Ron hosted the first rogue pool session tonight in Bloomington, I have to say I had an exhausting fun evening of learning. Both Alex and Jeff helped me tremendously. I worked first on the chest scull (Palluussineq), falling face first into the water, shoulders horizontal, one hand on the chest and the other outstretched waggling the blade (sculling) back and forth, exiting from the chest scull is the technique used for the reverse sweep roll hence I learned it first. Next Alex had me practice falling face first with my paddle at the stern of the kayak and then sweep forward, in and up. I got this far relatively easily – although I did regularly forget to keep my head low. The final stage was the full reverse sweep roll (Kingumut naatillugu), paddle aft and then falling backwards into the water, I really struggled to make this work, I pulled it off completely only once, on numerous times I was able to survive using a scull at the end or fail completely and then use the standard roll to recover. But even getting it just once felt really good! Cheers for your help tonight guys, and thanks Ron for arranging the session, can’t wait for the next one.
On Jeff’s advice I am going to work on thickening the foam masik under the foredeck considerably, I rolled in Jeff’s SOF which has a lovely low wood masik, it felt very nice to be in such close contact with the kayak, no hunting for knee pressure.
Now I am off to bed, knackered, but very happy. Oh and for good measure I nailed all of the previously learned rolls today too.
The video below shows someone doing the roll I am learing: