I figure everyone seems to be into the list so I thought I'd add my story. This was written on Aug 5, 2000. --Today was like a turning point in my perception of my skills. All paddlers hear about how if you can roll it substantially expands your confidence because the consequence of flopping over doesn't have to be a swim. That is totally true and intellectually everyone can grasp such a simple idea. Today I got it.- In the 18 months I've been kayaking I missed only 2 weekends of paddling, at least in the pool. I quit counting miles at 750ish. I kept meaning to get back to the journal but. . . Thanks to some very concerned paddlers in this area I got great instructions in the basics of wet exits, self rescues and equipment at the very beginning of my paddling. I fell in the a great group of paddlers who allowed me to join them at times. My primary good fortune was to fall in with Woody, who has been just far enough ahead of me in skills to challenge me without making me feel like I couldn't catch up with him. I can't tell you what a plus it is to have a good friend to paddle with. We have taken trips together, practiced together and encouraged each other, and it is all his fault I spent all that money on stuff. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! One of the things he has done that I mostly wouldn't do is go out and practice alone. I'm way chicken about some things and being the middle-aged female I've indulged myself by not doing things that make me too nervous. Woody, a substantially younger male, will do what I claim are wacko things. I'm always glad to see him in one piece. I always half feared hearing that some kayaker got his head stuck in the mud at Mason Neck and they were waiting for him to come to, to find out why he was upside down in such shallow, muddy water. I won't practice there, needless to say. His willingness to spend a great deal of time out practicing put him way ahead in the development of skills like rolling, bracing and not falling over doing a hanging draw. I tried practicing rolling by myself a couple of times last summer. I decided that I wanted to learn to roll. Greg Welker, who is very generous with his time for anyone how asks, spent some time with me until I seemed to have gotten it. So, off I went to practice in a rather safe place. The thing was that I couldn't get over the idea that if something, who knows what, happened all they would see would be the upside down red hull of my boat and who knows how long I'd be there before anyone noticed. I can work myself into quite a state with ideas like that. Besides, I lost my good sun glasses there that day. So, I gave that up as too nerve wracking. I tried rolling at the pool but somewhere along the line I lost my roll and couldn't seem to get it back. I'd make it up once in a great while, very frustrating. I needed to work with Woody but not in the cold water and not at Mason Neck. I wasn't going ask him to drive bizillion miles up to the pool. It would just have to wait. Over the winter I practiced all the rescues and stuff in my drysuit but I never had the nerve to try to roll except in the pool. Thank you one and all for stories of the gasp reflex, ice cream headaches and all that lovely stuff. I still haven't tried it in cold water. We were just speaking today about the thrill of new drysuits having worn real thin last year. I guess I have to invest in ear plugs this year. In January I got a new boat and spent the first month putting a new seat in, and new this and that before I ever even put her in the water. I couldn't roll her in the pool either! So I kept working on the stuff that I could do like sculling and bracing and strokes. I wasn't feeling so good about my skill level because I was seeing several people who had started after I had who were mastering their rolls and for whatever reason I was falling behind. I could even coach others in their rolls but I'd come out of my boat just about every time. I kept trying, and trying and trying. My other issue was that I didn't feel secure in the boat. It felt so tippy to me. More work on the seat and some rather tentative steps into the uncomfortable range of conditions has substantially improved this area for me. I had people look at my rolling to see what I was doing and they would say things like they had no idea what I was doing wrong. It all looked just right. It had to be the hip snap, but that looked right but they had no other idea to even put forward. So I plugged on, I worked more on my hip snap, making a roll here and there but mostly swimming. I just kept getting sucked out or falling out of the boat. Woody and I found a new place to work this past winter. It is a tiny bay on a cove by an army base. The little bay is very sheltered and when there is a wind it blows you or your boat back to shore. There is a sandy/pebble beach and the shore slopes for a short way then there is a quick drop off. This is all perfect for practice. You can practice really close to the shore but be in deep water or you can stand in water for working with each other. Woody has been really good about spotting me in the water. With him I seemed to be making more than not, so I gained a shred of hope that I'd get it. I can't explain the next series of times I was on or off. I got fed up with not rolling my new boat so I brought the Looksha, a hard chine, plastic boat. It is narrower than my Gulfstream and it isn't my Gulfie. I rolled that boat very consistently. I got in Woody's boat, the same boat I have but with a different seat, and rolled it several times in a row so I went back to the Looksha to practice. The next day I went down by myself with my Gulfie but only made 6 of 15, if I recall. I pulled the new seat out and rolled her! Then I lost it again. How irritating! I can't recall the exact order of things but at one point I took Mardi down with me for Woody to teach her to roll in the Breeze on a Sat. I was in my Gulfstream and I was totally "on" that day. I made every roll except when I tried not to use the extended paddle position, and when I tried a different paddle. I must have made 25, as every muscle told me the next day. The next day I had my boat fully loaded for a swim support I was working and wanted to be sure I could still roll with all that stuff on the deck. Twice around and not a hesitation. I blew 2 rolls after the event and decided I was too tired to play get-back-in-the-boat. Besides, I was substantially annoying the fellow I was practicing with. I struggled for a couple more weeks with a success here and there. I was making more and more but had no idea why I wasn't making all of them. When I made them it was like silk. When I didn't, I felt like I was being sucked out of the boat. The only other thing that I felt was wrong was a couple of times I couldn't get my paddle to the surface, like it was hung up on something. Weird feeling and I'd get scared and come out to see what it could be caught on. One day Woody pointed out that my paddle angle was odd. For those who don't know, I use a Greenland paddle. I "felt" what I was doing. I had the paddle turned so that it was vertical in the water rather than horizontal! If I had been using a Euro paddle someone would have caught that months ago. Actually, I had been doing that last fall but THOUGHT I had corrected it. That was the turning point. Now I was making 95%. The other 5% were an irritant because I wasn't blowing one and managing to recover and make the next try. My solution to that was to hang upside-down and after a count of 10 try to "J" up with the paddle and come up. That was were I discovered what the "hang-up" was. I had my paddle horizontal in the water and I'm pushing it up! In essence I was making the same mistake in getting the paddle out of the water that I had been making on the sweep. So, I had to determine what was the best angle to hold the paddle was I went over to get it out of the water and then I had to "feel" the right angle for the sweep. This also lead to one of the many small successes I've had, I finally made my first recovery and now make almost all of them, even if it takes 3 or even 4 tries. My failure in 1, 2 or 3 is still the blade angle and when I feel it going south I can now usually make the adjustments before it is too late. Now I KNEW I could and I just had to fine tune what I knew about rolling. Today was like a turning point in my perception of my skills. All paddlers hear about how if you can roll it substantially expands your confidence because the consequence of flopping over doesn't have to be a swim. That is totally true and intellectually everyone can grasp such a simple idea. Today I did things I thought would take a lot longer. I met Woody this morning with an ambitious agenda. I had put new bungies on the back deck and wanted to see if they worked, a paddlefloat self rescue, wanted to try to do a roll going over on the side I have never tried it from, wanted to try a reentry and roll and I wanted to try rolling with my Europaddle. We paddled long enough for me to get the kinks out and I tried a few rolls. I usually hold my paddle on my right and go over on my left side, which is essentially going over backwards, then I do a sweep up. As Woody said, "a piece of cake." I went and changed paddles but didn't have the nerve to just go over with the Euro. I finally asked Woody to spot me, which he kindly did. I found the paddle weird. I may be overpowering it. I was encouraged to speed up my sweep when I was having so many problems and with this paddle I think I need to slow it down and I know I don't have a good angle on the blade. I felt a lot of resistance in the sweep, which I'd guess means I need to flatten the angle a tad. I just don't want it to dive on me. Woody said that he doesn't push his paddle up, he just lets it float up. When I tried that it was much easier and that slowed me down so I didn't feel so much like I was fighting the water. As I did the sweep I was hanging onto the boat with my legs and feet because I felt like I was being pulled out of the boat by the blade. On the third roll my foot came off the peg and I got the WORST charile-horse in my left calf! I still can't walk right. I just croaked and Woody had to pull the boat up because I was stiff with pain. I got out and tried to walk it out but really didn't manage much improvement. After a bit I decided forget the leg and that blade for the moment and I would try my reenter and roll. I got back in the boat then I thought that would be a good time to try the "over the other side" roll, assuming I would make it because I actually needed to get out of the boat. I made it. It was actually a lot more comfortable than the roll to the left I've been doing. I'll have to try it some more, maybe tomorrow. I did find that the paddle got kind of sucked out of position but it wasn't hard to put it back. I needed to get out of the boat so I tried it again, I got to the point where I knew I had it and then sank back down so I could get out or I'd spend forever rolling this way and that. Woody was going to help me with the reenter and roll. I started by tried getting back in the boat without my paddle, just to see how hard it would be, simple! He told me to hold the paddle in one hand as I held the coaming and put the boat on. It worked like a charm, very easy. I almost made it that first try-bad blade angle! The second time was a breeze! Of course it would have been nice if I'd realized that there is a strong potential for falling all the way back over if I wasn't careful. I have no idea how I didn't but I didn't. Then I tried the bungies and they worked well too. Now I have two way I can get back in my boat by myself, which all those who paddle with me will be most grateful for. After doing the reenter and roll with such ease I GOT IT. All the skills, and all the hours, and all the failures, and all the bits of this and that has been woven into a tool kit. I'm not suggesting that I'm all that good at things yet. What I have now is a kit with some usable tools. I don't have a combat roll. I don't want to fall over in the middle of the Potomac again to find out, either. What struck me as I sat in the water after the reentry was that I took skills learned over the last year and a half and combined them in ways I'd never tried before and they worked! Thank you to all the people who have shared their time, knowledge, passions, and equipment with me. I treasure your gifts. Joan Spinner Paddling the Chesapeake Bay watershed in a Yellow/white CD Gulfstream and a Red CD Breeze *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Very encouraging tale Joan, you are persistent to the point of being inspirational! I am boosted to keep on with my own efforts to develop a smooth useful roll. All the same, one's roll will fail...(and other tactics need to practised and employed). I thought I was getting the hang of rolling on demand, but came back from a paddle in fairly cold water (11 Celsius, 50 Fahrenheit+-). I had done a couple of quick rolls en route, but back at the put in point, decided to crank off a few more. I was a bit tired and cold. I had no head covering on. I blew a roll, and then another... and couldn't roll at all. I just wanted to get my head out of the cold water, and of course lifting your head early is fatal to a roll. I needed my paddling friend's bow to pull up on time and time again. A couple of things from this experience: (a) don't practice when tired and cold, and reinforce bad actions, and (b)have a neoprene hood available in cold water.I don't know of any other head covering quite as good. I have since had a rolling/rescue practice session, using head cover, and thankfully stopped practising only the first half of the roll! Regards, Peter Treby 37°42'S 145°08'E *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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