Spin Cycles

Published May 5, 2011 |

I will shape myself into your pocket
Invisible
Do what you want
Do what you want
- radiohead

I’d learned what I do know of traditional rolling from the cockpit of my old blue NDK Explorer. Later I moved on to a Valley Anas Acuta. Step by step I was progressing. There came a point though, when I felt I wasn’t getting any further. I’m not sure if it was the volume of the kayak or just me hitting a wall. I stopped. I walked away with most of layback rolls in place up to elbow rolls.. and just starting to work on forward rolls beyond a storm roll & reverse sweep. At the time I was really feeling like the volume of the kayak was beginning to raise its ugly head. That can real, or it can be a psychological limit. Sometimes when you feel something, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It becomes true simply because you feel it to be so.

When I first got into sea kayaking, it wasn’t long before I bought my old used NDK Explorer. I knew it was one of the legends of the sport. I surmised that if so many world-class expedition sea kayakers paddled the Explorer, it had to be good enough for me! The first few times in the cockpit I was scared sh#tless! It was waaaay tippy and impossible to control. Of course, those feelings passed in time. Back then I felt my old warhorse was teaching me. Today I’ve moved on too much more nimble craft, but I still have special feelings for my faded old horse. In the same way, I’ve been feeling for some time now that it was time to move on to a real rolling kayak as well. So It worked out pretty nicely that Freya Hoffmeister has been clearing her decks of extra kayaks before she heads off to South America in September of this year.

Yesterday the delivery guy in the brown truck dropped off a blue package at my door. It was the SOFreya2 all the way from Germany. My new kayak is the folding version of Freya’s “SOFreya” Skin-On-Frame that was built by Hakola Dippel based on a pattern of Björn Thomasson’s Black Pearl. Freya helped build the number 2 and made it just a bit wider and even flatter on the back deck. Now the big question.. will I fit in it? Better yet, can I get it back together again?

Freya sent me a whole pile of pictures that she took when she dismantled and packed away the boat for shipping. I basically had to follow her sequence in reverse. For about 5 minutes the chances of doing that seemed utterly futile, like putting together a dresser from Ikea. After staring at the bits for a while, a sort of zen-thing took over and it went pretty quickly. (Other than that bit where I tried to fit the bow section into the stern of the skin.. but we won’t go there…) Honestly I wouldn’t’ want to have to tear it down and put it up every time I travel.. but it’s nice to know I can if you absolutely need to.

Once the boat was together, It was time to see if I could fit. Now, the “Masiq”, that last bit of bow ribbing near the cockpit, offers about 5 1/2 inches to get your thighs into. I was surprised how easily I was able to slide right in. I’ve been in some rolling boats where I’ve had to nearly bend my knee backwards to fit, not so with this one. It seems almost perfectly designed to allow me to slip right in without too much effort. Later in the pool I found it easy to wet exit from as well. (Methodical, but easy enough.)

The rib right behind the seat is extraordinarily low as well, making laying on the back deck from the seat practically a joke. In fact, I did laugh when I first tried it.. There’s nothing there!

Our local pool was willing to let me get into the water for about an hour before they had an event on. At first I submerged the back deck in I got in only to realize that I had forgotten to inflate the stern float bag. Once I took care of that the boat came back up to a more reasonable position in the water. (Maybe an inch of free board behind the cockpit.) I played around and went through a series of rolls that to be honest, I probably haven’t tried in over a year. For awhile I just had to overcome the fear of window-shading (Rolling back over the other side). The simple fact that I hadn’t done traditional rolls in a while and that this kayak is so low volume had me overpowering everything. I had to remember to slow down and dance with it. It seemed like I was just starting to find my connection with the new boat when it was time to go. Like a child leaving an amusement park, I left deeply disappointed and in a hurry to go back again.

This morning I woke up a bit sore as I expected. Traditional rolling has little to do with strength and everything to do with flexibility. If you’re rusty, you need to get those muscles stretched out once again. I think I’ll need a few more days to work back to where I was a year ago, but it won’t be long before I can start pushing toward some new rolls. I’m looking forward to it.