Jez, our Australian importer and Camp Arrowhead, NC instructor/councilor checks in

July 10, 2006

Hey mate, well the Jackson Kayak race car kicked off the season at the Riverside, South Carolina dirt track with a respectful 5th place finish. This year we have a professional race car driver behind the wheel, Dale Morgan of Tuxedo, North Carolina. This week at the track, the car qualified for the big event of the night and led the way until the last lap, but was taken out. The kids enjoyed watching the car in pole position as much as watching the carnage (sorta like an "Are You Gonna Eat That" sans boats)

The Jackson boats, as you can see from the pictures are really going well. So far we have taken kids on rivers such as the Pigeon, the French Broad, the Green and the Tellico. Lately there has been a lack of rain in the Southeast so boatable rivers are hard to come by. However teaching with a fleet of Jackson’s, which is awesome and a dream for most any instructor; allows us to match the boat with the right body size instead of squeezing people into weird, uncomfortable or unsafe positions. There is no company like Jackson that makes the right sized boats for the smaller paddler, especially kids. This leads me to see a drastic, almost overnight improvement in boating skills with these kids. In fact, we managed to get an 11 year old in a boat (a Fun 1.5) for his first time and in the space of 2 weeks taught him enough boat skills to run class 3-4 without a care in the world. There is no way we could have done this in any other companies’ boats. Most importantly, they look super cool on the water, and we all know that style is everything.
So if you are in the Southeast and you see a fleet of Jackson boats, full of kids with smiling faces, no doubt it will be Camp Arrowhead ripping up the rivers. Our plan is to teach boating to 300+ kids this summer, and we are well on our way to reaching our goal. A stack of these kids now are looking to grab a Jackson of their very own after such an intense few weeks.

On a side note, one of our instructors (D-Mac) got worked the other day in neices peices on the Green and dislocated his shoulder. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to reduce it, and the long hike out taking a little longer than usual, the verdict is no paddling for a couple months.

Cheers mate,
Jez and paddling staff