Sunday

Greenland style kayaking (as demonstrated by Cheri and Turner and some others) can be an amazing form of recreation or way to get in touch with the root of the sport. The grace, beauty and shear fun is well worth taking a class or investing in a twig (whether home made or from a manufacturer like http://www.cricketdesigns.com/). Years ago I had an argument with one of the guys who introduced me to twigging (a shout out for Keith and John) that a euroblade has more power than a twig. John disabused me of that when he showed me a sliding stroke. Keith reinforced the technique at a symposium a year or two later. However, I have a quandary again…Mike and I taught a course this weekend on launching and landing in surf. A participant had a Greenland paddle (and obviously had some training in technique) but seemed not to be able to use the slide to gain effective purchase on the water in the shallows of the impact zone. This seems to me to be a limitation of twigging and a reason to use a euroblade. I am hoping that Cheri and Turner can help me out with this when they come for the Southcoast Kayak Skills Symposium because I can’t imagine the progenitors of the sport didn’t have to deal with waves in some fashion or other.

That being said, the course was fun, the waves were there despite all predictions (yay groundswell), it was fun seeing Mike in a long boat (both surfing and teaching) and the sun was bright...the temperature right and things were learned by all.

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