Support Veterans' Kayak Fishing After Theft

This past week, the wife and I had our kayak fishing trailer broken into, and everything that was not bolted down was stolen out of it. The trailer we used in support of a veteran kayak fishing nonprofit that we run a local chapter of. The group focuses on veterans with various disabilities and getting them out on the water to enjoy the peace of being in the outdoors. Our group provides all of the equipment and licenses for our participants to partake in any part of a kayaking and fishing experience. We do this free of charge to anyone who is involved, serving approximately 1,000 veterans a year. Our national provides us with the basics that we use, such as some kayaks, life jackets, camp chairs, and fishing rods. We felt to make the experience as meaningful as possible, the wife and I had assembled a support trailer out of our own pocket. We had done this over the course of the last 10 years.

A brief list of things that we used were pop-up tents, outdoor camp cook stoves (we provide a meal at all of our events), stainless dinnerware (trying to do our best to minimize our environmental impact), cookware, fishing tackle, and a couple of additional kayaks (two of which were only a couple of months old) for us to have safety people on the water in case of emergencies. The thieves literally took everything except the kayak hulls themselves; even the pedal drives and seats for the kayaks were stolen out of the boats. Unfortunately, this has posed a mountainous financial hill to climb between now and next spring when we will begin holding events again. While some of it we may be able to shoulder in the near term, there is way more than we can or will be able to purchase on our own. Any help is appreciated.