Today I gave a five hour private lesson to a very motivated novice ocean paddler and intermediate flat water kayaker. We went soup to nuts to get Scott ready for the upcoming paddling season with his goal in mind for him to do some flat water races and some small bay condition racing.  Scott is extremely fit as Tri-athlete and realized from his previous background and mistakes made paddling over the last 6 months he needed a lesson. Scott did a great job today incorporating very quickly what I asked him to do. He left much better prepared, more confident, and is on his way to becoming a safer and more efficient paddler. As Scott repeated to me as I have heard often, “you can only get some much youtube videos”.

It pays to get a full lesson from an experienced instructor. It does not always have to be from an elite racer or coach. Most often their time is limited and the focus is on group lessons. Where as local instruction can be more tailored and comprehensive and often from a different perspective.  So take the opportunity to benefit from both if you can. There are many components to paddling a ski beside the forward stroke and downwind.  All my lessons and BCU/ACA certifications, coaching from my Sea Kayaking days before I knew what a ski was, has helped me tremendously in teaching surfski paddlers. My racing/paddling experience, and expert knowledge on paddling gear is a huge benefit to novice, intermediate and advanced paddlers. I also take lessons from the Elite paddlers like Sean, Jasper, Oscar when we have them in town learning as much as I can. I like to see how they teach a group and I always learn something helpful from these guys to incorporate in to my instruction. Looking forward to these guys coming back to New England this year too.

So Scott and I touched on a lot of topics, some more in depth than others, but nevertheless is he aware of the various topics of OCEAN surfski paddling, some of which is below:

  1. Sea State Situational Awareness: Wind, Tide, Sea Depth, Fetch, Obstacles, Land masses, Local knowledge, etc by first looking a the chart and wind app of where we would be paddling then seeing how reading the chart and predicting the sea conditions, matched up with the actual real conditions on the water and why this was happening. Most novice paddlers have no concept how water moves and why, and how this can adversely affect your paddling safety or how it can help you.
  2. Short viewing of the start of 2016 Canadian Surfski Champs with Sean, Jasper, Dawid, Kenny powering to the Hot Spot, so Scott could see the elite surfski paddlers strokes, leg drive, and pure power when it comes all together. Short viewing of the 2015 World Ocean Championship in Tahiti of Sean, Jasper, Cory making it happen in downwind conditions.
  3. Gear: one of my favorites, leashes, pfds, paddles(Braca,Jantex, Stellar), clothing, shoes, car racks(GoodBoy Paddling Sports V-bars), communication devices, skis of course, etc. Scott brought his own 2 skis and had a stable platform for learning: Stellar S16S Multisport, SR Multisport, both with over the stern rudders. We went over the pros and cons of over stern rudders in the ocean. He will be getting 2 under stern rudders for his SR(4 inch and 8 inch) and now knows the limitations of the over stern rudders in the ocean.
  4. Safety: Float plan, leashes, remounting, judgement, skill level, check the ego at the beach, group peer pressure and more.
  5. Proper surfski set up, footplate angle, toe paddle angle, knee height, pads, hydration set up, etc.
  6. Paddle set up: length, angle, markers. Benefits of different paddles brands and models: Braca, Jantex, Stellar.
  7. Remounting set up in the garage and steps for successfully reentering with 3 tries or less.
  8. On water: Sea State Awareness at beach, launching and exiting ski from beach, different paddling strokes, connecting the strokes, boat control, resting on the water, leg drive, remounting, rafting up, etc.
  9. Recap of the day.
  10. We watched the short video clips of Scott’s stroke and paddling position.
  11. Scott will now practice what he learned today, get a proper leash ASAP(he borrowed one of mine) and a wing paddle in the near future.
  12. Follow up lesson in one month before his first race at the Run of the Charles in Boston.

Scott having fun learning.

Scott Capsizes and getting ready to turn ski over. Leash, Pfd, Cold Water clothing.Check.

Scott Setting Up, Hands in set up position, Notice his body is more vertical, ski tilted over toward him, kicking feet ready to enter ski. Check.

Scott up and over bucket, clears gunnel, chest on other side of ski for ready to twist and plop into bucket. Excellent.

Scott in ski. This point is critical. Lean back for low center of gravity, one leg remains out for balance or two if ski is narrow enough. Most often one leg out is enough.

Scott in ski successfully, one foot out, takes a stroke or two for balance and gets ski moving and on his way!