Pool Sessions

by Matt Hopkinson

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Cathy (sp?) demonstrates the "C- to-C".   Dizzy yet?

Click on the image to see Steve's roll

Another thing he mentioned was that it was best to start with a small whitewater boat, because they are easier to flip, and because a lot more of them can fit in a pool. Another email to Steve D. (you can see him in the back, watching Pat roll the C-1), asking if I could borrow his kayak. "Sure", he says, "but the only problem is, I wanna go too!" Well that was no problem, and it provided me with a spotter. Little did I know, the other folks at the pool had plenty of spare time for spotting, critiques, and a wealth of information they were eager to part with.

Besides the boat, spray skirt and paddle, an essential piece of gear is the nose plug. We got ours at New England Backpacker in Worcester, a great local outfitter. Paddle floats make great training aids, a pump is not a bad idea, though it's fairly painless to drain the boats at pool's edge. Some folks wear ear plugs, while I just knock the water out afterward. Goggles also make the experience better. It's best to keep your eyes open while under water, so you can watch your paddle as you set up. By following your paddle with your eyes, it helps keep your head in the right position, which is down (more on that).

Each session was two hours long, from 9 to 11 PM. The first night, I accomplished two "Pawlatta" rolls, which is where you extend the paddle by holding the tip of one blade and grasp the shaft at about the middle. These are fairly easy. I also tried a rather diminutive looking greenland paddle and had good success with that one too.

The Pawlatta is named after a guy named Pawlatta, who learned it while studying Greenland paddlers. If you want to roll up from your right side, you grab the end of the left blade in your left hand and rotate it out so the right blade is more or less flat on the surface, up by the left side of the bow. Go ahead and fall in, keeping the blade positioned. The sweep of the blade itself is almost enough to right the boat, but you need to "hip-snap" about half way through, and keep your head down. Your head weighs a lot, and is attached to your torso, which weighs even more. With these in the water, the boat comes around quickly during the hip-snap. If the sweep is carried through, you should end up leaning back over the rear deck.

Click on the image to see Pat roll a C-1

The next session I worked on my sweep roll, which is the same motion, but your hands stay in the paddling position. This means you have less leverage and find out if your hip snap is good enough. One thing I learned was that if you find yourself looking around before you fall back in on a failed attempt, it means you lifted your head. Keeping your hands on the paddle shaft also means you have to hold the paddle at the right angle for it to scull across the surface. I had trouble with this motion. The best way to keep the right angle is to keep your forward arm wrist "limp".

Don't even think you can start learning to roll from this page. Maybe you can study the motions a bit, but there are other websites that are a lot better at explaining this stuff. Try some of these:

• kayak rolling primer Excellent site, but the internal links seems to be all screwed up. Navigate by editing your address line.
  
• Greenland Paddling Technique After you read this, you'll probably want to build a Greenland Paddle.
  
• Mariner Kayaks They have a section on resque techniques.