Mike

Have a great Christmas, and remember, the best cure for Christmas blues is…… to paddle

Mike

Taking off were Bjørn left off in his recent post… a little car loaded with 2 kayaks, a Quest LV for me & a Cetus LV for William:

Our campsite:

Great paddling weather:

The boys waiting for the old men….

Lunch at a rocky landing spot:

Pancake time

I am hoping to get back into a kayak just as the water temperature is about to nose dive below 5C…..

Mike

This is only the second time he has been out in a kayak….. it looks like he is a natural…

Our few hours on a local lake turned out to be a bit of an attraction as William balanced on the back deck, kissed the boats nose, and did loads of self rescues, tourists in the many canoes clapped & took pictures

The ‘Play-boat” used was the Cetus LV, rather big for a boy of ten, but a good 15 liters of water secured in the day hatch helped to press the hull into the water.

Next week we will be heading to Sweden with some friends on a kayak trip with inbuilt games, popcorn & marshmellows roasted over a bonfire….. is there a better way to spend time together ?

It was a really very short paddle, but it was definitly one of those very special events that makes paddling on the sea a real privelage…….

Here we are using Easky 15 boats as well as an Easky 15LV, these boats are really great for getting people to relax on the water, even after a few short minutes, they are so stable and yet really easy to turn through 360 degrees, I am glad that the Scorpio is as agile as it is, otherwise it could be a bit of a challenge to weave in and out of the trainees…..
It has been great fun teaching safety to people that daily are working in risk management, getting them to see the relationship between good maneuvering skills and rescue drills

And no……. this was not part of the rescue session, it was a part of the morning session designed to get paddlers to get to know each other & work together

More images can be seen here

I will write more on my site later in the week

all the best from Denmark

MikeD

The European paddle pass systaem, has been adopted here in Denmark as in many other mainland european countries. After passing the L2 seakayak instructor exam last year, I have been waiting to find out how the coach training here in Denmark would be compared to coach training under the new BCU system. Well I arrived Friday evening to find five other trainees and three coaches, so from the very start it was an intensive process with such a high trainer to trainee ratio. Denmark has more than its fair share of top instructors with a diverse background. Over the course of the weekend we worked on:

• The 5 B’s
• VAK
• Coaching
• Levels (What seperates a level 2 paddler from a level 3 paddler etc.)
• Assessment
• Feedback

During Sunday morning the 6 trainees delivered a 20 minute session that we had prepared before arriving on the course, it was great fun and really exciting, it is not that often that you get to teach 5 other coaches & 3 top trainers.

It was great to see two other trainees in matching Bahiyas (The Bahiya boys….. .)

I will post more about the weekend and the VAKs, Bs and other starnge sounding subjects on my own site as time allows.

A pump, a sponge & a paddlefloat, are items carried by many seakayakers, these are used during and after a rescue in many circumstances. Keeping the pump & paddlefloat close at hand is important, many people store them on the frontdeck, or next to the dayhatch behind the cockpit. I do the same if I am teaching self-rescue. The problem with storing these items on the front deck is that it takes space away from the seakayakers all-important chart table…. Over the last few years I have been storing these three items under my frontdeck. I have a system that allows me to quickly retrieve these items if I am in the water beside the kayak, or if I am in my boat and want to use the pump.

In this image, you can see that I have used epoxy and fiberglass tape to construct a simple system to hold the equipment under the frontdeck. The elastic is passed through plastic tubing that is secured to the sides and the middle of the underside of the cockpit.

In the second image, you can see the pump, paddlefloat & sponge neatly stored out of the way, but easily at hand.

Of course, kayaks with a cockpit hatch have a built-in storage area for other essentials like VHF radio, flares & snacks

The LV is very much a LOW Volume version of the Scorpio, looking at them side by side the LV is much lower volume, the back deck is a whole 7cm lower, the front deck 3cm lower, 2cm narrower…. and 7cm shorter. After testing the Scorpio, I really have been looking forward to this LV version.

The conditions I tested in were around force 5 building to a light 6, with confused waves of between 1 – 1.5m of coldish 9c water….. winter is on the way !

Well, the LV is rather a different beast than the standard Scorpio in my opinion. You are still getting a reletivly high initial stability, although as soon as you start to edge the LV you can really feel the difference that the 2cm reduction in width, it is not unstable, just rather more lively. Edging still produces carved turns, it only requires a few sweep strokes to turn a full 360. If anything bow rudders are more effective than the already great Scorpio, cross-bow rudders are extremely quick and aggressive, you just have to be a bit more careful to allow for the little livlier attributes of the narrower hull. Low brace turns are very quick whilst it is possible to lean the boat more or less completly on its side, this produces a radical turn of well over 90 without feeling unduly unstable. In the waves it is very easy to manouver into any position with ease. In short steep waves the bow has a more relaxed feel to it than in the full size boat, a considerable amount of volume has been taken out of the bow area. Windage has been greatly reduced, but then again, so has space to load up for extended trips… After extensive play with the skeg up, I lowered the blade into the sea, not because it was necesary, just to see how the LV would react. it seemed to bring a calming influence to the whole experience, I could now without much discomfort stow the paddle & eat a bannana whilst just watching the horizon disapear only to show-up again a few seconds later.
The only area that did suprise me was that it did not seem any quicker at catching waves, to be fair, trying to surf short steep waves is not easy so….. I will be looking forward to a surf session in the next few weeks.

Well I never did get out for the surf session, and the forecast is for light winds over the next few days, so I will be experimenting with the boats edging & turning performance…… and finally enjoying a little spring sunshine

Mike