Another Paddle

By Tuesday I felt confident enough to have a short try out with a paddle. On Tuesday mornings the club opens an informal coaching or free paddling session which seemed to fit the bill for a short paddle to find out how my various bits and pieces would respond to the vagaries of a return to a boat. I decided to leave mine behind and use a club boat as it's such a faff getting mine out of storage, onto the car and off again only to repeat again for the return journey. On arrival I pulled out a club Laance which is the same model, but rather lighter being a carbon-fibre construction. I did take my old Fi-glass asymmetric paddle though as this has certain amount of flexibility as compared to the wing paddle.

In fact the Ronson Fi-glass paddle feels positively elastic compared to my Knysna wing which is almost completely rigid and totally unforgiving in the shock absorbing department. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that if there had been a slight amount of 'give' on the wing paddle when I rammed a hidden underwater rock with it, while I was at full chat in the middle of a timed 'interval' my shoulder might just have survived the trauma that the impact caused. Whether or not that would have been the case I really have no way of knowing but I have the feeling it may well have saved almost a year of pain and inconvenience. As it was I can still recall with horror the shock that  rattled up my arm as it struck and the explosion that occurred in my shoulder. It's not something that I'd care to repeat.

The paddle went fairly well but it exposed the loss of muscle power left in either of my arms after ten months lack of use. Worse, it also eased the lack of core stability after only a couple of miles as I returned to the old fault of not being able to remain upright in the cockpit. That was a surprise as I'd thought that all the jogging over the year would have provided some sort of stability into that department. Just something else I'll have to work on I guess. I did a little over two miles just paddling gently but without very much effort. I still had to take a succession of rests as the shoulders began to feel tired and weak after the first mile and a very tentative, wobbly turnaround was negotiated without mishap. The following day my shoulders and arms were tight and sore and I gave up any thought of further exercise for the remainder of the week rather than push my luck.

So, where to from here assuming that the next few outings will be just as successfully completed? Well, clearly the DW for next year is out, so I suppose that just getting back into the hang of things will take up the winter months. From the spring the club runs improvement courses and although I haven't seen one advertised yet there may be a three star course in the offing for either canoe or kayak. That may be a little presumptuous at the moment as first I'll have to go over the two star schedule to get that level back again. But it would be good to get into one of those higher awards. Problem is though that ideally the award requires a greater degree of experience rather than a box ticking exercise. However, I've read the schedules and I'd give it a go.

I'm intending to use the asymmetric paddle at least for the foreseeable future, not only for its flexibility and the damping effect it has but for the control it imparts to manoeuvering a kayak as compared to a wing. A wing is tuned to forward paddling and can 'frinstance throw you a curved ball when trying to do a pry or a draw to move the boat bodily sideways, as I know to my cost with two swims during one practice session. Even a reverse sweep stroke which mainly uses the back surface of the blade to turn the boat can be a problem. Next session will be again on Tuesday which I hope will be a bit more positive and getting used to handling the boat again.