Inland Sea Kayakers* first Wednesday Rendezvous of the season was overcast and intermittently rainy with a strong wind out of the southeast: good weather for the ducks on Lake Calhoun and for several sea kayakers in dry suits. ISK was represented by six paddlers, TCSKA by one, and there were two independent groups of two each, for a total of 11 sea kayakers on the chain of lakes on a blustery Wednesday evening. After several months of inactivity, I felt strangely uneasy in the short, steep waves, but I soon had my sea legs back -- or is it sea butt in a kayak? Though we had talked about practicing rescues in the waves, our warm-up paddle took us to Brownie Lake, which as usual was unruffled in its seclusion. At 58 degrees, Calhoun was the coldest of the lakes, almost too warm for dry suits, though not for wetsuits. My thermometer told me Brownie was four degrees warmer, and the water felt it. Some of us practiced Eskimo rolls. I tried an off-side roll first, but though it was successful in that it brought me up again, it did not have the fluid grace of my subsequent on-side roll. Rick Wright came over in his new Greenlander to admire my newest Greenland paddle, an experimental hybrid with a West Greenland body and East Greenland tips. We traded paddles, and as Rick moved off with mine, I struggled with his until I found again the long-forgotten rotate, stroke, rotate, stroke rhythm of a feathered paddle. As I paddled over to the other kayakers, mock cries of amazement rippled through the group. For most, it was the first time they had seen me paddle a Euro-style paddle, let alone a feathered one. >From Brownie we paddled back to Calhoun in light rain and increasing darkness, guided to our put-in by the familiar rectangular silhouette of a high tree beyond the beach parking lot. The wind had almost died, the air felt balmy, and the fatigue with which I had begun the evening had vanished. Oh, it*s good to be back on the water again. Chuck Holst *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:59 PDT