This morning we did some technique drills. Mostly concentrating on trying to use hip rotation to move the paddle. I’d always thought that you start with hip rotation, but you then rotate your torso even further, but that’s not what they’re teaching here. After a bit of classroom time and practicing the drills on the erg, we drove into town and did the drills out on the water in the harbour. The town is a mixture of very quant old buildings and massive tourist tackiness. It all seems to work, somehow. There is a wall at the edge of the beach we launched at with a rather too graphic painting of a man’s backside and an admonition not to poop in the water. In this same harbour there were a number of swimmers, including several doing laps back and forth, a few SUP paddlers, and a large number of SCUBA divers – there are a number of signs offering courses, and I don’t know if they were all one course or several. And the gigantic ferry boats kept leaving and arriving, preceded by a pilot boat who would come over and park between us and the boats. He was probably worried we’d get in the way or try to surf its wake.
After doing the drills a few times, we also practiced remounts. For some reason my remounts didn’t go as easily as they do in my own boat, but I think I did well enough to qualify for a chance to paddle in the bigger stuff.
After eating a bunch of fruit for lunch, and a short nap, we went out this afternoon to do a bit of surf practice. The waves weren’t huge, but they were a nice intro. I got to try the newest V10 Sport, which I like a lot. The foot operable drain, the carrying handles, the sharp angled “cut outs” for your paddle, etc. I really want one. But what I really want is my own personal wave coach – somebody to go out with me and say “ok, this one is passing, now get up to speed, now really punch it, now relax and ride it”. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be better at judging where I am on the wave – that seems to be my biggest problem.
We were joined this afternoon by Boyan’s brother and by an Australian woman named Kassie who was wearing Vaikobi gear – first person I’ve ever met who also uses the stuff. Turns out she’s friends with Pat, the founder. After using Facebook’s “show me all the people who are friends with this person and that person and that person” feature, I found her blog – she’s way better at this than I am. And no, I’m not a creepy stalker, I’m just good with a search engine. Sheesh.