A Day Out{side} Kayaking With Kids
Learn how to have fun and stay safe while taking your children on their first kayaking trip.
Where’s daddy going to sit at
*laughs*
That’s my seat, that’s
where I’m supposed to sit.
Yeah, we put another seat in the kayak.
Hey, guys, how’s it going?
My name is John Deshauteurs
and I’m here with my son Liam.
And we’re going to go kayaking
for the first time today.
This will be Liam’s
first time on the water
and this will be my first time
kayaking with a child.
So I want to show you all our experience
in this episode of Go Outside.
I’m here in my Jackson mayfly today.
Now, this is a single kayak.
They have tandem kayaks for this,
but this just happens to be
the kayak that I have.
So this is the seat that comes
with the kayak, the Jackson mayfly.
And I took another seat out
of another Jackson
mayfly and set it up here
so you can see he’s comfortably sitting.
He’s comfortable.
So you guys come over here, come
check out the kayak and we’ll show you
all how we have it rigged up.
Oh, no.
I’m going to show you all of these ropes.
So as you’re sitting here,
you can grab onto this.
If you get if you feel like
you’re getting spooked or whatever,
you can grab onto that.
You can hold on to that.
All right.
You go with that.
You fill in spokes.
Hold on to that.
All right, guys.
So like I said, this is
be our first time
out on the water together.
There is plenty of stuff
on the kayak for safety.
And that’s the first thing
I want to talk about.
Case, anything were to happen.
If your child is to go overboard,
if for some reason
there’s a communication, lack
of communication, failure
of communication
between you and your child
and the situation happens
where your child is to go overboard,
you want to make sure
that they are protected .
As you can see, Liam is already
wearing his life jacket.
We’re not even on the water yet.
You don’t want to be on the water
with your child’s life
jacket, not on them
having their their life
jacket in the kayak.
As you can see, I’m wearing mine as well.
Having the life jacket
in the kayak, but not on you.
Serves no purpose.
So make sure you have a life jacket
that you can comfortably wear
and that your child can wear
for long periods of time
while you’re on the water.
Secondly, this is my tournament.
This is my fishing.
This is my just about every day
rig on my kayak.
I haven’t changed anything but
put a seat right here in the bow.
I already have a lot of rope
that is tied to the kayak
to where in case I need to throw a line,
I can do whatever I need to do.
That’s something else I want to touch on.
We’re here on the shallow
end of this little lake.
You want to stay on the shallow end,
make sure they get their
sea legs under them before you go out
and start
venturing off away from the truck,
from the you know, from
from from shore, not too far.
So first thing’s first,
in case your child is to fall off.
First, the first line of defense
is his life jacket.
He has his life jacket on him now.
OK, he’s got his life jacket on him.
And in case you need to throw
something to him,
he’s got you got some stuff
right here on the kayak.
You know,
you can throw him a rope or something.
If you can’t just reach out and grab him,
you can throw something to them.
With that being said,
you know, the seats here,
if you know, depending on
what kind of seat you put in your kayak,
there’s a lot of different options
you can put out there.
Some of my buddies just put their kids
straight on the deck.
Just depends on what you do where
your child’s comfort level is
make sure your seat
strapped down as well.
You don’t want, you know, the child
moving around and then the seat falls out
and you want to make sure that seat
to secure it to the kayak.
Just put some straps on there,
whatever it is you got to do.
However, your kayak is laid out,
find a way to strap your seat down.
if you put a seat in the kayak.
All right, guys,
another thing that you want to consider
when you’re putting
your child in front of you.
You want to consider your range of motion
if you’re paddling a kayak.
What I mean by range of motion,
you want to be able to sit in your seat
comfortably, your legs,
and be able to extend out
where you need them to.
And you can actually get
full strokes on your paddle
without interfering
with anything if they’ve gotten their
little bubble right here.
You want to be able to comfortably
paddle your kayak and not be tapping
it seat every time,
because that can get pretty annoying.
Never, ever, ever.
Like I said, I’ve got
a bunch of rope here.
I’ve got a bunch of straps here.
Never tie tether,
whatever leash, never tie
an individual strapping individual.
Whatever your terminology is,
you never want to anchor tie.
Strap your child
anyone to a kayak
in case that kayak rolls over.
That person may get stuck under the kayak
and that leash, tether rope, whatever,
may actually hold them underwater
and they may panic.
It’s only a few short seconds, guys.
Never tie any one to the kayak.
If they fall, let them fall
Let the lifejacket
Do what it’s supposed to do.
Never tie anyone to a kayak.
Let’s go get on the water.
You ready?
All right. Let’s go.
Happy.
Good deal.
We want you happy.
All right.
Here we go.
Bye Mommy!!
Guys, it’s really important
that you know how your kayak rolls.
As you can see, Liam is six years old,
so he’s excited to
put his hands on everything.
He’s leaning over
touching the water right now.
You want to make sure you’re high up.
Your kayak is stable enough
to where if they do decide
to play in the water and do some leaning
and moving around,
that you’re not having to deal
with any of that tipping.
So just make sure you
got a good, stable kayak
owie.
All right, guys, as you can see,
obviously this paddling
is too big for Liam.
But
like I said, he’s six years old
and he wants to put his
hands on everything.
We need to go ahead
and get him a paddle that he can
he can paddle around comfortably.
I want you to stand up
show everybody you can stand up
here.
Take this paddle.
I got it.
And throw it in the water.
All right.
Perfect example.
You’ve got your child out in the water
and he throws this paddle
and you’re trying to figure out
how to get the paddle back.
You always, always, always
tether your paddle to your kayak
just like that.
We
all remember like an excavator.
Which way is the bucket?
Which way is it cut?
Liam,
remember your blades?
Look at your blades.
You remember like an excavator
if you want to dig.
What’s that? Do you want to dig with?
There you go.
All right, guys,
we hope you’ve enjoyed today’s video.
Like I said, this
has just been another
episode of Go Outside.
We wanted you to experience this with us.
And if you could learn anything,
if you’re wanting to get your kids
outside in the kayak,
hopefully you were able to pick
something up from today’s video.
Y’all make sure put your life jackets
on, stay on the shallow end
if you’ve got your kids out with you.
Make sure if you’re going to be out
for long periods of time that you got
some hydration for the kids.
Listen to them.
Listen to their moods
and y’all go enjoy yourselves.
We’ll see you later.
Rounds like.
Yeah, there you go.
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