Category: Kayaking

It’s 12:55. I’m dressed in a farmer-john wet suit, toque, and polar-therm long underwear. It’s 39°F and there is a hint of snow in the air. My hands are freezing and my feet are cold. And I’m putting my kayak on my roof rack in preparation for going paddling with Dan and some of the others.

It’s now 1:20. I’ve arrived at Dan’s house to find out that I’d gotten the time wrong, and I was supposed to be there at 12:30. But Ginny says that they only left a little while ago. If anything, it’s colder than it was at home, and it’s certainly windier. I have a perfect excuse to quit if I want. But instead I quickly load up. Ginny doesn’t know which way they went, but I assume they went upwind so they’d have the wind at their back on the way back.

It’s about 1:45. My shoulders are aching, and I’m spending more time resting than paddling. I’ve been weaving around the canal, trying to stay on the upwind side to stay out of the wind, which is bitter at times. It’s cutting through me – the wet suit certainly protects me, but the parts of my torso not covered by it are cold. At least my eyes have stopped streaming. I figure I’m not going to catch up to Dan’s group, but I’ll go to the “2 mile bridge” (a bridge which is, coincidentally enough, 2 miles from Dan’s dock) and back. 4 miles is a pretty decent work-out, even if I’m struggling as I am.

It’s about 1:50. I turn the last corner where I should be able to see the “2 mile bridge”, and there is Dan and Steve. Steve is paddling cross-ways across the canal, and Dan is watching them. I’m tucked in to the shore, between two docks, and I don’t think they can see me. I speed up to see if I can get closer without them seeing me. But Dan spots me. They’ve found a semi-sheltered part of the canal, and Steve has been trying to get used to a new boat he’s considering buying, an Epic 18X like Frank and Paul D paddle. Dan points out why my shoulders have been hurting – in my rush to catch up I’ve let my technique fall apart and I haven’t been pushing with my feet and getting good torso rotation. It’s like I have to learn that lesson over and over again. Frustrating. It starts to snow a bit. A man walking along the canal looks at us and shakes his head sadly.

It’s about 2:00. We’ve been heading home, and Dan has been trying to help Steve with his technique while I try to ride either Dan’s or Steve’s wake. I’m not having to stop to rest anywhere near as much as I had on the way up, as I’m using my legs and torso much better. Plus the tail wind is helping. When I’m trying to ride his wake, it’s obvious that Steve is having trouble with his rudder and he’s weaving around. It’s much easier to stay in Dan’s wake because he doesn’t weave from side to side. He brings the speed up and down, and I follow. And the snow stops, but we’ve in and out of the wind as the canal changes direction.

It’s about 2:15, and Steve has, as he so often does, gotten frustrated with himself and stopped listening to Dan and just plunged on ahead. Even I can see that his technique has fallen apart. On the other hand, Dan wants me to finish up on a high note so we slow down and work on getting a good catch, good rotation, and a good glide. With the technique still good, we brought the pace up slowly, and finished up with 10 good hard strokes. I’m tired, but proud of myself. I really did it.

Yesterday I went out with Coach Dan on the canal at his home. It was a beautiful crisp fall day, brilliantly sunny and about 50 degrees F. I was thankful for my farmer john wetsuit and thermal shirt, even if Dan mocked them when I first showed up.

To give you an idea of how far I’ve progressed this year, we paddled a mile just for the warm up. We did a number of technique drills, adding one more element to my technique each time. Meanwhile, since all my paddling in this boat before has been in races, group work-outs, and leisurely paddles with my family, I was getting more confident in allowing the boat to move around me. I’ve read, and Dan has mentioned, that one major difference between a sea kayaker and a racer is that a sea kayaker locks into his foot pegs and thigh braces and uses his hips to rock the boat, while a racer tries to stay disconnected from the boat and lets it rock on its own. So one thing Dan encourages is to put a plastic bag on your seat so that when you push on the foot pegs on the power side of the stroke, your whole body rotates freely. It actually made a big difference – afterwards my legs were more tired than they’ve ever been in a work out.

So anyway, we were paddling along, adding new items to my technique at each drill, going slow to emphasize the item, then doing a “pick up” – paddling about 200 metres increasing the speed every 10 paddle strokes until I got up to past race pace. Dan watches and every time I mess up and forget the new item, we stop and recover and try again. It was very effective, and by the end of it I felt like my stoke was really starting to look and feel like some of the really best racers I’ve seen. I’m sure that just means that the things I need to fix are increasingly small and subtle, but I can really feel the difference, even over the course of one workout.

At the end, we practiced a bouy turn around a large piling. I was going to approach it about 2 boat lengths away, which would put the center of the turn right on the piling itself. But Dan pointed out that the water on the other side of the piling was shallow and the shore was near, so he showed me how to take it further out, so instead of turning around the piling, you come out of the turn just a metre or two away from it in the deepest possible water. So I was doing my turn, and as I started to straighten out Dan yelled “now accelerate out of the turn”. I put on a bit of speed, and suddenly I felt the most amazing thing ever, as my technique was good, I was getting a good recovery, and the boat was absolutely flying. It was like a “Rode Super Blue” day in cross country skiing. I love that feeling.

Today I said goodbye to my Valley Canoe Products Skerray RMX, and said hello to my Necky Looksha II. I’m going to miss the Skerray, since it was a great boat and I had a lot of fun in it, but I’m looking forward to mastering this extremely light and fast boat.

First the numbers:

Kayak	Length	Width	Weight	Tracking
VCP Skerray RMX	17′	23″	60lbs	retractable skeg
Necky Looksha II	20′	20″	45lbs	rudder

Now the pictures:
Continue reading “Out with the old, in with the new”

I’ve accepted a down payment on the Skerray, which means I need to get in touch with Frank as soon as he’s back in town to buy the Looksha. I’m going to miss the old boat, because it was everything I needed from a kayak except fast. I’d also better get back to finishing the Arctic Tern so I have something for casual paddling.

In less exciting news, I turned down the job offer from Paychex because they would only give me 2 weeks paid vacation.

Paul T After the finish (cropped).