Faltbootpaddeln

On the plashy banks of the Housatonic River in northern Connecticut one morning last week, two fishermen looked up with scowls as a hiker with a rucksack and a brown duffle shaped like an oversized golf bag broke through the woods with a noise loud enough to scare every trout within 50 yd. Abashed, the hiker tiptoed downstream, dropped his burden in a small clearing. While the two fishermen watched, first in irritation then in amazement, he took a red rubbery roll of cloth and a heap of small sticks from his duffle, put the sticks together in a simple frame, shoved it into the red material, tugged here, patted there and in ten minutes had a trim, 17-ft. boat shaped like an Eskimo kayak. Two more sticks merged into a double-ended paddle. The hiker stripped to a bathing suit, stowed his clothes forward in his little craft, stepped agilely aboard and shot away into the rapids. Instant later he vanished in a spate of spray round a bend, leaving fishermen and trout with mouths agape.

The strange kayak was a faltboot, and the exasperation of the two anglers is likely to be duplicated often, for the sport of faltbootpaddeln which has already swept Europe seems now on the verge of doing the same in the U. S. The faltboot (folding boat) was invented by a Bavarian named Klepper in 1902. After the War, faltbootpaddeln took Germany by storm, became as popular in summer as skiing is in winter. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and England there are now some 500,000 faltboats. Year and a half ago one Jakob Kissner arrived in the U. S., got a patent on faltboats, began making them under the name Folbot in Long Island City. To date he has sold about 2,000. Last fortnight, recalling that skiing won U. S. favor through snow trains, Jakob Kissner persuaded the New York, New Haven & Hartford R. R. to try a faltboat train. This week it will run from Manhattan to Falls Village, Conn., where the devotees will unfold their boats for an 18-mi. paddle down the Housatonic through 50 rapids (including one dangerous one) to Flanders, Conn., where the train will pick them up again. Cost of ticket: $2.25. Rent of a faltboat: $4 for a single-seater, $7 for a tandem.

Mr. Kissner's Folbots cost from $40 to $70, come in five models and two typesZJrdinary and heavy duty. The complete craft weighs about 50 lb. A canvas deck keeps out spray, and two rubber notation tanks prevent sinking in case of capsizing. Low-slung, they are hard to tip over. Experts have made the 1,400 miles around the coast of England, the 17,000 miles from England to New Guinea, the 1,500 miles from Manhattan to Chicago. German, British and U. S. submarines are sometimes outfitted with them. As in skiing, German is the language of the sport.

Faltboaters never say "shooting the rapids," but always "Wildwasserfahren." The rubber keel strips are "Kielverstarkungs-streijen aus Vollgummi," the inflatable cushion an "Aufblasbares Sitzkissen."

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