Sunshine in Canada

Arrived at Wilderness Tours a couple of nights ago. I'm sure someone said it was snowing here a few days ago, well if there wasn't still some ice on the ground, and pictures as evidence I wouldn't have believed them. We have bright blue skies and fairly warm temperatures: I've even been walking around without a coat, and despite paddling in the sun for the last couple of weeks at home have already got a pink nose (best get some suncream)! It is due to get warmer at the weekend too (20 degrees predicted).

Unfortunately it is still pretty darn chilly at night (although just about warm enough in a 4 season sleeping bag with fleece liner). At least we are fairly used to paddling in the cold, but the water temperature is particularly freezing - something like sticking your hand in a bucket of ice for a couple of minutes. I feel for some of the Ozzies who are all suffering from the latex neck rash (having only ever paddled in shorty cags)!

The frustrating thing is we have no waves at all to paddle on at the moment. The water is at a level in between any of the good stuff happening, and needs to go up a couple of feet before mini-bus comes in. Hopefully this will be taking place on Monday, or soon after, as the dam company are currently holding back water for us. In the meantime its quite useful to just acclimatise to the water temp.

Yesterday I reversed our nice, shiny (but particularly small) hire car into a tree - ooops. It may have been 10ft tall, but it was really (really) skinny and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there when I drove in forwards the night before, so I didn't see it. Thankfully it was merely a flesh wound (to the tree), and just a small - but significant - flaking of paint on the bumper. I'm pretty sure a touch of red nail varnish will conceal it perfectly, unfortunately I left all my nail varnish at home! We'll fix it somehow.

I'll hopefully update more, with pictures, when the waves have started working.

'Summer' days on 3 gates

A few rare events: summer arrived early; the weir (Hurley) stayed on a peachy 3-gater for weeks; I had no teaching work; I was in the country paddling every day.

The hardy local paddlers tried to cash in their 'I was paddling here in the snow three weeks ago, where were you?' queue-jumping tickets, which for some reason didn't seem to work. Luckily, though I timed it right and the queues were nice and short everytime I went paddling, even on the bank-holiday weekend.

A few photos:

Wiggy

Me. Photo: Alan Ward

Alan Ward

Pikey. Photo: Alan Ward

Me. Photo: Alan Ward.

Goose

Despite now dropping down to 2 gates, there is still a wave and it is still Sunny. However, I am leaving for Canada on Tuesday to much bigger wave and much colder climates . Hopefully this and these along with this and this will help to keep me warm!

A week of improvements

Photo courtesy of Kayakojacko

3 things have happened this week that seem to have hugely improved my boating:

1. Hurley on a perfect 3-gates.

Hurley can be a really depressing place to be after returning from the big, fast waves of the Nile, but after 4 weeks of not a lot of boating (due to too much water - and incorrect timing of arriving at the weirs), it is a fantastic place to be - renewed enthusiasm having not really been in a boat for a while, and although it is not a fast wave it is a great place for refining technique.

2. A new boat.

I have finally got hold of a Dagger Agent - unfortunately just the prototype and not the production model, and I'm not sure yet what the differences are to the production version. However, this prototype boat is much faster than the Kingpin, although not as fast as the Crazy, which in my view is a good thing - I found the Crazy too fast, and not very easy to control, especially on smaller British waves. The biggest advantage though is the ease/speed at which it releases for blunts, enabling my blunts to be bigger and faster. It also releases well for all the oververt/upside down manoeuvres (I stuck a couple of helixes - well, felixes - at Hurley for the first time last week, a difficult feature to complete them on). The back end is also much improved from the Crazy, more rocker meaning back surfing won't always end in unintentional upside down manoeuvres.

3. A Kayakojacko lesson.

I took a 3 hour 'video session' with Kayakojacko's coach Dennis. Most of the moves I do, have been learnt by picking up a few tips here and there from friends in the eddy. However, it makes a huge difference when someone is there just to watch you and give you advice. It was fantastic.

After just a 5 minute warm-up Dennis had already spotted a number of ways of improving my blunts - some of which I already knew, but didn't know how to put them into practice (and get rid of my old, bad habits). He took me through each technique required for blunts and back stabs/blunts and told me how to mentally and physically rehearse the moves both in the eddy and out of the boat, and most importantly for me - what I needed to be telling myself when I was on the wave (normally I'm thinking of too many things which always results in big wipe-outs, or going back to bad habits). I put some of the tips into practice there and then - and was then videoed doing a number of moves that I was working on, which we later reviewed at Jacko's house over a nice cuppa. I left with a number of tips for the moves I was trying and what to concentrate on when rehearsing the moves, so over the following few days I was able to work on changes to my blunts and back stabs. Excellent.

So, wave + new boat + tips learnt from Kayakojacko has resulted in the fastest, biggest blunts and pan-ams that I've done at Hurley; landing back stabs (although quite often falling over with surprise at the end); nearly sorting out helixes on Hurley (although I've landed a couple, I'm still struggling to get them all the way round consistently); and getting closer with donkey flips (which should hopefully be working on a wave where I can get more air to help me). I'm hoping that at least a few of the techniques I've perfected this week will transfer onto the bigger, faster wave that is buseater.