Today another student and I took a kayak class with Brian from Ckapco again...(which made 3 crazy people paddling in a rain at 55'F temperature.) We recapped Sculling Draw, Draw, Sweep, Reverse (all the way), Low Brace, High Brace, Bow Rudder, Draw in Motion, Sideslip (Hanging Draw) and Stern Rudder....then the new part we learnt was mixing them up.
Eww...like it's not confusing enough already.
Image from My 365 Project - Day 113
Like in order to make a U-turn I usually just use Sweep Stroke 3-4 times or use Forward Stroke and Reverse Stroke on each side of the boat. But there are other ways accomplish this. For example today (as shown on the image) we went forward first, then used a wide sweep stroke w/ edging, then while holding edging on the sweep side*, used Bow Rudder on the opposite side (I found my hat was in a way quite often), held the edging until the boat almost completed the turn and then used Reverse Sweep Stroke to complete**.
Oh my...@_@! It sounds confusing, doesn't it ? But do you notice that I use only 2 strokes to accomplish a U-turn ?
Mixing them together definitely forces you to observe how a boat works and how your paddling is as every little move really makes a change even just by pushing one butt cheek down while moving you can see the difference.
Now paddling is more like an art than labor to me. :) And looks like there is a lot of practice to do.
Until next paddling~
*, ** correction on 4/23/2012 (I colored the edging on the third image wrong and put the reverse sweep on the wrong side. I am so sorry!)
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