At 09:21 AM 12/9/98 -0600, Chuck wrote: >As Nigel Foster pointed out in Sea Kayaker some time ago, a roll is >considered a basic skill in whitewater, so why not in sea kayaking? > Ah, the great roll debate. Are you a "real" kayaker if you can't roll? I'm sure this has been batted around before, but before I came "onboard" Paddlewise, so since fools rush in, my two cents (Canadian, so about .0000005 cents American)… To put my thoughts in context: 1. I can roll. Formerly damn near bombproofly, though somewhat less reliably now as result of some spinal column problems. I have done a little whitewater paddling, and a lot of surf kayaking. 2. I have never been a paid professional guide, but have taught people to roll in pools and open water, and have taken individuals, some with no experience, on trips of varying difficulty. This is in a friend and/or Significant Other context, not as a club trip leader. I can see why rolling is a basic skill in whitewater. Without it you're going to spend a lot of time swimming, and not having much fun. Because sea-kayaking is done to a variety of different extremes, I think the situation is different here. It's quite possible, if you choose to, to paddle your entire sea-kayaking career without ever needing a roll. My inclination is to teach rescues like the stirrup rescue, or paddle float self-rescue first. This is because I believe that beginners would have the greatest chance of success with these, and that these rescues can in fact be performed in the sort of relatively mild conditions that beginners would and should be out in. Of course, the paddlers must be dressed for immersion in the local water. I would then teach bracing and rolling in parallel, for two reasons. A reliable roll gives paddlers the confidence to truly commit to a brace, as opposed just sitting up right and making token slaps at the water with their paddle. Bracing and rolling are also overlapping skills in that a sweep for a roll is essentially a dynamic brace, just done from underneath. I would emphasise that bracing is preferable to rolling, and that not being unintentionally in a situation where you need to brace is even more preferable. (In a true crisis, one thing is better than presence of mind—absence of body!) Can you be a "real" sea kayaker if you can't roll? Sure - I know a lot of very skilled types, some of whom, for physical reasons, cannot roll. They compensate by being very skilled bracers, and/or by exercising very good judgement about weather and water conditions. I suspect they are safer in their own way than kayakers whose ability to roll leads them to adopt an overly gung-ho attitude and charge blindly into danger. Perhaps the requirements for certification levels should be more "results orientated". Rather than having to demonstrate a roll, for example, you would need to demonstrate that you can cope with and/or land through particular surf conditions. If you do that by effective bracing, I think that in many ways that is preferable to doing it by rolling. ("To be able to roll is a sign of success—to need to roll is a sign of failure.") Cheers, Philip T. **************************************** Mountain Equipment Co-op 1655 West 3rd Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6J 1K1 Tel: 640-732-1989 Fax: 604-731-6483 email: pid_at_mec.ca Visit our website at: http://www.mec.ca ***************************************** *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Dec 09 1998 - 12:21:09 PST
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