[Paddlewise] Symposium + Surf Zone Class

Atlantic Coast Sea Kayak Symposium

This was the 17th annual symposium and was sponsored by L.L. Bean and
held at the Maine Martine Academy in Castine, Maine USA.

I arrived around 5pm, registered and then set up camp at a nearby field.
That night in one of the auditoriums, Olaf Malver of Mountain Travel -
Sobek (http://www.mtsobek.com/) gave a slide show on sea kayaking in
Panama, Viet Nam, Portugal and some other places.  I think I had
recently seen a rock climbing expedition along the Viet Nam coast on
PBS.  Olaf's job is to travel around the world, looking for neat places
and things to do for his company.  Tough job.  Apparently there are
hundreds of islands near Panama.

There were 5 different lectures, including one for kids, and on water
demos each hour.  Unfortunately, some hours had more than one
interesting lecture while others had less interesting things going on.
The on water demos were a couple of miles away so it wasn't feasible to
try to include them in your schedule. There were also a couple of
lectures especially for women.

On Saturday I went to Packing Your Kayak, Back Country Medicine,
Repairing Drysuits (by a Kokotat rep), Wind and Waves, Tides and
Currents and Dressing for paddling.

Before a big lobster and steamed clam dinner, they showed two episodes
of the 'Anything Wild' PBS series featuring Derek Hutchinson and the
Farne Islands in the North Sea.  They were experimenting with a new
program format and 3/4 of the show was historical information and 1/4
was actually about paddling.  We took a survey and I indicated I wasn't
thrilled with the new format.  Derek was there to answer questions
afterwards.  He's quite a character, a good story teller and pretty
funny.  I was kind of surprised to see that he's in his 60's now.

That night we were presented with a slide show entitled 'In the Path of
Giants' by Steph Dutton and his wife Heidi.  Steph has paddled the west
coast from B.C. to Baja and another trip along the Oregon coast in
winter.  Heidi is a licensed captain, (tug boats?) and used to work the
Columbia River in Oregon.  They have some kind of funding and/or
sponsors (such as Necky, Kokatat, Werner and others) for tracking gray
whales from Alaska(?) to Baja in sea kayaks for the next couple of
years. (http://www.graywhale.net/).  Steph is out there in 30+ foot
seas, 80+ miles from shore and had a few interesting stories to tell.
They are exempted from the 100 yard range the rest of us must keep from
certain wildlife.

Sunday, I attended lectures on Rough Water Paddling by Steph Dutton,
Reading the Weather by a local meteorologist (I missed Advanced and
Localized Weather for Kayakers), some more Wind and Waves (too many
formulas, etc) and Kayak Cookery.  My last lecture, Kayak Cameras & Care
was cancelled so I headed to off to Rockport, ME where I had a Surf Zone
class scheduled for Monday.

There were two instructors and four students at the Surf Zone class, a
12 year old girl, a marathon swimmer, a Paddlewise lurker and yours
truly.

We launched at the mouth of the Kennebec River from Popham Beach into
some small surf and were greeted with some small swells.  The whole time
we were there, I never once was able to read them coming in.  The
instructors would yell, go, go, go and I would paddle like hell and
catch one by accident once in a while.

After lunch we launched into some larger surf and paddled to another
part of the beach where steeper 3-5 foot waves were breaking over a
sandbar.  Now I could see them and told an instructor to get ready for
some rescues because I was going to get a lot more aggressive.  Sure
enough, I got knocked sideways and leaned too far into a wave and took a
dump.  (Not that kind, I fell over <g>).

When they came to rescue me, I told them I wanted to do a self-rescue.
What a disaster!  First, both sandals had come loose and were being held
on by the strap across the instep.  I'm between the kayak and shore and
the instructor tells me to get on the other side of the kayak.  The wind
is blowing on shore and I tell him I want to be on the downwind side so
the kayak is not being blown away from me.  He disagrees and wins as I
get to the upwind side away from the shore.

I got the paddle float out from under the bungies and started inflating
one side with my elbow hooked over the stern.  A wave came along and
knocked me off of the kayak and it floated away.  An instructor kindly
brought it back to me.  I stuck my arm under the bungies this time.

I stuck the paddle in the float, inflated the other side but forgot to
attach the strap to the paddle shaft.  When I tried to lift my leg up on
the float, it too floated away. An instructor kindly brought it back to
me.  I then attached the float to the shaft.

So I try again and am up on the rear deck when a wave catches me
broadside.  I didn't have enough weight on the float so lost my balance
and took another swim.  Meanwhile, the instructors would say here comes
a big one and I would get hammered again.

I get up on the rear deck again, and try to get my feet in the cockpit
but my sandals are both flopping around and I have a pretty hard time
getting them and my feet in.  Finally I do and I'm now sitting in a
cockpit full of water in 3-5 foot waves that fortunately are 6-8 seconds
apart and not much chop or anything in between.

I get hit by another wave and decide facing into the waves would
probably be a good thing.  I get turned into them, set the paddle so I
can lean my power elbow on the float for support and start pumping.  Do
you know how long it takes to pump out a cockpit full of water?  My
elbow gets sore so I switch the paddle to the other side but can't get
my balance so move it back.  

I'm negotiating 3-4 waves with no problem, keeping the kayak straight
and just rolling over them.  I get more than half the water out of the
cockpit and here comes a 5 footer.  We go up the wave the same as we did
with the 3-4 footers but didn't go any higher.  I punched through the
last foot or so of the wave and of course the cockpit filled up again.
Eventually I got the cockpit empty and the spray skirt back on and
joined the others.

The real star of the day was the 12 year old girl.  She was great.  She
couldn't have weighed more than 80 pounds but handled herself
beautifully.  Several times, all you could see was her head and her
paddle braced into a wave off in the distance.  She was a natural and
made it appear so easy and graceful.  Maybe there's something to that
old dog/new tricks saying.

A great time was had by all.  I caught a really good wave at the end and
took it almost into the beach.  I have a lot of practicing to do with
the high brace and I wish we had spent more time on launching and
landing.  While the self-rescue was a disaster, I think (hope) I learned
the most from it.  If everything had gone smoothly I might have come
away with a ho-hum attitude.   As it is, I hope I will think the steps
through next time and not just start doing them.  I'm really looking
forward to the next time too.  Hopefully under controlled circumstances.



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