Driving to the river on Sunday morning to head out for a winter paddle, I was listening to the radio. The Sunday Edition was airing an article about a singing coach, Tom Schilling. Schilling was interviewed and among the things he said was a line that stuck with me:
"We teach what we have to learn ourselves."
I like that. It reflects some of the reasons I teach people to paddle. One of the benefits of becoming a paddling instructor is that it has made me a better paddler, to better understand the skills so that I can better teach them to my students. It also reflects that we are always learning, that a good teacher is always working to improve both their teaching and the skillset they are sharing.
Mr. Schilling also said a few other things that struck a chord and are relevant to a paddling instructor. He teaches people to use their voice as an instrument. I rely heavily on my voice to teach and even though few would describe it as musical, it is one of my teaching instruments. He described how a good singer must learn to get big sounds without forcing it, without power. He related the analogy of the tiny locust that creates a sound heard for miles. I know this is one of my challenges - after a day of instructing in the outdoors, especially with some wind, my voice is tired. I've spoken to my good friend Mike about this in the past. Mike is a school teacher and involved in theatre. He described some techniques for learning to project my voice, but I have yet to get the hang of them (more specifically, to put in the required practice).
So, perhaps to become a better kayak instructor, I really need to sign up for some singing lessons!
Our part of the world is frozen pretty solid right now but I still got out for some paddling in December. Never mind that it was in Florida where their winter temperatures (water and air) were nearly as warm as it ever gets here in the summer. On Thursday I paddled an afternoon in the ocean to have fun and hone my skills, and on Friday our family went on a tour on protected waters to see some Floridian wildlife. I'll cover that tour in a separate post.
First, since I don't often get a lot of coastal paddling in and I wanted to work on those skills, I hired Michael Shugg to do an afternoon session of coastal kayak skills with me. Mostly, I wanted to learn to play and tour in surf conditions. Michael is an American Canoe Association instructor from Orlando and he recently started the company Adventure Spirit Kayaking. We started out at a Port Canaveral boat launch, not far from a number of cruise ships, then headed out around the point to the beach at Cape Canaveral/Cocoa Beach.
Palm trees and cruise ships at the launch - things you just don't see much of in Saskatchewan.
Once out of the port area and clear of the boat traffic, I tried a couple of rolls on both sides to get rid of any rust that might have built up from a couple of months off of the water. We then took advantage of the bit of swell (1.5 feet?) to catch some waves coming in to the beach, working first on coming in slower than the waves and in control, as you would do with a load while touring. That was easy enough so then we spent most of the afternoon working on catching and surfing the waves. On my very first attempt to surf some waves in toward shore I was broached (the following wave pushed my stern sideways until I was parallel to the wave) and I quickly capsized since I hadn't yet learned to lean into the wave. I rolled back up quite nicely so it was great to see my roll working in the real world conditions.
A pretty calm day out there but there was some swell, I swear it!
It was also remarkable how warm the water was. I was pretty comfortable in just a rash guard and shorts over neoprene shorts. Just guessing, I'd say the water was pretty close to 20°C and the air was close to 25°C. Like I said, warm summer conditions (if we're lucky).
Michael.
That's probably one of the waves I should have been surfing, rather than trying to catch on the camera.
I did have difficulties with a couple of aspects. First, it was hard for this prairie guy to time the waves - I often seemed to pick a little one that didn't surf me well, then I'd get halfway to the beach and end up getting the larger wave(s) that were following the one I picked. These waves would be steeper by the time I was trying to catch them and I wouldn't get a good ride before being broached. I also had some trouble picking the right spot as they always seemed to be bigger, 'just over there.'
On shore for a snack. Bryan's little tip: don't toss a water bottle and open bag of crackers into the day hatch loose together when you expect to be rolling over and over in the surf. The water bottle will smash your crackers to bits and make quite the mess in the day hatch, especially when that hatch cover comes off later during rescue practice.
Myself after handing the camera to Michael for a while. It looks too calm for a helmet, but it did come in handy a couple of times when I approached the beach helmet-side-down.
A successful surf into the beach.
Another thing that I did wrong at first but which quickly got better (until the end again when I seemed to be losing it), was that I leaned the wrong direction while broaching and the wave would dump me upside down pretty quickly. I learned (thanks to Michael) that I needed to keep the hull toward the beach while bracing on the wave. When I did that well, the wave couldn't capsize me.
Ready to head back out again for another try.
Low bracing as the wave spills away underneath me.
Finally, I had troubles controlling my angle on the wave. Most of my paddling is forward (or backward) and I can easily control the direction with correction strokes. Surfing a wave, you use a stern rudder which although I know how to do it in general, it's not totally intuitive or natural for me yet. I have to think about it and by the time I think about it, it's too late and I'm starting to broach on the wave.
I surfed backwards (on purpose) once or twice and in some respects that was easier for me since I could see what waves were coming. Heading out through the waves was interesting - that's the first time I've been smacked in the chest by a (short) wall of water. It was easy though to reach past the wave, plant my paddle, and power through. That's relatively small stuff though - I can see how that would be a challenge in some bigger surf.
On shore, ready to head out for another run.
By the time we were done I had salt water in every orifice in my body and had been more or less pummelled by the breaking waves (usually right at shore where it was very shallow). I did get Michael to take a video of me - unfortunately he captured my surf that ended in my one and only wet exit (I later practiced some rescues, but those were intentional wet exits). Looking at this video (below), it looks like I was bailing and setting up for a capsize and roll long before the surf actually dumped me. By this time it was getting toward the end of the afternoon and the surf had rolled me rather a lot of times. I guess I was maybe starting to anticipate what seemed inevitable?
We finished up the afternoon with some rescue practice - more rolling on each side, then re-enter & roll, then cowboy re-entry (which went very well other than popping my day hatch cover loose and getting my crackers soggy), then bow rescue, then a t-rescue. After that, we paddled back to the launch, a trip I'm certain was much longer than it was on the way out. Paddling back through the port entrance, we passed two cruise ships on their way out to the ocean, including a Disney ship which was just as loud as the theme parks my family had just visited in the first 2/3 of our trip to Florida. At the same time that one of the cruise ships was passing us, we paddled past a moored gambling cruise ship (much smaller than the other 2 ships, but a large ship nonetheless). We were no more than 60' from each of these massive building-sized boats in our tiny watercraft.
All in all it was a great afternoon on the water. I was glad to have made a new paddling acquaintance in Michael, I learned a lot, and I have lots to practice on Lake Diefenbaker or Lac La Ronge when the water warms up a bit.
Tons of fun.
If you find yourself in Florida and itching to get out kayaking and learn some skills, I highly recommend Michael Shugg and Adventure Spirit Kayaking.
This is a fantastic video from the mid-1930's demonstrating some amazing paddling skills. Toward the end there is a shot that is hard to imagine being taken with the technology that pre-dated GoPros by about 70 years. Whoever paddles near me when I'm solo in an empty canoe better be ready to duck because I'm going to be trying out the "technique" demonstrated at 10 minutes in!
I was going to repost an edited version of the list here to show which of the points I'm already doing or working on, or which I haven't done, but I'll let you head back to the original posting to cross-reference my checkboxes below. Note that just because I've checked the box it doesn't mean I'm done working on that item. Most of the list (all of the list?) are items that we need to work on throughout our paddling lifetime. Go ahead and see how many of the points below you can check off the list. What points would you add to your own version of the list?
For those not from the region, Blackstrap Lake is a long narrow prairie lake set in a valley. Winds can come up quickly and would be funnelled and intensified within the valley.
Last night I taught the second half of an introductory kayaking clinic at Erindale Lake (a local suburban pond). After the class I decided to spend a little time out playing on the water. I went through some of the exercises described in the book Sea Kayak Strokes by Doug Alderson (I have access to an online version through the library at my workplace). These exercises had me progressively building the motions to perform a kayak roll, with a paddle float on my paddle throughout. Initially I was in a high brace, then laid on the back deck while in the high brace, then moving my body out beside the kayak, then eventually tipped right over and moving back to the upright high brace position. This progression of movements worked very well for me and allowed me to work toward building these motions into my muscle memory, so that they can hopefully become automatic. The next step was to be completely upside down, then using the paddle (with paddle float) to get back to that upright high brace position, rolling the kayak underneath me using my hips and trying to keep my centre of gravity low and remembering to bring my head up last. Rolling up from completely submerged proved quite easy when done this way, however I was still reliant on the paddle float so was cheating.
I'll be heading out to practice again soon - this time I'll be focussing on reducing the amount of pressure that I'm putting on the paddle float. Hopefully Jay can come out with me and we can work through some of the exercises together. With any luck, after a couple of sessions we'll be rolling our kayaks without the cheat of using the paddle float.
If you have any tips or tricks, please leave me a comment!
This will be a very short post because I'm darned tired. I just finished a Paddle Canada "Kayak Instructor Introduction to Kayaking" course. It was a three day course, running all day Friday, Saturday & Sunday and included classroom sessions, on the beach sessions, and lots of paddling (at Pike Lake). The course was operated by Viki of Kingston Kayak Instruction. Viki is herself becoming certified as qualified to teach instructors so had Michael Pardy here assessing her. Viki is a very good instructor and I've enjoyed her courses in the past, but having the added element of a paddler and leader of the caliber of Pardy here in Saskatoon was something remarkable. I only wish I could have taken even greater advantage of that resource. Although right now I feel burned out from the sun (a rare thing here lately) and being on the water, I would have eagerly taken a few more hours of his time if I had the opportunity.
I'm proud to say that I have received a conditional pass (as did all 6 of us in the course), and following the submission of my yet to be received homework assignments, will be officially a flatwater kayak instructor qualified to teach the Paddle Canada Introduction to Kayaking 8-hour course.
