RE: [Paddlewise] PFDs have their moments

Doug wrote:



>>Daniel said:

>Only unintended wet-exit I've had to do in the last 1000 hours of fairly
serious paddling was BECAUSE I was wearing a PFD. Caught in turbid water and
couldn't get under the kayak to get my roll on where there was solid water
to push against - and trust me when I say that I was NOT willing to leave
that cockpit until I gave it everything I had. Not that I plan to stop
wearing one, but I'm moving to an approved inflatable suspender type PFD
this season. I'd like to be able to control when I have buoyancy and when I
don't. Only reason I'm mentioning it is that this issue isn't as black and
white as it seems. Good personal choices are what makes a good paddler
better.< <<




I had that problem when I first started using a drysuit when surfing on the WA
coast in January. After quickly learning to burp out as much air as possible
once the drysuit was closed up, I still occasionally had the problem of being
set up to roll on the opposite side that my PFD (and residual drysuit air)
buoyed me up on. Worse, when switching the paddle to roll up on the other side
the motions to do so invariably also floated me over to the other side
creating the same problem repeatedly whichever side I switched over to until I
ran out of air.



To try to solve that problem before finding myself swimming in big surf again
(a situation I found far less enjoyable than paddling there) I went to pool
practice and wore two PFDs. After much trial and error I hit on the solution
when I tried recovering in the shallow end of the pool where I couldn't reach
down deep to try to skull to the other side (as I had been trying--with
awkward difficulty).



The solution is to get into the roll position you are best at and if you find
that you have floated up on the wrong side simply make a short stroke that
keeps your paddle near the front deck and perpendicular to it as you go around
its curve. The blade edge should be nearly touching the deck. This will flip
you to floating up on the side you wanted to be on. Next feather your paddle
so you can slice it back under the deck into the original roll position again
and roll from there. It is very quick and easy to do this if you know how. To
come closer to a bomb proof roll one definitely needs to practice this
technique because that situation can be very frustrating otherwise.
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