Virgin Islands Kayak Adventure

As an author, it's always great to get emails from readers of my books who benefited in some way from something I have written. It's even better when I hear that something I wrote has inspired readers to go out and do some adventuring of their own. That's a big part of why I've written narratives of some of my trips, especially the account of my Caribbean kayak trip of twenty years ago:

On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean

About a year ago, I received an email from Scott Finazzo, a firefighter from Kansas City who read On Island Time while he was off from work on injury leave. He told me that the book gave him the idea of kayaking in the Caribbean and he passed on the inspiration to a handful of his coworkers and plans were soon made to spend a few weeks paddling the Virgin Islands.

Incredibly, despite the fact that none of them were sea kayakers or boat builders, they came up with their own designs for take-apart skin-on-frame kayaks, built them, and pulled this trip off in a little less than a year from that first email Scott sent me. Just a week ago, I received another email from him with a link to his blog, where he posted the above photo as well as a series of write-ups about their adventures and some video clips. I won't attempt to describe their trip here. Get it straight from Scott at his blog:

Lure of the Horizon

The photos and the descriptions took me right back to my passage through those fabulous islands. I'm really glad these guys got to go there and paddle and that my book played some part in it. I'll be looking forward to more in the future on Lure of the Horizon.