Yesterday I was trying to help someone with their sculling brace. He did very well with supporting himself in an extreme edging situation. He could bring the the kayak over past 90 deg, hold himself above the water in a J lean, and had water well up over the sprayskirt. However, whenever he tried to lower himself so that all his body was in the water the paddle would quickly dive and he would lose all support. Fortunately he has a good roll and despite about 6 capsizes never had to wet exit. We talked about raising his outboard hand as he lowered himself so that the paddle would stay more parallel to the water's surface and about laying back so there was less capsizing force. However, he just could not seem to keep the paddle from diving. I used to have the same problem, but it just seemed to go away one day. I am not aware of any particular adjustment I made to keep the paddle from diving. Is there some "trick" to getting lowered into the water without having the paddle dive. A couple of things I thought about were: 1. Moving both hands more outboard as you get lower into the water 2. Eliminating/reducing the J-lean so there is not so much upper body angle change when lowering the body into the water. 3. Initiating the final "capsize" more by raising the paddle off the water rather than pushing the upper body down into the water. I am not sure if any of these would help or if they might even hurt. I would appreciate comments on the above and any other suggestions you might have regarding teaching the sculling brace. Mark Arnold mjamja_at_earthlink.net Why Wait? Move to EarthLink. *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Nov 13 2003 - 10:14:03 PST
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