A Community First. . .
Published February 1, 2006 | 
Well, folks. . This is what the first (ever?) indoor rolling lessons look like in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Weird. Thankfully we have a few crazy people who want to learn more and a giant community pool in the local middle school. And thanks to John for coming over from Milwaukee keep the class structured and informative.
A basic or “intro” to rolling class will hopefully teach proper boat fit, wet exits, and bow rescues leading up to the mechanics of rolling and lots of time in the water. Because we were working a ratio of 3 to one with the students, we had to be as efficient as possible. Students ranged in experience from years on the water, white water, and new to kayaking! So that makes for a lot of targets to hit in a short time. John worked on sweep rolls with 2 students and I having one student with C to C experience, worked with him on that and with 2 others as well. As you would expect we had one guy who took to it right off and was rolling on his own with less than 20 minutes personal time. The rest of us “real humans” worked hard on fundamentals, banging away at snappy hip-snaps and clean horizontal sweeps.
Now the fun part begins. Everyone gets to take home what they learned and practice it on, in, and under the water. . With a bit of luck and a lot of work there will soon be a lot more kayaks rolling in the Baraboo area!
Click here for the basic ACA Kayak Rolling syllabus
Here’s the guy who got this class started, gathered people and organized the pool. Thanks Jack!
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7 Responses to A Community First. . .
You need to give Bill Merrick some photography lessons! Geez, your Optio pool pictures are so much clearer and nicer than his.
Mary gets credit for these ones. It’s probably just a setting, we shot it as manual as possible. We don’t use the Optios pre-sets, they’re pretty bad.
You know you’re just psyching me up for tonight’s pool session. With Alex’s new video posts, I’m going to nail that back deck roll tonight.
I think. : \
Thomas
Cool. You’ll do it!!
Almost.
I did it sorta smooth once. Had to add a bit of back sweep to finish it off most of the time. I’ve got the forward recovery with the reverse sweep roll, and somewhat with the storm roll, but this one has reverted me to layback mode again.
Alex makes it look easy! And I suppose it is once you get all the timings right and all.
TD
Yeah, Alex has that bad habit of making it all look so simple. At least we know we’ll get there eventually. Even if WE have to work at it!!
Man that rolling looks like fun. Almost makes me want to get a kayak just to try it.