Jack; Good point. Though I have purposely stayed away from ACA accreditation I have a number of friends, whom I consider skilled paddlers, who have all said that the ACA is notorious in its narrow view of paddling style and makes little or no allowance for variations in form due to the many variables in paddlers, boats, etc. (An example of this would be the placement of a bow rudder. Correct placement varies considerably depending more on boat design, paddler size and flexibility, presence or absense and speed of current, amount of lean etc than it does on just sticking it in a specific place.) It is this dogmatic approach to seakayaking that has kept me away from the ACA. I have not found this to be true for the BCU which does allow for variables with thier concomitant variations. BTW, the BCU and the Nordkapp Trust are not synonymous. The Nordkapp Trust does not represent the BCU and vise versa. One of the fellows I was paddling with in Scotland a couple of weeks ago is head of coaching for the BCU. In our conversation about the ACA certifying Greenland technique no mention was made of the BCU doing the same thing. John Winskill Jack Martin wrote: > > An interesting thread. We seem to be concerned --- justifiably --- that the > ACA or BCU or any other "accreditation" group will finally discover "the" > Greenlandic technique in paddling and patent it for sale. The real problem, > from my experience, is that there does not seem to *be* any one accepted, > standard Greenlandic technique --- at least not in Greenland. > > I remember first watching Maligiaq at the DelMarVa meeting last fall and > wondering how someone with so much recognition within the Greenland paddling > community could have such a terrible Greenland stroke! But "terrible" by > whose standards? My guess is that there is a continuum of paddling styles > in Greenland, and Maligiaq represents just one beautiful point on that > continuum; by inference, there may be lots of other styles of paddling > within the Greenland communities, nots superior or inferior to the style > Maligiaq showed us, which all fall within true Greenland strokes. Why > should we, as a worldwide paddling community, even attempt to stardardize, > package, wholesale and retail some self-styled "Greenland style" when it > appears that there is such a diversity of style and technique at the source? > > Jack Martin > *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jul 08 1999 - 09:11:14 PDT
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