Category: Revelation

Today I was working on a difficult problem on my real work, and needed a break, so I went paddling in the Thunderbolt. (BTW: If you know anything about OpenSymphony’s WebWork, please have a look at this question.)

I didn’t want to encounter any waves, and I wanted it to be deep enough to paddle well and close enough to shore to swim in if I dumped, so I went to use Dan’s dock even though I knew he was out of town. I started out, and immediately had to go back to the dock to take out the toe pull-bar. It was just located in an awkward position and I couldn’t get comfortable with it. But once I got it out, I felt extremely comfortable in the boat. It didn’t feel tippy, and I had no trouble controlling it even in a few boat wakes. The boat doesn’t turn all that well, and doing a 180 at a buoy is not going to be easy, and I really don’t like the tiller bar steering. It doesn’t seem hugely faster than the Looksha, even though the lighter weight means I’ll probably be able to paddle it for longer distances. It also picks up floating debris, both on the rudder and on the bow. A couple of times I purposely ran over a stick or twig to try to scrape a leaf off the bow, and that worked pretty well. I also tried the bouncing technique I’ve seen Mike F do in his EFT, but had little to no luck with that.

But all in all, I feel as comfortable in the Thunderbolt now as I felt in the Looksha in, say, May of this year. Keep in mind that I paddled the Looksha through October and November, and then March and April, and this is my second time in the Thunderbolt. That’s what a year of good training in all sorts of conditions will do for a guy.

When I finished, Dan had arrived home and he watched me paddle around a bit. He was impressed, and convinced me that if I work hard for the next couple of weeks, I could be ready to paddle the Thunderbolt at the Small Swells and Long Lake races. We’ll see. While we were talking, a boat came by and he suggested that I go ride its wash. It wasn’t moving very fast, but it was throwing up a good wake. That was actually ideal, because without much work I could play around and try different positions. That was great, even the positions where the water was pouring into the cockpit right over my left hip. One of the better positions had one wake breaking over the front of the boat and *not* coming in the cockpit, while the second wake was just behind me pushing me along. I don’t know if it was extremely efficient of not, but it sure looked cool. A few minutes of that made me feel much more in control of the boat, and more happy about eventually facing some waves with this boat, but it also put so much water in the boat that I was thinking it wouldn’t look very cool if I sunk, so I turned back.

Tomorrow the team is having a 5 mile “race” on the canal against each other. I’m going to paddle the Thunderbolt and see how it goes. Oh, and I think I have an idea what to do about that WebWork problem.

This morning, Paul D, Bill F, Jim M and I met for a paddle around the bay. At Jim’s suggestion we rode his wake and experimented with getting used to our various heart rate zones.

First during our warm up we paddled with our hands very low, which feels very unnatural, in order to warm up our “obliques”, muscles in the lower part of our torso. The idea is to build up some more muscles down there and learn to use the ones that are there already.

Then we paddled about 30 minutes trying to keep our heart rate between 120 and 130, which is the fully aerobic “zone 1”. The speed ends up being around what I still consider my “10 mile pace”, although I think I can probably do a bit faster in a race situation – I think it’s supposed to be the pace you can keep up for hours and hours, although for me it’s probably more like 2 hours max. As Jim says, you start off a race with a certain number of poker chips, and the idea is to spend your last one as you cross the line, not before and not leaving any behind. And also not to spend the chips when you don’t need to, unless you gain a race benefit from doing so – the example he gave was hammering ahead in “suck water” to cause the person behind you to lose your wake, and have to expend energy to get back on. So you spend two chips in order to force him to spend five. This pace is supposed to be the one that doesn’t cost you any chips.

[youtube -Qafv_lP0Io]After that set, we tried 15 minutes keeping our heart rates between 130 and 140, which is “zone 2” or “aerobic base”, which is more like a realistic race. You can see from the video that we keep yelling out our heart rates because Jim has to adjust his speed to get us into that zone. In this part and the following part, I noticed that Bill’s heart rate was higher than mine, in spite of the fact that he’s in a fast light surf ski and I’m in my big heavy boat. He’s normally a much faster paddler than me, so maybe his heart rate zones are higher than mine, or maybe I was just doing a better job of using Jim’s wake. But the point of this speed is that you’re building up your heart muscle.

After that, we did 7 minutes keeping our heart rates between 140 and 150, which is “zone 3”, which gets to the anaerobic threshold. That was tough, especially since the boat wakes had started to kick up and we were really getting thrown around. It was hard staying in Jim’s wake and also really hard to get back into it if you drop. I’m just thankful that I didn’t decide to try the Thunderbolt because of those waves.

After that, Paul D left and the rest of us went out to look at the lake, but the waves weren’t anything very exciting. A large fish surfaced next to my boat and seemed to gulp air. It was at least as big as my Basca VIII-max paddle blade, if not bigger. I have no idea what it was, but it was definitely not salmonoid.

After the paddle, Jim asked me what my plan is for the rest of the year. I hadn’t really thought beyond the Long Lake race at the end of this month, but I told him that I figured after Long Lake I’d concentrate on trying to learn to paddle my Thunderbolt, and then after the paddling season just try like hell not to lose all this fitness I’ve built up this season so I don’t start off gasping after 2 miles like I was this spring.

Update: Jim sent me a correction to how I’d characterized the various zones. I’m still not sure I entirely understand the differences – all I know is that “zone 1” is what I can do for a few hours, and “zone 3” is something I can only do for a few minutes.

I went out for a short paddle in the new (to me) boat. At first I tried to paddle it in the lake, which I’d chosen because if I had to swim, a nice beach with clean sand and a gentle slope was the way to go. But there were breaking waves there, and I got swamped a couple of times just trying to get into the boat. And as I paddled out into the waves, the waves would come into the cockpit. I hope this isn’t normal for this boat, otherwise I’m going to have to get a spray skirt for any sorts of waves. It’s also really hard to get all the water out of. It’s been suggested by a few people that I try to install some bulkheads or at the very least put in dry bags. The boat had these foam “beams” front and back to brace the top deck up, but they’ve come away from the boat, and the back deck oil-cans a bit when I’m trying to get in, so a bulkhead might be just what I need.

After a few minutes of trying to paddle in the surf, and a lot of swimming, I decided to try the other side, and paddle a bit in the bay. At first I couldn’t seem to steer anywhere, until I went back to shore and discovered that with the tiller bar centered the rudder was hard over to one side. Once I straightened that up, things got a lot better. At first, I had to (and this is absolutely true and no exaggeration) brace when I got hit by the wake from two passing swans, but after 10 minutes of paddling, I felt pretty comfortable in flat water in the boat. I had no trouble at all getting it up to 7 mph. I’m not sure if it’s any faster than my current boat, but you can feel the lightness and I suspect that it would be less fatiguing to paddle at that sort of speed than my Looksha. Unfortunately both the bow and the rudder are magnets for weeds, which is a problem in the bay.

I’m eager to get more experience in this boat and get comfortable in waves. I’d be tempted to try it on Tuesday’s team work out since we’re doing a time trial on the canal, but I think I need to concentrate on the Looksha since that’s what I’m going to paddle at Small Swells and Long Lake.

Now all I have to do is name it. I didn’t use the names much, but to me my Skerray was always “Mary Ellen Carter”, after the song by Stan Rogers, because it enabled me to “rise again”, and the Looksha was “Gideon Brown” after the song by Great Big Sea, because she can “punch ahead in any gale”. I’m thinking maybe “Anne-Marie” after the boat in Stan Rogers’ song “Acadian Saturday Night” because it has “wings on the water”.

Last night I picked up a new (to me) kayak, a gift from Scott Stenberg who has a large number of boats and was looking to get rid of a few. This one has been rode hard and put away wet over a long career with a couple of owners who are far more intense than I, but in spite of a number of nicks and bangs and customizations and re-customizations, the gel coat is still clear and unclouded by UV and it’s still pretty smooth under the waterline. Scott even included a cover to keep it that way. The boat is currently rigged with a rudder underneath, although it came with an over-stern rudder or two if I want to convert it. I have a suspicion that the underneath type is better in the surf, but the over-stern one is better in weeds. I’ll have to see. The boat is only 29 pounds – I’d never weighed my Looksha before, and was astonished to find it come in at 49.5! I’d always assumed it was lighter because it felt so much lighter than my Skerray. The Thunderbolt is also about half a foot longer and about 2 inches narrower. Dan described it as “tender”, which I think is a polite way to say “tippy as hell”.

One consequence of the underneath rudder is that I had to dig a hole in the lawn in order to sit in the boat to adjust the foot bar position. I guess I should mention that the first time I tried sitting in the boat on a flat lawn, I tipped over. That doesn’t bode well for my first experiences on the water, does it?

The strange thing for me is the tiller steering. I’ve never really looked at one before, so I’m not sure how stock this one is. I know that Scott added the PVC pipe to extend the tiller bar because he couldn’t reach it the way he had the foot brace. Interestingly, even though he’s shorter than I, I actually had to pull the foot brace towards the cockpit a few stops to get enough push to get some rotation. I’m going to order a set of “normal” foot pedals from Onno Paddles just as soon as I figure out which of those things he needs the dimensions for.

I tried to enlist Widget’s help while I was adjusting things on the boat, but he was no help at all. In this shot, you can see the “cargo net” behind the cockpit for keeping PFD or extra hydration, and in front of the cockpit you can see that red tapey thing which I’m not sure is some sort of carrying handle or to attach the GPS to. There are also patches of velcro here and there that I’m sure had a specific use for one of the owners. One of the strangest things is a couple of wide velcro straps across the cockpit – you can see the screws they attach to just to the left of Widget’s giant head. Scott said they were thigh straps, but I can’t see how you’d use thigh straps and get a good racing rotation, so maybe he or a previous owner paddled more like a sea kayaker than a racer? I will probably remove them and patch the holes with some epoxy and Fiberglas.

Once it warms up a bit today, I hope to get out to try to paddle this thing. Obviously I’m going to need to bring a change of clothes and a towel because there is no way I’m going to avoid dumping. I guess I’ll go to the beach where the bottom is sandy and not too unpleasant to swim in. I’ll let you know how it goes.