[Paddlewise] Day #50, Those Who Can't, Teach

6/14/08

When I got to the Secret Beach, Ken and Barb were sitting on the sea wall
looking like two beached seals--all clad in black rubber ready for our
Saturday Wet Works. They head over to the CG beach while I got ready and
when I joined them I found Pete and Jeff Libby there to join us as well. To
the side of the beach was another, large group of paddlers getting ready to
head out under the expert tutelage of George M.

We all headed to Pirate's Cove and we could see a couple yakkers already
there who turned out to be the Pilchard bunch. Clearly, they were there to
show off their nifty new two-piece Superior GP's and had already warmed up
with a coastal paddle. The sun wasn't out yet, but the water didn't seem too
cold, but I quickly had to acclimate to the chill. Barb was just getting out
her face mask when it slipped out of her hands heading for the briny deep.
The briny deep only being 10 to 12 feet here, I donned my mask hoping for a
quick retrieval. Sans my PFD, I still was rather buoyant with just my wet
suit top, but managed to make it down, but the Eel Grass in the area was too
high and after a few tries we left it as a sacrifice to the rolling gods.

It didn't take long for Kathy to start to show off with her new paddle. They
claimed they were still getting used to them, but Kathy showed off a real
nice butterfly roll that had her looking like a pro. She gave Ken a few
hints and he was able to do one too, so we already had people learning new
skills on the day. About this time, Ben paddled up from his launch site at
NAC and joined in the practice

Every one kind of paired up to work on sundry skills. H&K worked on more
Greenland skills and Ken helped Jeff try out a paddle float reentry roll.
Barb and Pete worked on reentries and I just seemed to paddle around
watching. Jeff wasn't having any trouble with the paddle float roll, so I
graduated him on to my kickboard paddle float. It helped him add a bit of
sweep to the maneuver and soon Ken was schooling him in the finer aspects of
real rolling. Off to the side, Henry was helping Kathy get set up for a nice
static brace. I looked over to see Ben swimming, the victim of a broken
paddle shaft on his roll attempt.

After a while, I asked Jeff if he wanted to come closer to shore where I
could stand up and help him with his roll attempts. Just trying to repeat my
rolling class with Jen, I had him do some hip snaps just holding my hands
and he came up rather smartly. We moved on to me holding the back of his
boat and letting him try to roll on his own and it wasn't taking a lot of
help from me to get him up. We gave him the story of keeping his head down
and after a couple more tries he rolled up all by himself like a real pro.
We figured it best he stop on a high note.

Since I was already in the water, I worked with Pete trying out my kickboard
paddle float. He was doing well with that and we moved on to trying some
real rolling. With Henry giving advice and demonstrations, I think we got
Pete moving in the right direction, but we didn't have two new rollers on
the day. Still I was glad to see him doing well with the paddle float roll.

By this time I hadn't even tried a real roll yet myself. I'd done a reentry
roll earlier only to find I should have recharged my bilge pump battery last
night! My roll of late has been at the best, iffy. I asked Ken to borrow his
boat and despite the tight fit, enjoyed rolling a boat that seems meant to
be rolled. Not to be out done, Barb was showing some excellent rolling
technique. Of course, Ken in my boat didn't look to have too much trouble
rolling my barge.

We had had a busy, successful morning of practice and all decided to head to
the Fireside for lunch. It was nice to be on hand for someone to do their
first successful roll despite the weakest roller giving the advice!

Mark Sanders
www.sandmarks.net

#
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