees in the North) and probably closed to protect the paddler from the frigid northern waters.  I can't see there is anything to gain by putting the two together and confusing the reader. Perhaps there should be an article on competitive whitewater sports that could/would include both kayaks and "closed boat" canoes.(olive (talk) 00:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC))

New Photos
I would like to change some of the photos on the page. I believe the creeking photo should be changed to one of someone in an actual creek boat. I have several good photos that would suit this spot. I also feel the playboating picture is not very exciting. I propose uploading a picture of someone doing a loop, and also have several possible photos of such. I'm not sure what the etiquette is for changing photos, so please reply if you disagree with such a change. Thanks. Seek writ awe there (talk) 17:43, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

River level Readings
Why the River level Readings link in References? This is the World-Wide Web. It is not an American-specific site here at Wikipedia. I say this as I walked last week for 5 days on generally ankle deep waters of the Wolgan and Colo Rivers prior to paddling the flooded Barrington here in the Australian state of NSW, and wished to learn more about reading gauges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.105.104.21 (talk) 01:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've re-name the seciton ot the more commonly used 'External links' and noted that the link focuses on the Americas, if you have a more internationals one please suggest it. --Natet/c 12:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Restructure
This page could do with a bit of restructuring, currently when it loads all you see is a short lead section, pictures down the right and contents down the left. My suggestions are; Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 11:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Expand the lead section.
 * 2) Move some of the images to different parts of the page.

Notes - Citation Sources
A few of the external references (citations) contain outdated information, "BCU Clothing PDF" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-05-15. now being a dead link. PaddlePro (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Equipment
I would like to update this section as I feel the information is incomplete or not 100% correct:

○ I think you need to list the types of kayaks under the kayak heading (not just in the style of whitewater kayaking). ○ You also need to include terms such as half slice and full slice. ○ Composition - there is no mention of inflatable kayaks, aka duckies. ○ Other features, there is no mention of hull shape, rail softness, or volume. ○ Other equipment, there are quite a few items missing - such as dry bags, pin kit (pulleys/rope), gloves, boots, first aid kits, etc. PaddlePro (talk) 19:36, 27 September 2023 (UTC)