Category: Kayaking

Yesterday Doug and I met at Baycreek for my first paddle of the season. Compared to previous years before my surgeries, this is relatively late for the first paddle, but it’s been a pretty harsh winter. The creek was open and running very strong, and it was 46°F, so it was a perfect first paddle.

Doug and I were both in our West Side Boat Shop boats, him in a Marauder and I in my Thunderbolt, and we still had our race numbers from the Long Lake race last year, which by coincidence were consecutive. Our boats looked like they belonged together. I was dressed in my farmer john wetsuit with long johns underneath, and a NRS Hydroskin light neoprene shirt, OR wind shell, and PFD up top, paddling gloves, and wool cap – all of that worked just fine. Unfortunately on my feet all I had were regular socks under neoprene socks, and that was *not* fine. My feet were cold before I even got in the boat, and when I got out afterwards they were numb and very painful as they thawed out. I’ve got to figure out something better. Somebody suggested plastic bags under the socks, maybe I’ll try that next time.

The strong current on the creek provided some challenge to my boat handling skills. Lots of swirling eddy currents, especially around corners – at one point the current caught my bow and whipped me across the creek right into Doug, which could have been bad for both of us. After that I was careful to go through the big corners single file, and start sweeping on the outside before the current caught me instead of after.

Later that day, I heard Doug telling somebody that I had tired him out and several times he saw me stop paddling to wait for him. In fact, what had happened was I’d powered ahead through a corner or other tricky bit to go through in single file, and I needed that recovery.

It was a pretty good day for spotting wildlife. At one point a mink was running along the bank going the same direction as us. It went into a pile of something and I thought he’d gone to ground, but Doug said “I can see him looking out at us”, and sure enough a few seconds later he pops out again and runs some more along side us, before finding another pile of stuff to hide in. Later on, we saw a diving duck that had a lot of white on the body and a roundish white cheek patch. I originally thought it was a Bufflehead, but I think it was probably a Common Goldeneye. We also saw several Common Mergansers. The Canada Geese were out starting to stake out nest areas.

I didn’t have my GPS, but Doug said we did 2.5 miles up in 45 minutes, and then returned the same 2.5 miles in 20 minutes. My shoulder started twinging a little bit with about a mile to go, so I guess we turned back at about the right time. But I did some stretches afterwards and the pain went down to background levels, so that’s comforting.

Later that evening, we were discussing plans for the season. It looks like Round the Mountain on May 17th is a definite, as is the Long Lake race in September at the end of the season. I doubt I’ll bother with Armond Basset, it’s always a drag. Blackburn is a stretch goal – it’s longer than any race I’ve done, and it’s on the ocean. I’ve also got the “TC Surfski Immersion Weekend” on June 5th-8th, and Oscar Chalupsky is giving a clinic here in town on July 13th. Mostly I think I’d like to spend more time out in the wave on the lake rather than pounding out miles on the canal like I did last year.

So I’ve written narrative summaries of each day at the Epic Surfski Center in Tarifa Spain, but what exactly did I learn?

The Forward Stroke

My forward stroke is pretty much based on a sprint paddler’s stroke, but with a few mistakes and imperfections thrown in. But at Tarifa, Boyan was teaching what I think of as the “Oscar technique” – lower hands, lower elbows, and most surprisingly, no torso twist – the hips, shoulders and paddle remain mostly parallel throughout the stroke and almost all your twist comes from leg drive rather than torso twist. I’ve been trying to keep my elbows lower this year as a defense against shoulder problems, so that’s not an adjustment. Lower hands make sense in the surf, but I feel they’re probably not optimal on the flat, so I should probably be flexible about that and use the lower hands when appropriate. And I’m not sure I want to eliminate the role of torso twisting entirely.

One thing that showed up in the video tapes, and I’m not sure why I’ve never noticed it before, is that I’m not really getting my catch in at the beginning, and I’m raising my hand over my head in order to get the angle right on the paddle. I’m probably not explaining that right because I’m not sure I understand what is supposed to happen. Boyan briefly mentioned the proper way to do the catch, but we never did any exercises or drills for the catch. I need to do some research, because I really think this is something I need to fix.

Waves

Waves are why I came to Tarifa. I had hopes of experiencing long downwind runs on very large waves on very long wave lengths, the sort of thing you see and drool over on the videos from ocean paddlers. Well, the conditions never quite reached that level – instead we got situations that I’ve seen on Lake Ontario, although possibly more consistent and definitely nicer weather. This year I’ve had a huge break through in confidence and skill and I’ve handled some big stuff with my Epic V10Sport. I’m not scared of falling out, and I don’t get all twitchy and panicky when sideways to the waves. But what I went to Tarifa to learn was how to get the best ride out of the waves, and especially to get some skill and experience when you’ve got multiple overlapping waves coming from multiple directions. And that’s what I got.

The basic change in tactics I learned is to not stop paddling when you find yourself stalled out on top of a wave with the water filling up the cockpit, and not waiting to start your sprint to catch the wave when you feel the stern start to lift. Instead you try to get to your “base speed” as soon as you can, including when you’re riding a wave and it’s starting to die. Then you start your sprint while you’re actually “hull up” pointing up the backside of the wave ahead of you. Once you get on the wave coming up behind you, you use the one just ahead of you to see both where the wave is going so you can turn with it, and also to judge when the one behind you is going to start to lose power. The other related tactic is how to find the next wave – you scan the area just ahead of the boat, watching the waves in an arc on either side if the nose of the boat. Several people refer to that arc as “a quadrant”, but my pedantic engineer nature doesn’t like that name because it’s rarely 90 degrees. Mostly it seemed we were looking about 30 degrees on each side, but you would adjust that to favor one side or the other if there was a predominant wave from one side or you were trying to get to a destination that isn’t quite in the direction of the prevailing waves.

I think I did pretty well with these skills. Sometimes I managed to link – I’d get on one wave, use that speed to catch the next one, and then use that speed to catch the next. And then on the third wave I’d end up stalled out on a wave with the cockpit filling up with water. But it’s a start. It felt especially good when the waves were going in different directions and you’d be basically doing s-turns down the waves. Now that I’ve got the feel, I feel like it’s only a matter of practice, practice, practice.

I didn’t get to blog about yesterday. In a way, it was just “more of the same”. We’d been joined by three German men who’d come with their non-paddling wives. They had been here before, and they were given the V10 Sports to paddle.

In the morning we went to the beach near town to practice going out and coming back through a mild non-dangerous surf. The Germans didn’t bother taking the van with us, they paddled down to the town to join us, and didn’t take any longer to get there than we did. It was Magnus’s turn to paddle today, and Frank was in a V8 as well.

I kept trying to catch a wave in order to practice handling the scenario that gave me trouble the other day, but instead every time I caught a wave it sped past me right at the beach leaving me coming in on the backside of the wave, which of course is the safest and easiest landing. So every landing looked like I knew what I was doing, even though I was doing the exact opposite of what I’d wanted to do.

After we finished, Magnus paddled back with the Germans. I guess we didn’t tire him out enough.

In the afternoon we went out to Punta Paloma for another downwind paddle. The conditions had looked relatively calm, but when we got out there it turned out to actually bigger and more confused that on previous days. I got some really good runs for a while, and then it started getting so confused I couldn’t find anything and over and over again found myself stalled on top of the wave I’d been trying to catch. I started telling myself out loud “catch the small ones, the bigger ones will come”, and that kind of worked. I started catching more waves, and having more fun. Frank appeared to be in some distress, and many times when I looked at him in the back of the Double he was leaning back in the cockpit to relieve his back. The Germans and Magnus were ranging far ahead, and Kassie and I were trading the Lanterne Rouge back and forth. I felt like I was getting better at my old nemesis – where you’ve got two sets of surf at about 90 degrees to each other, one longer and faster and the other shorter and steeper. Trying to pick out where the wave fronts are when there are interference patterns going on everywhere, and trying to stay on this wave when this other wave is attempting to crash over the side of your boat and fill it is a skill I’ve often felt a need for in Lake Ontario, and I think it’s coming along.

Afterwards, Frank said that his back was hurting and he wanted to spend tomorrow taking the ferry into Tangier. So we went into town quite early by Spanish standards, and he went to the port and booked a tour. Then we went to find the restaurant we’d been to on our first two nights was now closed, probably for the season, so we went down a nearby alley and found a really nice restaurant that was just opening up. The food was a bit pricy, on a par with the place we’d been the previous night, but unlike that place the portions were relatively big. And really delicious. And they gave us a free little appetizer – aubergine (zuchinni to Americans) and honey, and free glasses of Muskat wine afterwards. So I was completely impressed.

One last thought – I don’t really feel like I’m really on a wave until I hear the cheerful little burble that the drain makes when the cockpit is completely emptied. Is the empty cockpit the effect of the speed of being on the wave, or the cause of you being able to catch it in the first place? To me it seems like a bit of both.

This morning it was pretty calm and flat, and we headed off to the harbour in Tarifa to do some forward stroke drills. Magnus switched off with his wife, so now it was Karen’s turn to paddle with us this morning. We did the same drills we’d done on the first full day (God, what day is it today, Thursday? I don’t want to think about the rapidly approaching weekend and week end.), although hopefully we did them a little better. Then we went out of the harbour for a bit of a sightseeing trip along the outside of the harbour wall and a nice view of the city rising up the hill.

As has been the pattern for most of the week, the afternoon was breezier and we headed off to Punta Paloma. As has also been the pattern, Kassie joined us. However this time instead of going from the point directly to the hotel, this time we went a little further out to sea, and headed towards the football stadium on the edge of town, making the downwind section closer to 10km rather than the 6km or so the “direct to the hotel” trip was. Frank was in the V10 Double with Boyan, leaving three V8s, two red stripe and one black one. I was half expecting to be demoted to the black stripe one for my cock-up yesterday, but instead Boyan had us draw straws and I ended up in the black stripe one anyway. Hmmm.

On the paddle out the point, we again encountered Ben, the English paddler in the V10 Sport who we’d met yesterday (and again in the excellent “Eco Center” restaurant later). He said “There’s no surf, I just went around the point to look at the Roman village”, which kind of intrigued me. But Boyan knows the conditions like the back of his hand, and he told us to paddle “towards the tip of Africa over there for 5 minutes”. I know I see that it’s Africa I see across the Strait every day, I just get a little frisson hearing it in a context like that.

When we first turned downwind, the waves weren’t much, but they got slowly better and better. By the time of our third little “get together to make sure everybody is having fun and staying safe” on the water, they were getting amazingly good. Most of the time both Karen and Kassie were well ahead of me – I think I was wasting time and energy trying and failing to catch the biggest waves, and they were both doing a better job of seeing and catching the little ones. But on the other hand, when you catch a big one it’s a real thrill. So I’m not going to apologize for that, but I am going to try to get better at spotting the little ones that can give you a push in between hunting for the big ones. I did catch a couple of nice ones that linked to other nice ones where I went from a big one to a small one to another big one all without slowing down or even having to paddle hard. That felt good.

When we approached the shore, I told myself to not be an idiot this time, go last, and watch and learn. So Boyan and Frank went in on the double, and then Boyan stood and signalled where we were to go in. Kassie was in, and Karen was heading in, and I was paddling parallel to the shore to try to line up to go in at that same spot when a big wave broke over me and dumped me in the water. Fortunately it was shallow enough that I could stand up and grab the boat, so it looked almost like I planned it that way. I guess today’s lesson is “do your line up outside of the breaker line”.