Re: [Paddlewise] Sweetwater symposium

At 10:00 PM 3/2/03 -0500, KayakherSC_at_aol.com wrote:
>Did anyone go?  How was it?  Highlights and downfalls?
>
>Sandy

I realize that this message has been around for awhile but I haven't seen 
any responses to it and I've been in Europe for the past 10 days and 
haven't had a chance to respond.

I attended both the symposium and most of the BCU week prior.

I arrived Tuesday evening (flew in to Tampa International) and took a super 
shuttle (good deal!) to the Sweetwater shop for the BCU week kickoff whine 
and cheese party.  I mingled for a couple of hours, met a bunch of the 
attendees and coaches, and chatted with Shawna Franklin and Leon Sommes 
about their upcoming expedition around Iceland.  I had met both of them a 
couple of years a couple of years ago at the AKT symposium when Shawna had 
done my 3 star assessment (which I failed).  She remembered that I was very 
close to passing though and as it turned out would be doing my assessment 
again on Friday.  I also got to talking with this guy from Austin about 
boats which was about the amount of footroom in Nigel Fosters Rumour.  I 
mentioned that one of the boats that I had paddled with very little 
footroom was a Betsie Bay Valkerie and that I had paddled a kevlar 
version.  He asked me if it was owned by someone named Rita.  As it turned 
out, he was the person that sold and shipped the very boat I had paddled to 
Gabriel Romeau's wife Rita.  I caught a ride back to the campground with 
him and set up my tent (first time I had done so with the new tent I was 
doing) in the dark.

In the morning I met my campmate, a guy from Rochester (about two hours 
from here) and found that we'd both be in the same BCU training for the 
next couple of days.  He'd been out the day before for some 4 star training 
in conditions that were at the upper limit for 4 star and had decided to 
take the 3 star instead and the assessment on Friday.  The weather was in 
the mid 70's with water temps in the low to mid 60's.  I ended up wearing 
my drysuit for all my paddling and it worked out well.  There were about 20 
people for the 3 star training, about 12 of which planned on doing the 
assessment so it was split up into two groups.  The training went well but 
it was clear that there was a fairly wide range of paddling skills.  I was 
paddling a rented VCP Avocet and felt really confident about the assessment 
(the Avocet was so easy to turn it almost felt like cheating).  My 
campmate, Tim, was paddling his Nordkapp and he and a guy from Toronto in a 
Seaward Quest and a couple of others looked like good candidates but most 
of the others looked pretty iffy for the assessment.

On Thursday evening I went with Tim and a couple of friends from Nashville 
he had met at a couple of other prior symposium for dinner.  During the 
course of the evening Tim's friend (also named Tim) asked if he knew a guy 
named Dave from Ithaca.  He had sold a boat to the guy.  When he told me 
that it was a mango colored kevlar Current Designs Caribou I knew exactly 
who it was and had paddled with him many times.  The paddling community is 
really a small world.

The assessment on Friday was a bit tough.  The wind had picked up a bit 
which made things difficult for those that already were having trouble with 
some of the skills.  It was also a very large group (13) to be assessed but 
Shawna and Leon with the help of Linda Legg did their best.  With so many 
people we had to repeat each skill for as long as it took to assess 
everyone in the group so the three hour assessment was one non-stop 
demonstration of skills.  At one point during the low brace turn test one 
of the candidates capsized off to my right.  I was fairly close so I edged 
way over and did a sweep stroke to go in for an assisted rescue.  My stern 
hit another boat and I went over.  I reacted with probably the best off 
side high brace recovery I'd ever done but the woman had come out of her 
boat by the time I got to her.  Someone else came in for an assisted rescue 
and got her back into her boat.  I turned to Shawna and said "Can you count 
that one for my high brace?" and she nodded and said "nice recovery" and 
put down a check mark.

The rest of the assessment went well but I actually blew the assisted 
eskimo rescue the first time.  The guy doing the rescue was very slow 
coming in, then slid right past my hands with his bow so I was almost out 
of air when he finally got his bow to me.  I grabbed it and come up on the 
wrong side and ended up coming out of my boat.  At least I got to 
demonstrate being a victim for the assisted rescue.  I was able to try the 
assisted eskimo rescue later with Tim as my rescuer and did a real good 
one.  The assessment was finally over and I felt pretty good about nailing 
all of the skills.

The critique was short.  Leon said I was definitely a 3 star paddler and 
complimented me especially on my support strokes.  Shawna told me that she 
could see that I had improved a lot since the last time she'd seen me 
paddle and made a couple of suggestions for when I start my 4 star 
training.  She also said I needed to work a little on my bow rudder.  The 
last time I did the assessment she also mentioned the bow rudder and one of 
the other guys that passed said that she commented on his as well.  If you 
ever do a 3 star assessment with Shawna make sure that you're bow rudder 
turn is solid.  Of the 13 people going for the assessment, only 4 
passed.  The others were my camp mate, the guy from Toronto, and a guy that 
works at Sea Kayak Georgia.

I took a surf class in the afternoon that was just so-so.  There wasn't 
much surf but I got in a few decent rides before deciding to head back in 
and demo a few boats.  On the way in I stopped at a beach where Nigel 
Foster was diagramming waves in the sand and describing where to be to 
catch a wave and a series of maneuvers to perform to make the best of 
it.  I actually got more useful information from Nigel's on land 
presentation than I did with the coach I had actually out in the waves.

Friday night I got invited along to go to dinner with my camp mate Tim, the 
other Tim, and a bunch of others (mostly coaches) including Jean Totz (a 
co-owner of Sweetwater and our very accommodating hostess), Dale Williams 
(owner of Sea Kayak Georgia),  Andy Stamp (BCU level 5 coach), and several 
others.

On Saturday the wind really picked up (25-30 knots).  I was scheduled to 
spend all day with Greg Stamer (traditional Greenland paddling guru).  We 
spent most of the morning going over a forward stroke with a Greenland 
stick in great detail and spent some time on bracing as well.  Saturday 
afternoon I was scheduled for the second level Greenland paddling with Greg 
but the wind was so strong there wasn't any place left in the lagoon that 
was conducive for instruction.  The classes on rolling and rescues still 
took place and the conditions couldn't have been better for the rescues 
class.  All the other classes were moved to on land sessions, which was 
actually very good for Greg Stamers class because he got to talk a lot more 
about the Greenland culture and their kayaks.

It started raining...hard...about 5:00pm and I discovered that I had set up 
my tent in a bit of a low spot.  We moved it a bit in the driving rain and 
then headed off to dinner.  The dinner was quite good and was followed by a 
slide show by Greg showing his trip to Greenland for the Greenland kayaking 
championships (where he took a gold medal in his age group for one 
event).  It was fascinating.  There was also a video shown that was made by 
someone associated with Sweetwater about the BCU that was very 
entertaining.  At one point he was describing the various levels and said 
"At the four star level you're performing the strokes you've mastered at 
the 3 star level in challenging conditions.  You'll learn to paddle in 
tidal races, in the surf, and learn where to go, and where not to go.  Once 
you learn where not to go...but you go there anyway....you're ready for 5 
star training."

Finally, Nigel Foster gave a wonderful slide show presentation of paddling 
on a few trips from La Push all the way up to Alaska.  Although the rain 
had stopped the wind continued to blow most of the night which made 
sleeping a bit difficult as the tend flopped around.


On Sunday I had the choice of doing Nigel Fosters discovery learning class 
or taking Greg Stamers rescheduled Greendland II class and I opted for the 
latter.  We revisited some of the things we'd done the day before then 
started working more on bracing, side sculling, and a balance brace.  My 
bracing and side sculling were already pretty good on my right side and 
Greg really helped me work on my offside bracing and sculling.  I was also 
able to get a good long balance brace on both sides.  I spent most of the 
afternoon just fooling around in demo boats.  I particularly liked the P&H 
Vela and Quest.  I was hoping to demo a FR Legend but they didn't have any 
available.

I was planning on camping over Sunday night and getting up early to go to 
the airport but when Tim said that he was going to pick up camp and start 
his long drive back I decided to get a motel near the airport 
instead.  After sleeping on the ground for five days it was nice to get 
back into a warm bed.

This was my first Sweetwater Gulf Coast Sea Kayaking symposium and I 
definitely plan on going again.  It was real nice to go to a symposium that 
focuses on training rather than a place for vendors to try and sell boats 
and equipment.  The coaching level was top notch and it was limited to only 
80 people so it never got unwieldly and made it easier to meet a lot of new 
paddlers and rub shoulders with some of the best kayakers in the 
world.  The only downsides were the somewhat marginal weather over the 
weekend but no where close to what I heard it was like last year.  The 
racoons at the campsite were also a big annoyance.  They got into my tent 
twice (even though the rain fly was zipped) and pilfered a bag of beef 
jerky.  I'd heard that the racoons were very bold and there were a lot of 
them.  Someone even told me how he had witnessed them working in teams when 
he saw a racoon holding open the lid of an ice chest, while a second racoon 
reached in and grabbed eggs and was handing them to a third racoon.  On the 
other hand, my campmate was also awakened one night when a couple of 
racoons that weren't so sharing decided to get into a fight right up next 
to his tent.  All in all though it was a great five days.


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