Surf Ski Remount with Oscar Chalupsky

A skill I have about 90% mastered on my V12, and one essential for all ski paddlers, especially now that the market has been opened up by stable beginer boats like the V8. Here's Oscar Chalupsky demonstrating a textbook remount with a very clear step by step technique.

The first thing you should do when you buy your new ski is head down to the bay & practice this skill.

Video - Greenland Paddling Around Sydney Harbour

Following on from Friday's post about our relaxing morning paddling the Tahe Greenland boats, here's a video with some of the pics & movies.
Special mention to Rob for his fantastic photography. Obviously all of the pics of me in this little video are taken by him, and he really has become a brilliant on-water kayak photographer. I had to cut out another 15 photos that were perfectly composed.
You can see how much fun the NRS paddle gloves add to the exercise. Next up I'll have a crack at the hand rolling without them…..
Music from Michael Franti, suitably relaxed in keeping with this gentle morning cruise.

Greenland Paddling in & around Sydney Harbour

Sitting on the beach after landing at Hummocky Island on our recent expedition, with just one day's paddling left, and so many months previous spent preparing for the challenge of the trip, I asked Rob how you get over the 'post expedition blues'. He said the secret was to start planning the next challenge as soon as you get back, even if it's not likely to happen for a good deal of time.
The time demands of a trip like we did means another one like it cannot really be on my radar now for a while, so I have spent the last month or so trying to work out what to do with my paddling without a clear challenge on the horizon.
Thinking it was a bit silly to have the Greenland boats in our range & not really have any handle on how they work, I have filled my lost motivation nicely by having a crack at the art of Greenland rolling.

Today was a beautiful Sydney spring day, with a warm northerly wind in the morning & a bouncy but pretty tame sea running outside. After an early demo paddle Rob met me down at Watson's Bay & we took the two Greenland boats in the Tahe range, the Greenland & the Greenland T out for a trundle along the cliffs. As we left the heads dressed in black, in our black boats, a dude paddling past asked us what we were going to go & secretly bomb. No calls from ASIO yet so hopefully he accepted our lame excuse for looking so silly…

The spectacular scenery of the Sydney cliffline is highlighted in the morning sunshine, and it's a beautiful time of day to get out & around the sandstone formations of the infamous Gap.
Being relatively inexperienced with a Greenland paddle, the rebound & confused water is definitely something to concentrate on a bit harder. Even so I soon settled into a rhythm, essentially by waiting a fraction longer for the stick to 'bite', rather than feeling the power at the catch as you do with a flat blade. It takes a little while to adjust to the 'different' predictability of the stick, and remembering to keep your hands low when you need a bit of extra support, which is quite counter-intuitive to my normal dynamic water paddling.
We messed around up against the cliffs, washing in & out on the surges & generally having a relaxing time in among the rebound & chop.

With a big change forecast we struck out for the harbour & spent an hour or so doing some rolling in the calm of the bay. NRS sent us some webbed gloves to try out & the extra lift from them soon had me doing some hand rolls, while Rob was almost able to crack a forward finishing hand roll.

I then lined up for a go at my first forward finishing or reverse sweep roll & managed to do a couple of them, much to my own amusement. This is an amazing roll to perform, & I can't honestly say I have my head completely around how to position myself. It's also a very late recovering roll which is something to get used to when my combat roll is snappy & instant. The number of twists & convulsions you seem to perform upside down are quite disconcerting, but with a little bit of extra rotation suddenly you're upright again. Too funny.

These Greenland boats themselves are such a pleasure to paddle. While we had the little Greenland boat out in conditions that are probably at it's limit, at least for a paddler of Rob's weight (& therefore free board), I had no end of fun in the higher volume Greenland T. It's a smile on the dial boat if ever there was one. It skips along in the flat water & turns & dances around in the gentle clapotis, importantly responding perfectly to properly applied technique. The little one is definitely the king of rollers though, even though the T rolls like a dream, it's smaller sibling is almost a self roller. If rolling is your thing, then this specialised boat just has to be on the list, it's a dream...

We rounded off the morning with lunch on the waterfront back in Watson's Bay (at 'Rob's Office for those of you familiar with his hospitality set-up). We got some good still & moving pics of the paddle which are now up online HERE….

Klanocopia 2011

  

Three years ago Hunter Klan founder Brad McPherson decided it was time to have a focal weekend for his slowly building group of local paddlers. He approached us to run a day of training at Umina Beach, followed by a 'messing around in boats' day on the Sunday. The first ever Klanocopia was a relatively small gathering, a bunch of paddling mates getting together to do some targeted training aimed at making them safer sea paddlers.

Rob gives the Saturday morning briefing

Last year the event built a little more, with some new members joining in & establishing it as an annual meet, rather than just a once-off weekend. 

Bert Tarrant cracks a nice wave on the Box Head Bar

This year Shawn Armitage took over the organisation of the Klanocopia & did a terrific job of sorting out everything from the venue, accommodation, registrations & a communal building for some presentations, and Klanocopia made the jump from a smallish weekend to a proper symposium-style sea kayaking event.

The Klan are a broad range of people & paddlers. Not all of them are interested in out & out sea kayaking, but those who are have steadily built their skills up over time to give them what is now a very solid member base of core sea paddlers. They take it upon themselves to introduce their Klan mates to the sea, look out for one another & treat the open waterways of their region with great respect. They also have way too much fun for the often grumpy world of sea kayakers - I think a few more disapproving strokes of an old grey beard are in order if these folks want to consider themselves 'real'…..

Chris outlining his battleplan

We arranged for Shaan Gresser to come along to help out Rob, Sharon, Chris James & I in running instruction, and also to give a talk on the Saturday night about her solo Bass Strait crossing, the first ever by a female paddler.

Surf & bracing training at Box Head

The weather delivered, with a warm spring weekend, some gentle surf & clear blue skies.
On the Saturday we ran five separate instruction programs, with the focus on everything from basic skills & rescues with Sharon & Shaan, to blade control in close quartering with me, to surf, bracing, contact & emergency tows & rescues with Rob & Chris. I bamboozled my guys with a structured session aimed at getting them to eventually turn their boat 180 degrees without stopping, and without resorting to old 'pinpoint turn'. It's not easy stuff, and both the morning & arvo groups applied themselves admirably with several capsizes & a lot of blue language as they contorted themselves & generally performed some kayak pilates trying to follow my directions.

Blade & boat control group

Afternoon surf on the bar

In the evening Shaan gave her talk about the Bass Strait crossing and the dramatic lead up to it in which she suffered a couple of debilitating injuries, had to cancel an original attempt due to bad weather, before finally succeeding earlier this year.

Shaan, all smiles….

Her story is a beauty, with all the elements you'd imagine are required, determination, sheer toughness & careful planning, preparation & risk management. It's a real story of overcoming adversity to achieve something remarkable in the paddling world.

 Colin Sheringham showing some nice surf control

Fernando going hard!

Sharon Betteridge then presented a woman's perspective on expedition paddling, using a 1000km trip from Cooktown to Cape York as her narrative. She highlighted the different issues women face in attempting these sorts of challenges, from the obvious differentials of having a smaller engine to the blokes, as well as some subtle ones such as group dynamics & preparation.

Chris is the crunch zone….as usual

Rob, Chris & I then finished the evening with our North Reef trip, which gave the Klanners some froth to bubble after hearing Sharon & Shaan speak so impressively!

Patonga fun on the Sunday

On the Sunday we headed over to Patonga to mess around in the bay with our demo boats. In the space of three hours a spectator would have seen everything from a 7 year old paddling the Greenland (my eldest daughter Kiri, yes I'm a proud Dad…)

Kiri in the Greenland (thanks to Owen Walton for the pic)

to Greenland style rolling, rescues, beautiful edge control from eager students, capsizes & even a spectacular southerly front, which put an end to the fun right on Fish & Chips O'clock.

Leonie practicing the Haka roll

In all more than 35 people attended throughout the weekend, and despite Klanocopia getting bigger it remains what it was intended to be, a bunch of paddling mates having a good time on & off the water. 

Rob smoking the Baidarka in between the demo paddling

Shaan summed it all up when she made the simple comment at the end of the weekend, 'Hey that was fun'. She was right, it was fun, the weekend had a great community spirit infused throughout, which is something us Sydneysiders don't get to experience too often. I'm sure all who turned up felt the same way.

Selim showing a Mexican bow draw in the Etain

Thanks to all who attended & to Sea-Kayak-Mini-Symposium-Organising-Guru Shawn Armitage for putting it all together.

60 Minutes with the Valley Etain

I can usually sneak an hour so on the water every Friday arvo, with an alignment of a late kids gymnastic class pick-up & proximity to the sea.

I've been keen to get the Valley Etain out on flat water to find out empirically how fast it can go, and also to play around with the edging, manoeuvrability & general nuances of this rather different Valley sea kayak.
After about 6 months of the demo living exclusively at Mercer's house it turned up at the warehouse last week so I commandeered it for a spin around at Dolls Pt, at the southern end of Botany Bay.
I set my GPS & took it for my own special speed test, to determine the speed I can hold a boat at over a 12 minute stretch. I like this test because it's pretty hard to go flat chat for that length of time, and even though you can push hard you tend to find a sea kayaks' hull speed in the averages. There was about 10kn on my nose & no discernible current or flow, and over the test period I averaged 9.8kmh. Top speed was about 10kmh with a very flat line on the trace. This was faster than I thought & puts it alongside the Nordkapp & Rockpool GT in our crop of sea kayaks for the 'exercise pace' hull speed. I don't think I could have made it go much faster so my guess is that the terminal hull speed would be somewhere around the same mark.
Next up I ran back with the tiny little wind waves, trying to hold the boat in the troughs & make it glide along with very little paddler input. A typical loose-tracking British boat will tend to slide around in these sorts of conditions, a feature which actually makes them such a joy to paddle in rough water. The Etain has a similar downwind feel to the other Valley boats, but with a little bit of skeg it tracked hard, in fact very hard. Extrapolating this to bigger & faster seas I reckon it would be a great downwind runner in much the same mould as my old Aquanaut, but plainly it has a much higher hull speed than the Aquanaut could hold. I haven't had a go in these conditions yet because my business partner keeps all the fun stuff to himself.
Finally I indulged in a little bit of fart-arsing around, doing my best to find the tipping point of the boat, dropping it on edge, low-brace turning, rolling & sculling. This playful madness has method, I was trying to find out the subtleties in the design, in comparison to the more traditional 'Valley shape' which is fish, rather than Swede form (the fat part on a fish form kayak is around your thighs, on the Etain it's slightly aft of the cockpit).
Valley designed this boat with user-friendliness in mind, hoping to conjure a rough water kayak that looked after the paddler, without sacrificing too much of the responsiveness that frankly makes Valley boats such brilliant performers in the dynamic water of the sea.
So how to achieve this lofty goal? Well a good start is bucket loads of stability. Not stability in the sense of that reassuring lounge chair feel that you get from some 'ol buckets of kayaks with 60cm+ beams. Rather stability as a very solid feeling that the boat is at one with the water. On edge the Etain is absolutely rock solid, with a lovely bouncy & predictable secondary point that is going to be identifiable to even the most inexperienced of paddlers. It rolls with the same snap that the Aquanaut has, and doesn't rest in the upside down pose as comfortably as some other more radical Swede form boats with flat rear decks.
I had to modify my mechanics a little to get the boat to turn off the bow, but soon worked out the small weight adjustment required to make it do what my old Aquanaut could do. 
The boat feels nimble, with the narrower foredeck giving the impression of a much more sporty boat than it actually is, and the stability gives you huge confidence to throw it around & play.
I reckon this boat is a winner for paddlers new to skeg paddling, perhaps looking to ditch the rudder for a few years & learn some good boat handling in a boat that won't crucify them for a mistake. I haven't paddled it laden so can't comment on the loaded performance, but I now have my eyes fixed on the smaller Etain 17'5"if I can sneak it out of Mercer's backyard. Unfortunately there are only a handful of Etain's left in the next shipment, two in standard glass & two in the infused carbon-kevlar layup. Check our stock page for more details.

EK Joins the Facebook Generation

We've finally got around to putting up a Facebook Page, which is now live HERE. We promise to use it for updates, interesting stuff & not waffle, we are damn sure you don't need to know what we had for lunch at the Watto Bay cafe.

Greenland Rolling

Enough is enough, we have some great rolling boats in our fleet & I've sadly never taken the time to get in the water with Rob & learn a few of the moves.
The local pool at Enmore has recently been refurbished & they kindly allowed us an hour's lane-time for a session. The aim for me was to go from scratch & try & make a start on acquiring some of the techniques of this ancient art.

Obviously I'm hardly a novice, with a reliable combat roll developed over years of rough water paddling, and a sea instructor to boot, so my learning curve would hopefully be a little steeper than most people out to pick up a new paddling skill.
Nonetheless, Rob took me through first principles, which revolve mostly around becoming familiar with the balanced brace. I can see why people with a lighter upper body can find this particular position so relaxing & joyous, but for a near-enough 100kg 'person of Pacific Islander appearance' who has been banned for life from attending any form of yoga instruction, it is rather a 'stretch'.
We progressed through some gentle recovery exercises using the paddle as an anchor for finessing onto the back deck, onto a full capsize with the same recovery, into a sculling brace to further develop the mechanics of the recovery, then to a full blown go at the technique unassisted.

Rob is a master instructor, breaking down the components of the roll into such small parts, watching the bits that I immediately understood & skipping through them. The result was that after about 25 minutes I was doing a basic Butterfly roll (although because you can't go from the macho jut-jawed world of ski paddling to doing something called 'Butterfly', I prefer to call it a Haka roll).

Rob's own Greenland rolling is really something to behold. Although he doesn't blow his horn on this aspect of his instruction abilities, I can't imagine many other people in the country able to either demonstrate or teach Greenland rolling as well as he does.
With 10 minutes left at the end of out little session he hopped in & showed me the mechanics of the forward finishing rolls, as well as one he's developed himself, awesome stuff.
It's a completely different way of rolling to the whitewater style that I have developed over the years primarily to deal with recovery from being wiped out in big breaking surf. It's rather nice actually, and pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum to the ski paddling & big water training & paddling I've dedicated myself to these past months! 
But…..the deceitful buggers who say it's relaxing & calming should spend an hour in my bones this arvo, I've got strains in places I haven't stretched since the days I was getting pinned on the bottom of rucks.
The video above shows a few of the ugly moments in the lesson, as well as a couple that came out alright, with the bonus of some of Rob's lovely rolls at the end.