Naming the TRAK 2.0

June 28, 2019

— by Simon Wenger

ALL PHOTOS © SIMON WENGER

I've been paddling a TRAK kayak for years. In 2013, I bought my T-1600 boat and paddled it in Scotland, Cornwall, Wales and southeastern Sweden.

It was only 2016 that I decided to give my boat a name. In the rare moments when I'm not on the water (I wish that were true...), I am conductor of a youth orchestra. For a New Year's Concert I was rehearsing Felix Mendelssohn's beautiful overture 'Fingal's Cave' which he had written after visiting this fascinating place on the Isle of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides. With the name, I set the goal to paddle into that cave someday (which I finally did in 2018).

As a member of the Kanu-Club Konstanz, my home waters are the Lake of Constance and the Rhine. As an early Kickstarter backer for the 2.0, I decided that my new boat was going to be yellow (call it gold!) and the name could not have been other than 'Das Rheingold'! (Let's see if my new goal will now be to conduct this wonderful opera someday...?) It was just fabulous to share Das Rheingold's baptism with some of my dearest friends on a sunny spring day on the club's premises in May.

— Simon Wenger