Problem: Exaggerated torso twisting and too many hours paddling wore away the bone interfaces that hold my lumbar vertebrae in line. I stopped all exercise 3 months ago due to high levels of constant pain and numbness. Now , after therapy and rest I’m nearly recovered and painfree. I would love to continue kayaking but can’t afford to ablate anymore skeletal matter.

Another problem with kayaking is sitting. My doctor said that when lying down there is 20 psi of pressure between the vertebrae, when standing there’s 120 psi, but when sitting there is 250 psi. I believe this is due to the lumbar vertebrae being non-parallel when sitting, creating pressure points. He warning me to minimize my sitting, and to be sure to never sit for more than an hour without getting up and moving around. He also warned me that torso twisting had to stop, even though I got great abs somewhere under this fat. In other words NO MORE KAYAKING FOR ME!

I am resisting that advice, and endeavoring to overcome the problems by creating and designing solutions...

I would usually putin with a destination around 3 hours away, stop for power bar and a stretch, and then head back, some 2 or 3 times a week. So, I should reduce the amount of time paddling as part of the solution. Perhaps paddle for 1 to 2 hours max, once sometimes twice a week sounds reasonable. Second, maybe I can replace torso twisting with an oscillation of the hips on a pivoting seat using a kind of bicycle pedaling motion. It seems to have potential as I play with the idea in my swiveling office chair, but like a bicycle pedal it appears efficiency requires a solid connection which could prove problematic in a capsize. The back and forth motion seems to need knee and thigh ‘elbow’ room, maybe a big open racing cockpit or SOT arrangement is in order?

Next, I need to be able to not sit for a while. Well, I have Nicks S&GNH plans and enough Okoume for 2 boats. What if I made 2 Herons and then constructed a sailing rig with outriggers and trampoline and made them into a catamaran? A furling trampoline could keep that out of the way for paddling, yet deploy to provide a platform for standing/lying/moving around. This could be very cool! I’m very impressed with some of the sailing outriggers and tacking proas I’ve seen lately, (like the hydrofoil equipped Raptor, and the tacking proa Flaquita). This could be a great platform to experiment with. The Heron is probably not the ideal choice for sailing, she’s a bit light especially in the bow, maybe I could add tab foils at the shear bows to coax her over waves? The trampoline section would hold a mast, a rudder and a daggerboard (and maybe even a tent for camping) and the kayaks would be easily detachable by pulling the CF stiffened 2.5” aluminum tubes out of reinforced receivers in the hulls.

So if any of you have heard about stuff like this, or you have a neat idea to contribute, or like me you get bluebrains and need some periodic mental masturbation: My big first questions so far- is the swiveling seat doable and does it need a big open cockpit? Does it cause instability (NightHerons are