Dear Editor:
Lean Jimmy’s bug out boat idea is good, but on most rivers of North America you’ll have “pirates” set up at strategic points along the watercourses — as in yesteryear — and have a tough time getting by them. It’ll only be a matter of time before they take control of those defined travel lanes and lighten the load of fleeing refugees. Slave trading might also come back into vogue.
How could you outfox them? Travel at night? Maybe. But if your craft was small, almost silent and light enough to carry or collapse into portable pieces, you’d obviously hold some advantages up your watery sleeve:
A Folboat (See a video of some being assembled and paddled.)
The native people of the continent were using stealthy deerskin folding craft in the late 1700s and often broke them down to hide their presence while scouting or traveling waterways. Commandos in WWII used the very same tactics and still do to this day. Why not follow in their wake?
A Greenland II tandem kayak from Folbot — Made in the USA — will take a large payload and two paddlers. Dr. Hannes Lindemann made an amazing voyage across the Atlantic in a tandem folding kayak in the 1950s so they can handle the big stuff, too. Long Haul is another USA based manufacturer while Feathercraft is based in Canada. For the money, though, Folbot tops my list and I’ve had their 2-man version (at the time it was called a Super Folbot) since the early 1980s. And it’s still going strong!
Since I live on an inland river – as many North Americans do — and that watercourse connects to others that run all the way across the country to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, I have several folding boats stashed away. Did I mention that they also make fine craft for weekend forays and extended holidays?
Get one now! Cheers, – Wayne W.