Lay down, Sally, and rest you in my arms.
Don’t you think you want someone to talk to?
Lay down, Sally, no need to leave so soon.
I’ve been trying all night long just to talk to you. – clapton

In Greenland rolling an essential technique, and the foundation of a variety of rolls is called the balance brace.  This little maneuver is basically the act of floating your upper body on the surface of the water, while remaining in your kayak and WITHOUT falling over.  Sounds simple enough eh?

The real challenge of the balance brace is that with your upper body in the water, the kayak wants to follow you in (or roll over on top of you). So to counter this, we have to position our bodies in a particular way to “balance” the boat against the weight of our torso to remain on the surface.  Yeah, it’s tricky. While we’re going to talk about the balance brace for at least a couple posts in this series.. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to be successful at it, to have an effortless roll.  Continue reading →