Kayak Yak: Blowing in the Wind

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Blowing in the Wind

The winds were up higher than forecast yesterday, and a stiff breeze was blowing right off the water into the usually sheltered Telegraph Bay and our planned launch point.

So we decided to stick to the bay. Louise is not a confident paddler and abhors the wind and Paula has inner ear issues and occasional balance troubles and she abhors rough water, so it was a good chance to safely practice paddling in windier conditions than we normally do. Richard however abhors anything with the word "practice" in it and set out by himself on a quest to find calmer waters. (He eventually found a new car.)

One of the things we did was practice something I had read early in the week over at The Gnarlydog. There, he posed a question to a number of experienced kayakers: In the event that I should be caught out on the water in a group of 6-8 paddlers (too far from shore to be reached in time) what would be my best way to ride out a short storm? The post makes for an interesting read and I recommend you check it out. Nigel Foster suggested a couple of training exercises, including this one.

"Another useful practice session in similar conditions is to paddle a figure-of-eight path around two anchored floats. It gives practice in turning in every direction to the wind and shows how effectively you can control the kayak in that strength of wind. The more practice, usually the quicker and more effectively you can do it without getting blown onto the beach."

And that's exactly what we had here in the bay. There were a couple of floats out that we did some figure eights around.

We went to the edge of the bay and enjoyed surfing the waves back in.

We also saw otters (I couldn't get any pictures), 3 deer (I couldn't get any pictures), and two eagles arguing over a tree (yeah, that's right -- no pictures). But we did see some geese, and I did get a picture. (Fortunately, these geese were of the pacifist variety, unlike this one.)