Did anyone go? How was it? Highlights and downfalls? Sandy *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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