Sausage Rolls

Today was a small step for kayakers but a giant leap for bens kayaking career.
After taking 2 sessions with russel on Eskimo rolling in the last 2 weeks, this week he was running a differnt course, but invited me to come along and practise on my own. I had left the last session with being able to comfortably right my kayak from being held at 135degree angle (mostly upside down) under the water, but totally incapable of righting it from 180 degrees (totally upside down). Most of it stemmed from not being able to get the paddle into the right position at the top of the water, and culminated into me swallowing a lot of water and thrashing my arms pointlessly.

But today was a different story. I made a significant attempt to lean as far forward as possible and watched another guy complete a roll almost effortlessly. His technique was to setup, then lift his whole paddle and arms from the water, and then rotate these exactly 90degrees. After planting the blade, it seemed like the boat just righted itself. So therein lies the lesson: Get the blade at a 90degree angle from the boat, at the surface of the water, and the rest is inevitable.

So I had a go at this, with the guy at arms length and it worked. Although I thought that he helped me so I asked him if he did, and he said that he didnt help me, but I didnt believe him. So I kindly asked him to step away, for me to have another go. I think I may have offended him slightly, but said that I just didnt believe I was doing it myself, and had to know for sure. So I tried the roll myself, and hey presto. I was up quicker than a old man on viagra.

Amazingly I tried 25 more rolls and nailed every one of them. Not even any double attempts. 1 or 2 where I had to make doubly sure the blade was on the surface, but as soon as that was confirmed it seemed almost inevitable the kayak would right itself.

Bombproof.

At least that was the goal of my going on this course, was to gain general kayaking confidence, and make my eskimo roll bombproof.

As the session went on, I started shifting my hand towards to central position, and got them to the paddling position almost right away. Then I tried to capsize whilst moving and that worked just fine. Then tried to capsize on the opposite side (left) to the righting side (right), and that that worked great aswell.

Fantastic!

I'm now not sure what I'll do in the remaining 2 sessions I've paid for learning to roll, as it seems like I may have got the gist of it, and now just need to work on the finess and fine tuning.

Wicked. I love learning things and its been great for kayaking confidence to get this working.


PS: This post had nothing to do with sausages.