It's been a few months since I've welcomed the new members and I'm getting too lazy to do individual greetings, sorry about that. I still do read each of your profiles when you join to try and address what you want from the group. We also have a few polls that I refer to when planning events. The polls have been moved to the "More" menu on top of the page, please fill them out.

With the warming weather, we have had a lot of people join or re-join the group, and quite a few step up to assistant organize, so hello and welcome to all of you and thank you for making this such a great group of paddling enthusiasts. As always, we are looking for additional competent leaders to either lead paddles or to help me heard the cats on our bigger group paddles. It can be a bit stressful finding everyone after the launch on the evening paddles as they wander off to look at stuff. Since I help everyone launch I am usually the last one on the water and with the bigger groups people tend to wander, so let's remember to stay together, I want all of you to have a fun, healthy and safe experience.

We try and have at least one local paddle a week and as the weather warms up we will start adding out of town kayak camping trips. The local paddles are generally geared to beginners while the out of town trips usually require demonstrated self rescue skills.

I have about 20 kayaks that I make available on loan for our paddles, but you need to put "need to borrow" in your RSVP for me to assign one to you. If you are borrowing a kayak or signed up for a class, you need to show up or change your RSVP to a NO at least 1 hour ahead of time as managing gear to avoid theft and wasted instructor time is a nightmare.

I'm sure I am forgetting something, but consider this the start of a great friendship on the water.

Saul