Kayak Rolling lessons-3 is the magic number

Rolling. That oft mystified kayaking skill that eludes, amazes and delights. People want to learn it. But how many sessions should it take? Working on your own? This is fine for some folks. Some can watch a video and nail it on their first try. For most people, a bit of instruction is needed to …

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Greater Duty of Care-Navigation as a primary skill

So as it turns out that navigation stuff is quite useful. Johnathan Walpole, a BCU coach from Oregon, posted something quite interesting in the mile-long thread on the Netart’s Bay incident from Lumpy Water that really got me thinking. Whenever there is a symposium, or any skills training event, students flock in droves to classes …

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used Cetus LV for sale!

Some one needs to buy John’s Cetus LV, but they may not know it, yet.  http://gokayaknow.com/index.php/kayak-reviews/nigel-foster-silhouette-used-for-sale/used-ph-cetus-lv-sea-kayak/ This is a versatile boat that would give years of enjoyment to the paddler on your Christmas list!!  (and a tear to my eye, for selling it.)  

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New Panasonic TS3 Waterproof Camera for Kayaking

I have really grown to like taking pictures on the water. I get out a fair bit, and I see quite a bit of weird stuff while kayaking, so I’ve gotten some interesting shots over the last 5 or so years I’ve had a waterproof point and shoot. So I was pretty bummed when I …

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Grand Rapids White Water Project Approved by City

In the event you hadn’t heard, the city of Grand Rapids had been considering restoring part of the Grand River to it’s natural state at the urging of the Grand Rapids White Water organization. The idea is to return some white water features in the downtown area by removing some low head dams. After about …

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Kayak Rolling lessons-3 is the magic number Greater Duty of Care-Navigation as a primary skill used Cetus LV for sale! New Panasonic TS3 Waterproof Camera for Kayaking Grand Rapids White Water Project Approved by City

Jan
19

Kayak Rolling lessons-3 is the magic number

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Rolling. That oft mystified kayaking skill that eludes, amazes and delights. People want to learn it. But how many sessions should it take?

Working on your own? This is fine for some folks. Some can watch a video and nail it on their first try.

For most people, a bit of instruction is needed to guide their attempts, provide concepts, and a critical eye on where things went wrong, or what is working.

There is no completely right or wrong answer, but I will say that the basic concepts can be broken down into a few simple components.

  • setup (wind up)
  • leg drive (hip flick)
  • brace (unwind and paddle support)
  • timing (putting it all together)

Focusing on breaking down these components into multiple sessions eases the burden on the poor students head, and let’s them progress once they have demonstrated the mechanics of one core piece. This is of course not prohibitive, and many students will “get” it pretty quickly. But my observation has been that it takes an average of three sessions to get “a” roll in the pool.

My own experience was somewhat longer. :(

I had a roll in the pool when I learned 12 years ago. But it took me another six months to really “get” it. I still practice rolling to this day.

I would encourage students, considering a lesson to actually consider threethe average.

Our package for three lessons for $100.00 is still available.

We still have plenty of lessons to get you on your way to success come spring.

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Jan
16

Greater Duty of Care-Navigation as a primary skill

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So as it turns out that navigation stuff is quite useful.

Johnathan Walpole, a BCU coach from Oregon, posted something quite interesting in the mile-long thread on the Netart’s Bay incident from Lumpy Water that really got me thinking.

Whenever there is a symposium, or any skills training event, students flock in droves to classes like surfing, or directional control. They sound sexy, they sound like something you could use. And that poor lonely coach who gets stuck coaching tides, or navigation has two students, who were probably tired that morning and wanted a land-based class to “take it easy”.

I don’t think anyone is saying that the hard skills classes that get so much focus are not important. But based on the photo above, and this BBC Story on the wreck of a cruise ship, might hint at the importance of knowing exactly where you are at sea.

The danger of being in shoals in a sea kayak is negligible. The aha moment I had when reading this article is that a Captain of a vessel who is responsible for the lives of potentially hundreds of people, didn’t know exactly where he was. And this Captain most likely had every sort of techno GPS gadget known to man or monkey available to him.

Now lest we condemn the Captain of this cruise ship prematurely, everyone makes mistakes. But the crux of the issue is again. Greater Duty of Care. If we are responsible for the lives of others, shouldn’t we know better?

  • Take a Navigation Course.
  • Get a deck mounted compass
  • Get a hand compass
  • Get a dorky grease pencil, or a waterproof notebook
  • Get some charts of your local paddling waters
  • Practice doing some dead reckoning with a watch and your chart each time you go out
  • When you travel somewhere new, get charts. Familiarize yourself with the navigational markers, landmarks, and practice dead reckoning.
  • Practice taking ranges at sea.
  • Know the tidal range and type of your local area. Diurnal, semidiurnal. Know the strength of the tidal current, the rule of thirds, the rule of twelfths, and the time of the low tides, and the high tides. This link from NOAA on Tides is a good place to start
  • Know how to account for tidal streams when planning journeys.
  • Understand how land forms, and other geographic formations, (headlands, rivers, islands) affect tidal stream.
  • Read this book, on Navigation by Franco Ferrara.
  • Last Resort, buy a GPS, but at least know how to use it.

There is a ton to learn about navigation and tides. And I would say that even for us unsalted folks, having a working knowledge, if not intimate knowledge of tides is only going to help you when you get your day out on the wide blue sea.

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Dec
23

used Cetus LV for sale!

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Some one needs to buy John’s Cetus LV, but they may not know it, yet. 

http://gokayaknow.com/index.php/kayak-reviews/nigel-foster-silhouette-used-for-sale/used-ph-cetus-lv-sea-kayak/

This is a versatile boat that would give years of enjoyment to the paddler on your Christmas list!!  (and a tear to my eye, for selling it.)

 

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Dec
16

New Panasonic TS3 Waterproof Camera for Kayaking

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I have really grown to like taking pictures on the water. I get out a fair bit, and I see quite a bit of weird stuff while kayaking, so I’ve gotten some interesting shots over the last 5 or so years I’ve had a waterproof point and shoot.

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Winter view of Saugatuck Michigan, Lake Michigan Oval Beach

jim_wilderness

So I was pretty bummed when I dropped my old Pentax Optio WP60 in the parking lot in South Haven about a year ago. The battery door broke off. Camera to its credit is still functional, but it is obviously not operable on the water. I looked into getting it fixed with Pentax just before Thanksgiving. They said $100 to look at it and repair the door. So I thought about it and thought about it. I finally decided for the price of a new Panasonic DMC TS3 Waterproof Point and Shoot, $249.00, that it was more worth it to get a new camera.

Here were some of my issues with the Pentax.

  • Shutter lag, shutter lag, shutter lag. The camera had terrible response to closing the shutter even in bright light conditions outdoors with the button pressed halfway down to focus the camera first.
  • Poor image quality, sometimes color and crispness in photos did not turn out very well based on subtle lighting changes. Keep in mind this was mostly outdoors photography.
  • Lens would fog up on the inside often. This happened a lot, at really inopportune times. Like I go out to surf one time a year in saltwater and see a dolphin, lens fogs up. Would have been a great shot… Too bad for that big smudge.

So I did a lot of research from other paddlers, and from dpreview, on their waterproof camera roundup review, and ended up looking more and more at the Panasonic DMC TS3.

I haven’t tried it out on the water yet, but I am going to give it a whirl this weekend I hope. I will post a follow up review with some photos.

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Nov
30

Grand Rapids White Water Project Approved by City

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In the event you hadn’t heard, the city of Grand Rapids had been considering restoring part of the Grand River to it’s natural state at the urging of the Grand Rapids White Water organization. The idea is to return some white water features in the downtown area by removing some low head dams. After about three years, countless meetings, negotiations, and a vigilant belief in the project, our buddy Chip hit it out of the park.

Congrats to the Grand Rapids White Water organization, and to everyone who helped get the project off the ground. I hope to hear from Chip in person on the pertinent details in the next week or so.

What follows is the post from their facebook wall:

It’s official: Last night the Grand Rapids Whitewater dream was adopted by the City Commission along with all of the other brilliant parks, bicycling, clean water and urban forest projects. No other city has ever opened up it’s master planning process to the public in such a way. It took three years and every citizen had an opportunity to speak or act in favor of their ideas for a better community. The Green Grand Rapids process in now being studied at the University of Wisconsin.

I look forward to hearing more about the progress, and also getting people down in Kalamazoo ready to do some white water kayaking. Time to start thinking about a white water kayak!!!

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Nov
23

Package Deal for Kayak Pool Sessions 2012

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Buckle up paddlers and rejoice, here is the chlorine-filled, upside down deal of the new year you’ve been waiting for! Spend your Black Friday hanging out in your jammies, rather than camping out in front of a big box store waiting for a plasma tv.

Do you want to learn to eskimo roll your kayak? Do you want to learn some new rescues in the pool?

This deal is for you. Kayak pool lessons won’t make you skinnier, more beautiful, put more hair on your head, or make you last longer in bed, but it will make your paddling safer and more effecient when spring rolls around.

In the past we have only offered pool sessions by price one at a time. To that we say, nonsense, bah, snort, giggle, laugh. To make things as fun and effecient as possible, we are offering rolling and rescue packages for 2012.

Go Kayak Now! can offer a 4 session deal for rolling/rescues for $100. This is over 15% savings for the sessions for a 4 session commitment.

email yours truly me @ go kayak now dot com to receive this valuable offer. For Pool Dates and details check out our Kayak Lessons page.

Or you can message me on facebook.

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Nov
21

Kayak Pool Lessons 2012 Announced

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Our sea kayaking course calendar for Winter 2012 will consist of Pool Sessions with Rolling and Rescue Sessions by appointment.

What:
Kayak Lessons are by appointment, please email me prior to showing up for lessons. me @ gokayaknow dot com.

When:
5-7pm on Sundays starting in 2012. The dates are as follows below.

  • 1/15/12
  • 1/29/12
  • 2/12/12
  • 2/26/12
  • 3/11/12
  • 3/25/12

What to bring?

  1. clean kayak, free of debris, leaves beach sand and zebra mussels.
  2. Kayak must have bulkheads, rescue lines, and end toggles if you plan on doing rescues.
  3. lifejacket for rescue lessons
  4. paddlefloat for rolling lessons
  5. mask or swim goggles and noseplugs
  6. spraydeck, preferably neoprene

strong>How much is it going to cost?
Here are some easy calculations to help figure out costs based on what you want to do.

I just want to come use the pool.
Pool time $15.00 If you just show up to use the pool. It is $15.00.

I want to come use the pool and I want a lesson.
Lessons $15.00 + Pool time $15.00 = $30.00

I want to come use the pool, but I don’t have equipment.
Rental Equipment $10.00 + Pool time $15.00 = $25.00

I want to come use the pool and get a lesson, but I don’t have equipment.
Rental Equipment $10.00 + Pool time $15.00 + Lesson $15.00 = $40.00

Where:
The map to Gabel Natatorium is here to make getting to the pool easy.

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Nov
18

Bio-luminescent waves in Southern California

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One of my google alerts caught my eye. Most of the time it is SPAM, but this actually hit the cool meter. Bio luminescent waves in Southern California. Cool Man!


This brief video is a short boarder rocking it on bio-luminescent waves in San Diego.


This is mission bay, a kayaker at night got this short film of how the water looks at night.

The glowing night-time ocean effect is attributed to red tide, or algae blooms in the ocean. This is apparently harmless, but very cool. Notice how that surfer was totally looking at his hands while he surfed?… We would need a lot of laundry detergent and blacklights to make this work on the Great Lakes. Not sure that is environmentally friendly. Looks like a good time to do night paddles for So Cal folks.

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Nov
17

Risk vs. Reward

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Dalua Downhill – Episode 4 Teutonia (English Version) from Zeppelin Filmes on Vimeo.

I saw this on kottke’s blog. It definitely got me thinking about the nature of risk vs. reward. While we do have a lot of discussion about the nature of risk, leadership, and duty of care, it is also important to remember why we got into the outdoors, paddle sports, and specifically kayaking at all. Without risk there is no reward. Watching these crazy bastards fly down a hill on skateboards at 70 mph made me realize that sometimes we can get a bit nuts about our thinking of risk and duty of care, and forget that there is a reason we are out there.

This video perfectly captures the nature of the dilemma, for some of us, we have to have the risk factor tweaked a bit to get some reward out of it. Minute 3:41 of the video says it all for me. Watch the subtitles for the operative phrase.

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Nov
16

Pa’a ‘Eono ironman outrigger canoe race – video

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This video demonstrates amazing athleticism and teamwork in challenging conditions. The Pa’a ‘Eono ironman canoe race allowed for multiple canoe designs. Looks like the swell was definitely up and moving pretty well. I would have paid real money to be paddling hard in that crew to feel a canoe go that fast on the open ocean.

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