Interesting day

One of the big choices that I have to make before not too long is what sort of kayak to buy. As I have kayaked in the past (many moons ago - see previous post) I am not a complete beginner. However, I can hardly class myself as experienced or even confident when it comes to paddling one of these long kayaks (loads of volume, usually 5-6m in length and a rudder).

I posed a Q on a discussion group and to cut a long story short, I was advised to go for a faster kayak with makings and shape of a really fast one (I won't bore you with the hundreds of pages of discussion on this subject). As a light guy (60kg) I don't have too many choices.

Thus, as the kayak club I have joined has one of the recommended boats for club use I have set about trying to paddle this boat with varying degrees of success and failure. Today, having had an average paddle (getting balance a bit better) but still not great, I headed back to the clubrooms. With 200m to go I noticed a guy watching me so I set about putting my best style of paddle stroke together. I thought I was doing quite well as most of the effort was via my torso and shoulders (correct) rather than arms (wrong!). Well, as I approached the club this guy (who I recognised as the club president) started yelling at me that my paddle wasn't vertical enough. He then said I needed a much longer paddle as I was only really taking half a paddle stroke. Taking his advice I chose a longer paddle and hit the water again using a more vertical paddle stroke. Well, stuff me, I was really cruising along. The president then gave me 5 mins or so instruction and I reckon I was streaks better in that 5 mins than if I'd ploughed on by hours by myself.

It's really hard to find true experts when you need advice. The bods on discussion groups are always helpful but who knows how good/experienced they are. Meeting someone face to face is invaluable. A few weeks back I was advised to have a bike fitting from a shop with an ex pro cyclist who had designed a computer programme to analyse all sorts of things. (My wife was flabbergasted at me paying $120 for "someone to show me how to sit on a bike"!). The advice and subsequent alterations to my bike from this expert were superb and I straight away knocked 6mins of a 40km hilly ride I do.