An oldish thread but new to me - recently back at the 'puter after a delightful week with four boats and extended family at a beach house at Pensacola, Florida. I have many times found an offside roll to be useful. In white water it is not too unusual to come up against a rock and have to switch over to an offside roll. In white water holes and when playing in the surf it is also quite common to be compelled to roll up offside or not at all. One need only set up to roll with a wave to get up whereas to roll against the wave ain't likely to happen. It also has happened too often to me that when I tip over, my boat won't go all the way over but stays sort of half tipped so that it becomes necessary to change set up sides. As someone else already mentioned if you miss the onside roll you are then in good position to do the offside and it might be a good idea to go ahead and roll offside because whatever property of the water kept you from coming up onside originally is likely to still be there. Larry Koenig *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
>Larry Koenig wrote: <SNIP> >It also has happened too often to >me that when I tip over, my boat won't go all the way over but stays sort of >half tipped so that it becomes necessary to change set up sides. As someone >else already mentioned if you miss the onside roll you are then in good >position to do the offside and it might be a good idea to go ahead and roll >offside because whatever property of the water kept you from coming up >onside originally is likely to still be there. > This has happened to me several times. Usually in the surf when wearing a drysuit. Especially before I learned to burp as much air out of the drysuit as I could. The trouble with an off-side roll here is that when you try to switch positions to the offside what invariably happens is that you float up on the opposite side as well and it will still take 270 degrees to rotate back up. Switching back to onside again just flops you over to the otherside and by now your reserve air supply is getting low. I was so frustrated by this (and having to swim in big surf becauseof it) that I went to pool practice with the prime objective to figure out how to beat this little bugaboo. I put on two PFD's which recreated the problem nicely. After much confusion and many failures trying to scull myself over to the right side I hit upon the solution in the shallow part of the pool where I couldn't scull deep. It is quite simple. Set up for the roll and when you realize you have floated up to the wrong side simply pull the paddle blade down in a stroke that keeps the blade at about 90 degrees to the curve of the deck (and right next to it). This stroke will cause you to float up on the side you originally wanted to roll up on. Now simply feather your blade and slice it back under the foredeck and into position to begin your onside roll. Then roll. I got a chance to try it for real after being dumped while wilderness kayak surfing last summer and it worked like a charm. Matt Broze http://www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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