Balance Brace…
One of my goals for this summer is to be able to do a reasonable balance brace. While I was able to do a butterfly role last summer, I wasn’t able to hold the balance brace position for any length of time. If I didn’t roll up right away, I’d have to revert toa standard layback roll. On the plus side I got to practice the layback roll a lot, but I was never able to sort out the brace.
Last weekend we spent Sunday at Munch and Linda’s family cottage. Munch and I spent most of the time in the water practicing. After woring on my sculling technique I was finally able to hold the balance brace for an extended period of time. Later in the day, I tried again but wasn’t able to hold it for more than a few seconds. At the time I attributed this to the dry jacket I was wearing in the morning, but not in the afternoon. I figured the extra buoyancy made the difference.
While practicing this afternoon however, Nat pointed out that my shoulders were not quite parallel to the water, and it looked like my paddle was diving a bit. After thinking about this a little I tried again, arching my back a little more, and rotating my shoulders to get as parallel to the water as possible. Essentially getting as much surface area in the water as possible. This made the difference, at least for a short period and I was able to hold the balance for a reasonable amount of time.
I’ll try to get a video of the brace, as it’s pretty neat to see. Hopefully over the summer I’ll be able to sort out the legs and add this to my rolling repertoire.
Raccoons…
Our house boarders on a school yard with a large garden and lots of big trees. Every summer, at least once or twice, a raccoon will make it’s way along our back fence heading to or from some appealing tree. This year we saw not one, but a whole family of raccoons. While I’ve read that raccoon have up to seven babies in a litter I had never seen this many. A Mother and six babies….
You can check out the rest of the pictures here.
Some more rolling fun…
We went for a nice paddle this morning, heading out from one of our usual launch points at the end of Thomas Dolan Road. After a leisurely paddle Munch and I decided to practice our rolling. We often practice in pairs, mainly because it allows for a assisted rescue and means no wet exit. While we can both roll fairly well now, Munch has a odd habit of laughing, often underwater, leading to the assist. Here is a classic example…
Here is Munch doing a successful roll…
I also found this shot of me from last year when I was learning to side scull. Note how my chest and shoulders are not quite flat on the water. This is causing me to work harder than I should have. Hopefully with the yoga I’ll be a little more flexible this year and fix that issue. I suspect that if I can get my back flat in the water I should be able to move into a balance brace…
Rolling Practice…
Friday evening I went out for a little rolling practice. Nat came out to grab a video and enjoy a warm sunny evening on the water. Two interesting things happened. First, the practice went really well. It was a little rustly, and I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I didn’t need any assistance and was able to get back up each time.
In general, I like to think I have fairly good balance. I’ve never capsized accidentally before, at least not that I can remember, but I’ve always wondered how I would react if I did. Just after shooting the above video. I went to practice edging while Nat enjoyed the sun. While on edge I managed to lose my balance and capsize. Happily, reflexes took over and I executed a nice layback roll and popped back up. I haven’t practiced a lot without a nose plug so it was nice to see that this didn’t cause a significant issue and I didn’t panic. On the down side I managed to lose my good sunglasses, which I suppose is also an important lesson.
In any case, weather permitting, I plan to head out again next weekend to practice a bit more and sort out a way to attach my sunglasses to my PFD.
Smugmug integration…
Posted by ctravers in technology on May 17th, 2009
Just wanted to post a quick note about the new “galleries” section on my side bar. This is the first change in a series of changes that I hope will result in better integration with my smugmug powered photo site, photos.ctravers.net.
This first change is a widget I wrote for wordpress that reads the smugmug rss feed, parses the categories, and creates some pull down list for the galleries in each category. Poke around, play with the menus and let me know what you think. I’m specifically looking for any feedback on performance, speed, etc.. or general issues that make the menu less than useful. Cheers!
Linda’s Whiptail…
Posted by ctravers in kayak building, paddling on May 13th, 2009
Back in August of 2007, I bought to sets of plans from Ross Leidy for his Whiptail kayak. My friend Munch and I both planned on building them over the winter for our wives. We were both impressed with the lines and reviews we had read, but neither of us had paddled on yet.
While I’ve been pecking away at it, Munch finished his last fall, and finished up the rigging this spring. Here are a few pictures of the boat in action. All of us agree, the boat handles wonderfully and will make for an excellent play boat.
You can check out the rest of the photos in the gallery here.
Workshop Cleanup
My original plan for today was to move the table saw from the basement into the garage and cut some strips for the whiptail. Sadly they forecast rain for the afternoon limiting the amount of work I’d be able to do, since the table saw will be at the front of the garage. Working with 20′ long boards does make things interesting.
With limited sunshine in the forecast, I decided to go for a paddle with Linda and Munch. This was Linda’s first time on the water, and I must say, the whiptail Munch built for her glides beautifully in the water. This is like a kick in the ass for me, and reminds me how far behind I am on mine. If I can remember the camera next time I’ll take a couple of pictures.
It started raining half way though the paddle, so w cut it a little short and headed in. With a little free time, I decided to clean up the basement a little and setup the miter saw stand I got with my home depot gift cards from Christmas. After way too much thought I ended up getting the Dewalt. The Ridgid was nice, but a little too much stand for what I wanted (it weighs a ton). Bosch seems to have a nice one with wheels that gets good reviews, but it’s not available the the Depot, and I wanted to use my gift cards.
The stand was very easy to setup and is a very simple design, which is one of the things I like about it. Mounting the saw and removing it from the stand is also trivial. The only issue I had was that the mounting brackets for the saw don’t quite fit properly. The base of the Makita saw gets wider, and the brackets are fairly narrow, so when I started to tighten the screws the brackets pivoted in under the pressure. This was pretty easy to fix by putting a little piece of plastic between the bracket and the saw base.
The saw is actually cantilevered out over the aluminum beam, and each mounting bracket has a release handle on it to remove the saw. It’s also possible to reposition the saw along the rail. With relatively long extension rails built in, this makes for a pretty versatile stand.
Paddling on a Windy Day
I went for a paddle this past Monday. It was very, very windy. The waves were not very big, but there was a lot of chop and the wind was blowing offshore across the river. Since I’m paddling alone, I’m always very conscious of how far I’ve paddled, and what the paddle back will be like. In this case, I had a long paddle back against the wind, so I was being very conservative and constantly checking how far I’d gone.
Just when I was getting ready to head back I noticed a canoe ahead of me. I estimated that it was about 1km away, and it looked like it was a solo. I thought this was a little odd, given how windy it was, and how early in the season it was. I also thought about paddling the extra km, and see if whoever it was needed help, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it back. Rather than risk getting myself stuck I turned around and headed in.
After the paddle, while I was packing up, a car pulled into the parking lot, and an nervous woman and child got out. The woman walked down towards the water, and while her son came over and started asking me about the conditions. It turns out that it was her husband that was out in the canoe, and he didn’t think he would make it back. He wanted her to get the car with the roof rack and meet him on the Quebec side.
There were a couple of things that struck me as odd about this. First, he has a cell phone and made the call for her to help out, but he didn’t provide good information. She didn’t know where he was, where he was expecting to land, or how much distress, if any, he was in. He just told her to get the car and head to the Quebec side of the river. This seems a little silly. At the very least he should have told her that if she didn’t hear from him in some time period, to call for a rescue. I’m always paranoid about safety, to the point that I sometimes feel silly about it, but this reminded me how important things like a simple float plan are. Whenever I paddle alone someone knows I’m out and when I’ll be checking in. If I don’t call, they know something is wrong. I also always dress for immersion. When the water is only 7 degrees Celsius, you haven’t got a lot of time before limbs stop working. Having a dry top and pants, or even a simple wet suit and help a lot.
In any case, while I felt bad about not paddling the extra distance and helping out, the paddle back re-enforced my decision. I’m not sure I would have made it back if I went farther, especially if I was towing a canoe. It was a long hard paddle back. I do hope that the canoeist made it back safely, and that he plans a little more carefully in the future.
Day Paddling Check List
Every spring when I head out for the first paddle of the year, it always seems I’m less organized than I’d like, despite my efforts to do a better job each year. This year I missed two items of critical importance, my pump, and two full sets of dry clothes. Why two you ask? One set that I keep in the car, and the other that I keep in the kayak.
As part of my spring cleaning this year, I’m cleaning, painting, and re-organizing the garage. As part of this I’m planning on making a laminated check list that I’ll post on the garage wall next to my kayaks that I can check just prior to leaving. I’ve got the following on the list so far…
- PFD
- Dry Jacket and Pants
- Gloves and Booties
- Dry set of clothes in car
- Dry set of clothes in dry bag
- Tow line
- Pump
- Paddle + spare
- Whistle
- Energy Bars
- Water
Ok, so have at it, what am I missing?
The first paddle of 2009
Munch and I decided to head out for a short paddle this morning. The air was cool at about 1 degree celsius but the windchill, we learned later, was about -10. We both have dry jackets, dry pants, and an assortment of base layers and fleece to wear. We also have booties and neoprene gloves. Needless to say, we needed it all, and then some.
Overall it was a great day. We only stayed out about 20 minutes, but really this was just a test paddle. We wanted to see what it was like to paddle in conditions this cold. Launching was a little tricky as it was very windy. The waves were not big, but strong enough to make getting the spray skirt on tricky. This was compounded by the fact that I had completely forgotten my technique for getting a very tight neoprene skirt on. This force me to go back to shore, sort things out and try again.
Once we were both on the water, we started paddling. Within about 2 minutes both of us had numb fingers. I would guess that if one of us went in, we’d have about 2 minutes of useful time before we wouldn’t be able to control out hands at all, probably even less. Having our fingers numb also had a significant impact on our ability to control the paddle. We just didn’t have the same control we normally would, making large waves harder to deal with.
Overall, it was an excellent day and we learned a ton. We hope to head out again next weekend, perhaps with a little warmer weather and a better solutions for the hands. Neoprene gloves just were not enough in water that cold. Here’s a shot of Munch’s PFD with Ice and frost forming after we landed.
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