Shaft Roll
Published April 3, 2008 | 
Ok this is stupid! But on the other hand, you never know which way you’re going to end up rolling. Once you become a fairly proficient roller (btw, Congrats Kellie K!!!) the next thing you may want to learn is how to roll with your splits. Meaning “half” your paddle. The idea is that if you lose your primary paddle, you can grab one half of your spare off the deck and roll up. You certainly can put them together under water but if you need air just roll with whatever half you can grab. Well, that walks me up to last nights pool session where I wondered if you could do a backwards split roll. Meaning you hold the paddle blade and sweep out the shaft. hmmmm. You’ll see it’s the 5th one down under “fun or trick rolls” on the video page. (You can also find a “splits” roll right near the top of the page.) Yeah, the good rollers out there will take a look catch it right away. Simple. Really.
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4 Responses to Shaft Roll
Yup, played with that last week at the pool. It ended up more like a lay-back norsaq roll, holding the throat of the blade and pointing with the shaft. Sculling, angel and C2C rolls all worked ok with half a euro too. My go-to in this situation would probably be a sculling roll. Watch the ferules though…yow!
I had the ‘real thing’ happen when my Greenland stick broke doing a high brace In Lake Superior. I didn’t save the pieces to practice again however but as this post suggests, it would have been a good idea. I definitely did not think of it as a ‘trick roll’; it was extremely practical, even more so since it was April and the water temps were a bit brisk.
yeah, rolling off half a paddle is not a trick roll like you say. I’ve had to do it myself as well. Of course, rolling of half a paddle, backwards. . . that’s more in the line of a stupid-human trick.
I have a canadian paddle T handle in the end of one of my splits for just such an event, Saves all the hastle.