So here’s my two cents, don’t think of rolling and bracing as two separate skills. They not only overlap they are intertwined. The best thing you can do to improve your paddling and work on new skills is to build a paddling community around you. Find some folks that can assist with your development and this will increase the pace that you learn, and increase your safety and most importantly keep you from practicing bad habits. You did mention that you had found a group to assist and you can learn a lot by asking on a message board or watching youtube videos and then going out and trying out new stuff. There is value doing it that way. You can be independent, explore your relationship with the boat. “Messing around in boats” should be encouraged!
However, a more solid approach for what you want to learn, would involve others and some instruction. When learning to roll and brace I would be to seek a paddling club or other more experienced paddlers and learn from them and combine those experiences with some lessons from professional kayak instructors. If you can tell us the general area where you want to paddle then we can probably give some suggestions. We have a few international folks on the forum but mostly I think we are geographically spread out around the U.S. so if you paddle in U.S. then you will get a quicker response.
Holding an edge, bracing, and rolling are all mingled together. When you learn to roll then you can really experiment with braces, edges, and tipping points in a more aggressive manor without the problem of “what do I do to get back up?” The simple answer is, “you brace and hip snap to get back up”. It is easier to learn to brace if you can roll. I think of the progression this way 1) wet exiting 2)rolling 3)bracing 4) edging. Is that the only way to do it? No and you can work on edging some regardless but if you are pushing off the bottom, or using a rope to pull yourself up I guess I’m not really a fan of that. If you have the side of a swimming pool or very low dock then you can practice hip snaps all by your lonesome. Be sure to watch some good instructional videos before you start. You can learn a lot about edging and holding an edge and bring it back up (hip snap) without a paddle while hanging onto the side of a pool That would be the next skill I would focus on. Get your new paddling friends to help you out with that. Bring your head out last and try to apply as little force as possible on you hands (that are holding the side of the pool).
You are not a coward! The fear of flipping over after losing an edge is real. Learn to roll and brace and that fear is greatly diminished. If I flip over I want it to be deeper and not get scraped up. I want it to be obstruction free and at least waist deep to wet exit.
You can use a paddle float on one blade so you don’t have to wet exit if by yourself. You should have a paddle float as part of your safety gear. Here are a couple of videos.
castoff that sounds like a great “scaffolded” suggestion for what she wants to do. I don’t have experience with paddle floats but I can really see where that might work!
I should add that if you lift the front of your kayak as high as possible when you flip it most of the water drains out in the process. you will be stable without pumping most of the time. A paddle float also makes pumping more stable.
In the first video a couple of important points. In the beginning he is using a hip snap and chin pointed up repeat this until it is automatic. It will set you up for the rest. Remember during the roll to keep your head back and chin pointed at the sky. Wear a nose plug or blow air out your nose like the guy is doing as this will protect your sinuses. Pay close attention to his head entering and leaving the water. To help keep your paddle at the surface keep the elbow of your arm closest to the boat tight against your side. If you extend your arm up like I was wanting to do it will make the blade dive and the roll fail.
You might want one to use with your sea kayak if you don’t already have one. When the weather cools down consider joining me on a paddle out to the coast for a couple nights camping. I’ll see if some of the gang want to join us.
As an instructor, instructor trainer and / or instructor trainer educator for multiple disciplines I am so not a fan of paddle floats. For bracing… great if you want to build compensation. You’d be much better off learning to brace and just stay balanced over your base of support.
For rescue, I have never seen a situation where conditions were big enough to knock a paddler over, yet the paddler successfully use a paddle flat. Test it in 8’ seas and 30mph wind, not a warm pond.
In my mind the problem with this is if you keep using your paddle to right yourself you may teach yourself a bad technique for bracing which won’t work in deeper water. If you are using your hand to push yourself back up this seems like less of an issue, but the water needs to be very shallow.
I suspect we must tend to do things in a different order in the UK where rolling tends to be much further on. It’d be really nice to learn to roll early on but the training just doesn’t seem structured that way in the UK. I do think your way is logical and psychologically better - wet exit, then rolling, then bracing, then edging. Anyway, today I managed to persuade my son (adult) to come out and paddle with me. Even at the very quiet cove there was too much surf for me to practice edging at the water’s edge as I’d intended. Instead he just came alongside me while I edged towards him - so if I went too far I’d basically fall onto his boat deck. That worked really well. One thing I noticed by chance - while I was talking to him about lifting the offside knee, I got hold of the bottom of my boat on that side to illustrate some point I was trying to make. And the second I had hold of the bottom of the boat, I realised that I felt much more stable and confident. I wonder if leaning that way (ie towards the raised offside) in order to be able to hold the bottom of the boat put me naturally into that curved shape where my head and shoulders are where they’re supposed to be, over the centre line of the boat?
