Living, working, kayaking, rowing in Venice, Italy
Yesterday I practised rolling in a pool for the first time in over two years. Its the first time for a long while I get some good rolling practise. My focus has been elsewhere, on touring in Sardinia, setting up a business in Venice, getting […]
Nigel Foster visited my local kayak dealer, Kajakhotellet.dk, on May 17th and 18th. I participated on the 18th.
Nigel Foster is a very soft spoken man. He explains a thing, demonstrates it and sends us of to try it. At first this exercises were very simple, like edging the kayak to make it turn, but then he build more things on top of that, like leaning over the kayak while edging to edge further, adding bow rudders and stern draws to turn faster and so on.
In the end the movements became really complicated and few really managed to do it. Some exercises took a while to settle in, like moving in zig-zag patterns by an combination of edging left and right while making coordinated bow rudders, side draws and stern draws. It was so incredible elegant when Nigel Foster did it, but I suspect the most of us must have looked rather fumbling, going here and there with little control.
At the end of the course I was exhausted 🙂 I had been in my kayak, edging it left and right, for hours, and the muscles in my hips and sides were rather sore. When at the end I wanted to practice my roll a bit, I had absolutely no hip flick and always had to revert to the sweep roll to get up.
(foto by Anette Kjær)
I’ve finally learned to roll solidly so it is now the exception that it fails rather than the other way around. The roll that works best for me is a standard Greenland roll, or sweep roll. Until now I’ve only done it with my Greenland […]
