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The following are introductory comments, and thoughts for the future of SMSKN by our President, Bob Arledge.
For those of you who I haven’t met, I’d like to introduce myself; my name is Bob Arledge and I am the president of SMSKN this year. I’ll summarize some of the things the SMSKN board is working on below, but first let me talk about some of the activities planned for this year.
So far we have approximately 50 events posted on the SMSKN Event List. We have day paddles, overnight paddles and paddles that involve an element of instruction. The paddles are a pretty good mix of level 1, 2 and 3 paddles. Five of the paddles are joint paddles with the Maine Island Trail Association (MITA).
We have four pool sessions posted and of course we have presentations at our monthly member meetings at the Falmouth Public Library. I am going to be encouraging some people I paddle with to post one or two paddles and I would like to encourage every SMSKN member reading this note to consider posting your own paddle. If you have any questions about organizing a club paddle call me at (207-415-1567) or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Please take a look at the Event List and keep checking it as the year progresses. My hope is that not a single one of you will have any excuse to say that you could not join us on at least a few paddles.
I mentioned above that we have five joint trips planned with MITA. We are going to be forging a closer relationship between SMSKN and MITA and doing more to support them in their efforts to provide opportunities for those of us paddling along the Maine coast. At the March meeting Brian Marcaurelle, Program Director for MITA, is going to show slides and talk about SMSKN’s role in adopting one or more MITA islands and about supporting MITA in their stewardship of the islands. He will also be answering your questions about the resources MITA makes available to us.
Also at the March meeting, Jane Arbuckle, Director of Stewardship for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT) will be presenting slides of some of the resources that MCHT provides for paddlers. MCHT manages more than 50 preserves along Maine’s coast from Whaleboat Island in Casco Bay up to Hamilton Cove on the Bold Coast. Jane will be talking about the availability of these preserves for our use and how we can help to safeguard them.
If we have time at the meeting, I would like to encourage anyone to bring up any suggestions as to how we can improve SMSKN and the opportunities it can provide its members. Before each monthly meeting at 7:00 pm we have an informal get together at the Ricetta’s restaurant in Falmouth at 5:30 pm. Please join us for this meeting and dinner beforehand if you can make it.
Succeeding meetings will include: learning to roll your kayak (with a follow-up pool session dedicated to helping you obtain your roll); birding from your kayak; Greenland paddling, and coastal Geology; each of these meetings will have a subsequent paddle scheduled to provide an opportunity to use the information learned at the meetings. We are in the process of developing topics for the rest of the meetings this year; if you have any ideas let us know.
Once again, I want to invite all of our members to become more active in SMSKN activities. If you have any thoughts on how we can improve the club, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call me at 207-415-1567.
Thanks, I hope to see you again or meet you soon.
Bob
