welshkate

Hi water people. So I guess I’ve been meaning to blog my paddling exploits for a while. I would describe myself primarily as a surf kayaker, with a little bit of a river runner/creeker and playboater thrown in for good measure. This summer, in a bid to improve my and rodeo moves in the ocean, I’ve been spending a lot of time at Spencer’s hole on the N. Santiam, Oregon. It’s a fairly friendly wave/ hole that requires attainment to get to the service eddy -which is a good work out. I’m using the blog site as an outlet to chart my progress.

Firstly, for the last month, I’ve been having fun in the new JK all-star. It’s a fast, well-balanced and loose boat. The first thing I got to grips with was getting loose on the wave. EJ Etherington gave me some great advice- not to fight the boat and let it go to a point that it felt like it was on ball bearings. This is the feeling of a loose boat- and it feels great! Next job was to concentrate on my 360o flat spins. I thought I’d been doing these right for years but then I discovered, when I got my first REAL flat spin that it feels like spinning on a swivel chair- super quick and super fun, with very little effort needed. After the 360, we started working on dropping an edge to allow some verticality to the spin-ie initiate the end of the boat. I didn’t want to use a double pump; so instead, I entered the wave, threw in a 180 (so surfing backwards) and dropped my right stern edge. This had the effect of throwing the bow vertically. Okay, most of first attempts ended in getting flushed, a window shade or in a screw-up (yes that is really the name of a move) but at least I was getting the feeling of how the cartwheel could be initiated.

Now at the point where I felt like I was getting somewhere, I headed down to a much friendlier spot in Eugene, called 24/7. Jesse Coombs, kindly coached me into getting the feeling of how to throw a cartwheel. This time I did initiate my bow with a double pump. After about 1 hour- I managed to get 4 to 5 consecutive ends down fairly consistently. Next up, Jesse took my through the mechanics of a loop- adding onto the knowledge that had been passed to me by EJ and James Bagley Jr. Although, not quite there yet, I’m managing to get the feeling of how it should be…

Next up…apply what I learned at 24/7 to Spencer’s.