Canoe Club's open house gives novices a shot on the water

Balloons and signs recently decorated the Wissahickon bus stop on Main street, welcoming visitors to the Philadelphia Canoe Club’s annual open house.

The club has existed for 106 years, but its location which is leased from Fairmount Park, is still unknown to many of its neighbors.

Picnic tables were set up along the riverfront, live music played from a balcony in the clubhouse, and visitors were given the opportunity to take a boat out. For many, it was their first time on Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River.

Club members volunteered all over the sprawling riverfront picnic. Some were manning the grill, some sold used boating equipment and others gave tours of the historic building. A few members got in their boats to demonstrate complex maneuvers or lead families into the water.

Joe Cunningham, the Fleet Captain, opened the newly built boathouse for the community to try out their paddling skills on the mouth of the Wissahickon Creek.

With cars passing overhead on Main Street, inexperienced canoers and kayakers tried not to flip into the shallow water rushing down a waterfall from the creek, and into the Schuylkill.

Club members glided between the wayward boats, offering advice and preventing the land-loving novices from flipping into the water.

However, many of the club members were more than happy to take the plunge.

The club leads many whitewater kayaking and canoeing trips, so boaters need to practice the life saving technique of rolling upright when their boat is flipped.

While the band took a break, one club member stood from the balcony and narrated as three kayakers played around in the water, demonstrating different moves.

Todd Zielinski, getting out of his kayak, tells Jacob Bortman from the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood how “rolling is a piece of cake.”

Both he and Bortman, who is planning to soon join the club, are glad to be back in the river after a winter of practicing rolling in the pool at St Joseph’s University.

Bortman finishes his conversation with “nice talking to you. I’m gonna go get wet.”

As a canoe goes by, apparently demonstrating a “modified jay stroke” the announcer instructs the crowd that his fellow member is “demonstrating the form and function of a solo canoe.”

Peggy Bradley, a five year member, screams “and grace and beauty!” to the balcony above.

Inside the clubhouse, visitors got a peek at the “War Canoe," a 34 foot canoe built in 1911 that now hangs from the rafters but still hits the water once a year during the club’s June meeting.

Open canoe rental / guides/ tours near Devon

Hi - I'm brand new here at this forum and am hoping for some advice. I'm from Sydney Australia and will be visiting friends for three weeks ( late July - August) and will be based in North Devon. I would really like to spend some time on some rivers etc Open Canoeing - I would really appreciate it if I could get some recommendation for good rental / tours or guides in the area. Many thanks To check out blogs of trips on rivers in this area search the forum for Torridge. The other big river is the Tor, but so far as I can tell you can't search for that because the forum software doesn't allow searches for three letter words, which it claims are 'too common'. (Perhaps someone else more knowledgeable than me will be along and explain how you *can* do this ...) But I do remember reading some blogs about canoeing the Tor written by a couple of chaps with inflatable canoes. You can search for posts by name, so if you can work out who is blogging about canoeing on the Torridge and then search for other posts by the same authors you may strike gold. I'm in North Devon and a couple of us paddle the Torridge at some point most weekends (depends on tides). You're welcome to join us. There's a boat bike hire setup in Bideford though they have mainly Sitontops,and a couple of bright green plastic moulded opens things But we could find you a spare seat. We're a bit limited to where we can paddle at this time of year but we can sort a day paddle using the ebb and flow of the tide, and a cookup that can take up to about six hours if we don't paddle too fast. If that's any help pm me or post a reply on here when you arrive.

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