White Water Weekend

Surely I could handle one of those little white water boats?!? How hard could it be? The first problem I had was just making it go in a strait line ... on calm water. It soon becomes apparent that the little directional stability problem on calm water becomes its saving grace in the bumpy stuff. Saturday was a day of paddle strokes, and learning some fundamentals that would be essential for paddling the Kettle River from Banning to Sandstone. Jerome, Chris G, and I, the seakaykers in our group of six students, and three instructors, headed for Banning on Sunday morning. A little warm up in the calm waters, and its a go! Through "Blueberry Slide" and catch an eddy to regroup ... one swim ... no harm done. "Teachers Pet" is the next rapid. Kent was behind me yelling "Go left!" When I hit the hole the bow disappeared into a mess of foamy root beer coloured water. Now I'm flipped over .. sideways .. and stuck! A couple futile attempts to roll up, and I'm outa here! Swimming through the rest of the "Pet", Dave catches up with me and I hang on to his boat through "Mothers Delight" and we catch the next eddy. One thing I learned is the "Pet" was a big enough bomb, to bomb my roll. The other is it pays to go with some good paddlers.

Dave is a great instructor, I wish I could've bought him a cold one at the end of the day! A husband and wife teaching team, both in thier day jobs, and on the river, Kent and Sally have many years playing, and teaching white water. They made a great teaching team! The tally for me ... 4 combat rolls, 1 swim, and a good time on the river.

Seal Launch

Jerome getting some air!

I'll try and get some more photos up in the morning.

"Canoe U"

Well I did it this time!! Off with Alex, Chris G and the Rapids Riders for a weekend of Canoe U. Be back Monday, we'll see how this lowly seakayaker does in a white water boat ...

Qajaq USA

I put it off for way to long. I sent in my application and am now a proud member of "Qajaq USA". I think they are really a great resource for Greenland Kayaking.

Rolling

The plan was to get on the lake this weekend, even if only for a short time. Sunday evening the weather was perfect so I hit Lake Independence for a 6 mile circumnavigation of the lake, and a half hour or so of rolling. Last year the Nordkapp gave me some troubles with the lay back rolls, so I was a bit surprised when I was able to hit both on side, and off side angel rolls with out any problems. The forward sweep is working real well on the on side ... off side, well, not so well. I seem to get a little disoriented on the off side forward sweep. I had never tried the crook of the elbow roll until last week while I was out with Dave checking out his Feathercraft mods. It seemed like a natural progression to the sweep roll, it seemed to work, not sure if I'm doing it right, but .. what the heck. I did work on the narsaq roll for a while again last night ... close, but not yet.

Cool Airplanes

The T-6 is one of my favorites. The North American T-6 Texan was known as "the pilot maker" because of its important role in preparing pilots for combat in WW II. I may get some stick time in this one over the coming summer.

Cold Water Rolls

We did do some cold water rolls in Lake O'Brien over the weekend. Ice cream headaches after only a couple of rolls!