Danny Mongno teaching in the surf. Photo: Richard Davis

Fun in the sun on Tybee Island at the BCU Skills Symposium and Tybee Island Surf Jam. Click here for more photos.

optical communicationDNV – Det Norske Veritas, is an organization of unsurpassed reputation within risk managment. I have just completed several courses for some employees at the Copenhagen office. We started last year with a couple of one day sessions after they purchased 3 Capella kayaks for employees to use after work and at weekends, their office is just a couple of hundred meters from Tuborg Harbor. The sessions over the last two weeks have been for new people to get a good start with technique & to learn the basic safety drills.

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

Ready for action. Nice call on the camo, Dinver.

Meet my new friend, Leroy Brown. We are about the hit the road for the Northeast. Click here for more.

On the Road at Collinsville Canoe and Kayak.

On June 1, I will officially start my new job as a road warrior for P&H and Venture kayaks. This weekend I got a little taste of the job when I flew out to work an event at Collinsville Canoe and Kayak. Great people, sunshine and fun times. Click here to get the whole story.

After returning from a hectic weekend of non-stop input & thought provocation, I am now filled with ideas and questions.

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.

After reading kellys post about sticker placement, maybe it could be a good idea to free-up some of that valuable front-deck realestate:

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

There comes a time in every paddlers life when they feel the need to personalize their watercraft. Being a proud sponsored kayaker of many fine outdoor companies, it is vital that I “funk my colors” in an appropriate fashion to inspire shock and awe while out on the water. This process should not be taken lightly! In order to be effective, one must comprehend the overall look and feel of the end result and create a rich tapestry, both while in and out of the boat. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you consider sticker placement and content;

1)      Be sure your sponsors are displayed prominently on the deck without obstruction. Too many people place stickers and logos on the boat only to cover them up with deck bags, spare paddles, camera cases, etc. A rookie move that can be avoided simply by considering your on-water presents prior to stickerage!

2)      It’s important not to over logo your gear. Less is more! Make your point without creating visual mayhem.

3)      Add the personal touch. Not all stickers need to be sponsors and it’s a nice change of pace to have other, non-paddling related logos on the boat. It gives the viewer a sense of your other interests and detracts from the overwhelming feeling that you are a total kayaking nerd. Many of my fellow Pyrahna/P&H peers are or were avid skate boarders and thus leading to a Vans or an Independent logo. Me? I am an MMA fan and practitioner so I have a Sprawl sticker on my back deck. I can always count on my friend Darren Bush of Rutabaga to get me some really inappropriate, reflective trucker stickers which I display proudly on my bow. I am aware that he does this because he doesn’t feel comfortable with the stickers on his boat but he has a secret desire to display them. I then become his conduit; His darker side so to speak. And because they have a story to it, they don’t come off as tacky but as a slice of my life that other paddlers feel comfort in enjoying. Side note: I have run across people who put political stickers on their boats. This should not be done, as a rule. Fully 96% of all paddler will view you with distain regardless of their political viewpoint. 3% will simply feel awkward and, thus, not want to hang with you. The final 1% will be totally in agreement with you and want to be your new best friend. Consider then that 96% of all paddlers will view that guy with distain and you are most like in that category. In other words, there is a huge chance that you won’t want to be involved with anyone who wants to be involved with you.

4)      Don’t put any stickers on that are funny for a few moments. After the joke is over, the joke is suddenly over and you begin the journey down the road of being a tool. This includes writing on the bottom of boats. You want yourself and your boat to be identified as a visual feast, not with being upside down every 4 minutes either for a less than clever sight gag or lack of skill.

5)      Everyone has a Mac or an Ipod; leave the Apple sticker in the back of you Element, huh?

6)      Treat your sticker placement as you would if you getting a tattoo. Don’t logo under the influence of excessive drugs or alcohol consumption. Don’t logo if you are going into or out of a relationship (Consider how awkward  it would be to see on a kayak the saying, “Brenda forever” with the “forever” crossed out and “is a prostitute” scribbled in underneath).  Stay away from band names cause I am not paddling with anyone with a ”Yanni” sticker anywhere visible.

7)      Motivation is key. If you are logo-ing your gear so it conveys “Look at me! Look at how cool I am and look at all the nifty stuff I own”, maybe you are on the wrong track. Consider that the sticker represents you, not define you or promotes you.

So, I hope this helps you in your kayak decorating endeavors.

I am hoping to get out to play in the Scorpio LV again over the next three or four days, and decided to remind myself of my first-impressions of the boat last November:

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

Fast and fun, the Bahiya is a modern classic.

I’ve been paddling a Bahiya off and on since 2004, and thought I would share my observations on the boat. The full review is at BigWaterSmallBoat.com.

The Scorpio awaits.

The ice is finally off the lakes in Madison, Wisconsin and I got to take my new demo Scorpio for a shakedown cruise. I recorded some initial impressions on my Big Water, Small Boat site. Click here for the whole post.