Editorial: OUR 13TH YEAR!

June-July 2003

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Alan Wilson

Welcome to our 13th year. This fall we'll be publishing our 75th issue, and we're happy to report that we've moved to all ancient rainforest-free paper - as well as all-gloss, as you can see. The new paper is fully recyclable and has high environmental values, and the new look will help promote paddling even more effectively.

We again want to thank the great men and women in the ecotourism field - those who provide the products and services shown throughout this magazine - for providing the lion's share of the funding for WaveLength over the years. We appreciate your commitment to our dream of an industry which celebrates and promotes nature.

And we also want to thank our subscribers who help to make WaveLength possible. We're hoping many others who read us will become subscribers to help us grow and take the message of paddling even further afield.

MOTHERSHIP KAYAKING

In this issue we present an array of mothership options - an anchored 'inn', houseboat, sailing charter, converted fishboat, period schooner, ferry, raft-supported kayak river trip, and others. And in the front section, among our advertisers, you'll find all manner of 'character' motherships and amazing experiences available to you.

In a sense, a 'mothership' could be said to be any vessel or vehicle which helps provide transport to a less accessible site for paddling, often with accommodation and meals, but perhaps just as a pick-up/drop-off service for self-supported trips. This would include ferries, charter transport boats - maybe even that small float plane winging you and your kayak into the wilderness. And by analogy, it could apply to overnight accommodations from which you take day paddles - B&B's, inns, resorts, hotels, etc.

Whatever form it takes, 'mothership kayaking' is here to stay. While many of us love self-supported kayak expeditions - everything tucked into our kayak, heading off to adventure - there's many a baby boomer who enjoys the ease of a mothership experience, or has limited time to reach paradise. And many a boater who's finding great joy, once anchored, in probing the ins and outs of the shoreline by kayak. Not to mention the new paddlers who haven't yet acquired the skills for more challenging trips, yet want to be out in the wild and need transport and/or accommodation.

Here's to diversity!