Three two hour rolling sessions this weekend. Exhausted and exhilarated. And I made a few new friends along the way.
We had huge improvements, an elbow-roll achieved, norsaq rolls renewed, strom-rolls cleaned up, static-braces held firm. Saturday had me standing in the water for two hours, it wasn’t until I finally got out of the lake that I realized how chilly it really was. I guess concentrating on the training had kept my mind off the idea of shivering.
Thanks to Mark Vincent I found time to roll his bardaika. This taught me a lesson in kayak fitting. I was able to execute forward finishing rolls. But I failed dramatically to do any lay-back rolls. The kayak’s masik was across my shins. Renee advised me to move about 6 inches forward and then it all worked (we had to let air out of the float bags and hook my feet under to toe rail to make this happen). Thigh contact with the kayak seems to be very important in order to confidently get lay-back rolls to work. Several other paddlers struggled today due to kayak fit. Clearly this is an area I need to think of prior to teaching in unknown kayaks.
And at the end of the day I was able to spend a few minutes and remind myself how to roll.
I had previously watched Turner Wilson perform a variation on a reverse sweep roll in his latest video. I think it really is a back deck roll, but it just makes more sense, now that I have done it, to call it an about-face reverse sweep roll. I love it, it has such a practical application in surf. I look forward to needing it soon. You can see me do it at time 1:30 in the video.
I will document the instructions and draw it soon as the roll of the week.
I hope you are enjoying this summer’s Roll of the Week Series.
