Yes, I’ve posted about my own attempts with this in the past. To this day I don’t know why I can’t get it right, despite having ?mastered? many others. I can only sacrifice so many paddles as well…
Not to make excuses, but much of my body weight is very high up in my shoulders and chest. This isn’t exactly an advantage for any technique where the upper body is so high above the boat.
A low brace with a Greenland paddle is not just slapping the water…it’s more like spreading peanut butter, and using the water surface tension. Sometimes you go into the water and use your body combined with the smooth spreading the peanut butter action. It’s never just a slap.
GPs aren’t that good for the slap style braces. Better with sculling braces or the like where the paddle stays in the water. Agree with comments above about arm positioning. And using a skirt for bracing practice helps, as you could potentially edge or lean further without taking water in cockpit, letting you learn larger braces.
On the re-entries, you don’t really do a heel hook. You are more just climbing in. In heel hook, your body is still in water and you hook a heel up and use the straightening of your leg to lift yourself up. That said, I don’t use (or teach) heel hook for paddlefloat, but do for t-rescues. The standard get on back deck for paddlefloat seems fine for most, and is a step toward working toward a cowboy scramble. The way you are doing it you likely would easily be able to do the standard (non-heel hook) rescue.
Well done. You got back in on 1 & 2 (that is the objective) and then were just too pooped on 3 - that is real world and definitely it occurs when practicing. Rescues are tiring and I applaud you practicing.
A few observances: 1) When doing repeated practices, why expend the energy to pump out your boat? You are just going to fill it again in minutes. Use that energy during practice sessions to reenter the kayak another time or two. 2) As others said, a sculling* action is more effective with a GP. The low brace scull is much safer than a high brace. Concur with what others wrote about arm/elbow positioning. 3) When using a slap on the low brace (applies to both GP and Euro), make sure the blade is flat on the water. A couple times you knife edged the GP blade into the water with the resultant capsize because the paddle gave you no bracing support. 4) Your are expending lots of energy lifting yourself up to then put your leg directly into the cockpit. You may find it easier to put a leg over the paddle and then shimmy onto the back deck before reentering/sliding into the cockpit & rotating into the seat. 5) Congrats on knowing when you were too tired to continue during a practice session!
*PS - When sculling a paddle, the leading edge should be in a slight climbing angle to create lift. The leading edge is different going forward and backward so you must make that minor adjustment to the paddle to allow the sculling motion to support you.
I second everything, which was written here. Including the “well done” - not only on the actual rescue, but also on your own analysis of what happened.
A few additional comments.
Glasses
See the small silicone thingy on my glasses in this picture? It is awesome for kayaking. I get them for free at the store where I buy the glasses.
Head position
There are actually two things you can work on with your head position:
Paddlefloat
What you do seems to work for you, but there are two things you could consider:
Heel hook
You should not be climbing the side of the kayak in a heel hook rescue. You should much more be “rolling” over the side. This requires your body to be much more parallel to the kayak when you are in the water.
The closer you can keep your body’s mass to the boat, the less pressure you will put on your paddle float. So try to really be glued to the boat with the full length of your body along the boat.
Wow, thanks for all the comments so far. I’ll try to address them.
Yes, my PFD isn’t fitting correctly. The good news is that I’ve lost 20 lbs since I first bought it. It is almost at the limit of its adjustments. However, last night Lillyflowers really cranked down on the side adjusters and there is some room to give, but then it was really tight! I need to experiment with this some.
How can I avoid putting pressure on the shaft? I had the exact same comments last year when I put up my “traditional” paddle float reentry video, see Critique my Wet Entry . That thread was what led me to the Heel Hook video, which is also referenced now in this thread. I must have watched that a dozen times. He does it so smoothly. I can see that I do accomplish it, but barely.
Later on Peter-CA says “You are more just climbing in. In heel hook, your body is still in water and you hook a heel up and use the straightening of your leg to lift yourself up.”. Allen_Olesen says “You should not be climbing the side of the kayak in a heel hook rescue. You should much more be “rolling” over the side.” Ahhh, those are interesting differences between the video and what I was doing. I need to remember that next time
‘less climbing’ - exactly, that’s also what I was doing wrong last year. I was trying to do that this year, but not very sucessfully. I just couldn’t get my legs up horizontal. More kicking?
I pumped out the boat to both familiarize myself with how my gear is stowed but also to simulate a real world situation, multiple capsizes. I wanted to get tired out and see how my form degraded. However, now that I’ve learned that I should conserve my energy on the next attempt and get more reentries, and less pumping practice.
The strap on my paddlefloat just doesn’t secure it well enough to the shaft. I see there are “greenland” floats out there and I do need to buy one. I can’t find mine and I was using Lillyflower’s float. I fear I forgot to remove it from my boat and it blew off on the highway! Lars’ float looks like a good product, I may get that one. But wow, the price! Limited demand, high price I guess.
Thanks everybody! Hopefully the water will be warm at Lake Umbagog and I’ll practice again. I hate being cold. Dave’s pool was in the high 80s!
Outstanding work! I wish every new kayaker would be as smart.
I saw several things in sequence thru the efforts, some of my comments may be same as above but easier to just write them down.
The brace you use with a GP is a single fast sweep, not a slap. The slap requires the bigger blade of a Euro. I have seen someone who knew how to do it, it was as effective as the slaps the Euro folks in the class were using. Note that the static brace even with a Euro blade may be taught with a bit of motion to it, depends on the coach.
Your brace is not exactly high or low right now, meaning that you have the risk of injuring a joint. For a low brace you need to have your lower arms vertical over the blade, trying for a right angle at your elbow. The back of the blade if a Euro hits the water. For a high brace you should for the moment glue your elbows to your sides and not let them come off there no matter what.
Can’t tell if you are doing this, but the way to hang onto a boat in the water is to keep a leg in it. Hence your hands are free to mess with other things.
Put the paddle float on the blade then inflate. There is often a strap with a clip that helps with this, clip it on before inflating.
For the regular paddle float reentry, come up over the deck further back so you can come up over the deck behind the cockpit. Get into a swimming position and take a big launch that puts your lower chest over the deck. Get a leg onto the shaft first then transfer support to a hand. That puts your legs together to put into the cockpit.If you are tired, which is when bad things are more likely to happen, you may find that the oomph to get yourself over the back deck is enough you don’t have a lot of tries in you. So coming in a little further back to lose an inch of elevation could make it more doable. So practicing literally climbing around on the deck is useful work.
This puts less water into your cockpit as well as reducing the physical effort. If you are really out there you need to do whatever will make it more reliable you get it on the first try.
VERY IMPORTANT note on the heel hook version. More so than the regular entry, wear long pants at least to start. I find this one produces more interesting shin scrapes than the other.
But again, congratulations on this work!!!
What roym said. You get the ‘purchase’ or ‘bite’ from a GP by pushing down and FORWARD (or backward) at the same time. Like spreading peanut butter. Once you get the feel of it it’s awesome.
Besides all that…when in reality do you brace in still water? Braces are more of a modified forward stroke. Especially with a GP.
I have braced holding a position on the surface of the water when the underlying shape became more like a mountain, ie a steep wave passed under.
But agree, it is usually an event in motion.
GPS might have said you were stopped but the water was moving. Thus the boat was “moving” through the water.
Most of my braces in still water are just for fun or practice. Some, however, are necessary to stay upright like when a tired swimmer at the local triathlon hangs on to my boat. Sometimes it’s just a grandson climbing on the boat in the pool.
Then you likely skull the blade of the GP. Not so much a brace.
Not sure of the terminology. Is it accurate to say we GP users brace by sculling?
Static brace means the blade is not moving, mostly.
The gp brace l saw was a single stroke, seems to line up with what others have said.
Sculling in my mind means stroking back and forth, multiple times.
This is what I was trying to do.
If only I had watched the video before heading out. You can clearing see him scooping, not slapping, like I was.
And thanks for the kind words Celia! I’m not a newbie, just still learning. I got my first sea kayak about 15 years ago. Learned wet exit/entry at a lesson on my first time on the water. Fast forward to last year when I decided to see what I still remembered!
And yes, leg was inside the boat.
The clip doesn’t work too well with a Greenland paddle, nor is it difficult to insert the tiny blade into the float.
Some paddle float clips are too small a diameter to work with a GP. Good to do if you can.
The video shows the basic stroke. IMO, ideally the guy in the video should be moving his elbow out from the body less and getting more upper body oriented over the paddle. But I am sure he is a better paddler than me.
He actually does both. He slaps, and then scoops the paddle out of the water.
This is also correct technique for a europaddle.
When you do a good, powerful low brace with a europaddle, the water will close in over the top of the paddle blade. You will hear two sounds: a hard [slap] when the blade hits the water, and a deep [kaplonk] when the water closes over the blade. If you try to lift the blade out of the water after the [kaplonk], the water will create a downward force on the blade, which will actually help the capsize you were trying to prevent.
If you instead scoop the blade out of the water, you can avoid this downward force, and instead get neutral force from a “clean” scoop or upward force from a “sculling scoop”.
Nice explanation of how best to actually get the paddle out of the water right. Had the thought but could not figure out how to say it clearly.
I agree with a lot that this guy says… but not that slap-twist thing he does. It might work great for some folks but I’m in roym’s ‘spreading peanut butter’ club. I would add that a training tool I made up for myself has helped me get ‘automatic’; brace quickly left and right; over and over again.
While I’m at it, I think Eric Jackson’s way of teaching the roll and the brace AT THE SAME TIME is a great idea. A good roll helps the brace. A good brace helps your roll.