Friends in Whitewater

It is great to get friends out onto whitewater for the first time. For one thing, bringing new people out to be introduced to something you love to do adds more friends to paddle with you. And it is simply exciting to see how they take to it, and to think back about how excited you were when you first started too. Well, I got Anna and John out last week on Thursday, the 20th. They have both paddled flat water quite a bit. Both Anna and John are pretty experienced in a Sea Kayak, and have at least a reliable roll. From past experience, I have seen very experienced Sea Kayakers on whitewater for the first time, and have watched as they panic in the new environment and swim, swim, swim. That is sorta what I expected this day.

I was surprised to find out how wrong I was. Both of them rolled well in flat water with no problems. They had a little rough start getting the idea of transitioning from flat to moving water using peel-outs and eddy turns. Still they did great. In no time, we were up at the Maryland Chute doing ferries across the current, and practicing rolls in the wave trains. Again, they did really great.

Seeing as how the water was just above 3 feet on the Little Falls Gauge, I though I would push them to try getting into the chute. This is where the flat water paddlers are seperated from the whitewater boaters, for sure. They were up for the challenge. A few shots at the hole, and a few rolls in the current, and eventually they both got in, did a short surf and even an unintended cutback before gracefully exiting. Very impressive you two.

Finally we decided to go over to the VA chute to see if that smooth green wave may be there. Alas, it was not a wave, but a really short hole. Anna decided to sit this one out, but John was still anxious to try anything. He tried to surf through the hole a couple of times, and was rewarded with a couple of quick flips. One one, I though he was gonna hit his roll, and instead I watched as he started banging on his hull, signalling for a rescue. By the time I reached him, I thought for sure that he was on his way out of the boat, so I rammed his boat hard enough to start it moving into the eddy. Surprise! He pops his hand up and grabs my bow. He was still waiting down there for me to show up.

It was an excellent day for everyone. Lots of sunshine, some good water to play in, and some exercise. If only I could do this more often. Oh well, back to work now.

A trial run (or paddle)

Today I awoke to an unexpected free day. With the water in the Potomac still at a "too high to take beginners out in" level, all my weekend classes were canceled. My first plan was to go camping for a couple of days but after calling just about every campground within a 3 hour radius it seems you need to make reservations in advance on a holiday weekend!

The forecast for the day was HOT! 97 degrees hot but not too terribly humid. Sounded like a good surf ski day to me. I decided to do a time trial practice run to prep for the next CPA race. That race is 10 miles and as of yet I've never managed to paddle my surf ski non-stop for that far. In my silhouette its no problem -- I could probably paddle that 20 miles with no breaks and be OK. Alas the the surf ski is not quite the same.

My surf ski and I have a love hate relationship. I love how fast it goes, love how light it is and how easy to car top. Its down side is a real pain in the butt. Literally! For some reason no matter what I try, sitting in that boat for more than about 40 minutes makes by backside hurt like nothing else. I've tried several types of seat pads but so far nothing really helps.

Today I wanted to see if I could go for 10 miles, all out, no breaks, and still be able to get out of the boat at the end. I figured I'd take Dave's approach and just paddle through the pain! So off to Fountainhead Park I went. It seemed like an ideal place. Lots of water, no current, and very little traffic. I paddled there yesterday with Tall Tom and while the water had more debris than usual from all the rain it wasn't too bad.

I launched at about 9:50 (Barb and Anatoly if you are reading this why do we always launch at ten to ten??). I paddled in circles for a bit to warm up and adjust the hydration tube on my camelback. In the last CPA race I didn't do that in advance and then couldn't get to the tube for the entire race. I never had time to stop paddling so I just did without. Learned my lesson on that one.

Once adjusted off I went ... headed out at about 6.2 mph with a few short lived bursts up to 6.4. I kept noticing that I go faster when I slow my stroke rate down and let the boat glide. This will be something to work on since my usual cadence is pretty fast. Turned around the first corner and got smacked in the face with a headwind that dropped my speed back down to 5.5. Oh well, so much for holding 6 today.

The Occoquan reservoir is wierd because around every corner the wind is doing something different. I found it difficult to get into any sort of good rhythm. Then, I had to stop twice to clear the rudder. There were lots of sticks in the water and they kept getting hung up on my fixed rudder. I would have to stop. Paddle backward and then speed up again. That was kind of a bummer.

My turn around point was just before the bridge leading to Bull Run Marina. By now it was 10:40 or so and I was hot! My seat wasn't hurting too badly but I had definitely started to notice it. My speed continued to drop a bit as I kept thinking about how hot it was. Finally I stopped. Dunked the hat, dangled my feet and generally got as wet as I could without breaking the park's no swimming rule.

Boy did that help! I took off again with 2.5 miles to go and the speed was back up above 6. It felt great. I ended up finishing the 10 miles in 1 hour and 44 minutes with an average speed of about 5.7 mph. Not as fast as I would have liked but not bad either given three stops of a minute or so a piece.

I did manage to paddle to whole thing without my backside completely going numb. I guess my current seat pad is helping. It is one of the gel filled ones. Problem now is that the gel is leaking. I've got to get a new one fast!