useless if you cant get your skirt on underwater, correct?
Like above
I tried a couple of times to get the skirt back on one side before rolling up on a re-enter and roll, and found that I just don’t have that kind of hang time at this point in my life. Course if I opened my eyes under water it’d make things easier too…
Anyway, no you can roll up fine without doing that. Just have the pump real ready to use once you are upright.
Surprizing
But I empty the water out first by lifting the bow then re enter and when I am up I am surprized that the water level is much less than I would have thought. Maybe Ill get better but holding on to the paddle and using two hands to get the skirt on is beyond me while inverted.
Mark
many folks use a bead or two on a
forward deck bungie so the can shove a paddle quickly under it.
some of us who do so have (quelle horror) small scratches on our decks. Some put clear plastic protectors on the decks to avoid those horrible telltale deck scratches.
R & R - fast out of the water
Forget the spray skirt underwater - get up and breathe. Once you get it down, you can do a R & R in about 30 seconds - compaired to a paddle float reenty which might take several minutes at best - if you can even do it in a rough water situation. You want to get out of that cold water fast. You can paddle your boat to shore if you’re not too far out and drain it there or blow up your paddle float and use that as an outrigger as you hold the pump between your legs and pump it out. You can hold the paddle with the paddle float under your forearms or under bungees. Paddling with a boat full of water is not that difficult - try it.
Most seasoned paddlers first line of defense in a wet exit would always be the R & R. Don’t forget, if you’re a beginner, you can do the R & R with an inflated paddle float on the end - but usually you need a little bit of roll experience first.
the boat may be full of water…
but at least you are sitting inside!!
Did my first one last Saturday.
rentry and roll
I was surprised how easy an rentry and roll was to do without the sprayskirt attached. At first I practiced it with the paddle float, but I found it much easier and faster without the float. The problem is that my valkyrie does take on more water in the cockpit than when I do a scramble reentry (which seems completely impractical with a small cockpit in bad waves–I’ve never tried it in waves). Maybe I’ll try flipping the water out first, then turning it back over and rentering and rolling. It’s easier for me to reenter my legs when the boat is tilted on its side, rather than completely upsidedown, so that probably explains the extra water getting into the cockpit.
Yep
Hey Mark - I added two sort bungees at either end of my 700. They run across between the forward and aft deck fitting pairs. Pair of balls on each (large round black cordlocks on this). No real good picture but you can see the aft one here:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/120051991/1120052190052048071PVJmmu
And similar short decklines with wooden balls on my SOF:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/550036085/2369258270052048071hTCycs
This works best with GPs that are happy to lie flat on deck - but works with EPs and Wings too with the bungee versions anyway.
With GPs its pretty easy to stow or retrieve paddles underway - righted or inverted. Doing it with eyes closed/zero vis is also not too hard.
From there (doing a R&R) it would be a matter of how easy/hard your skirt is to deal with (no nylon decks!) and if you have that much more air. Look at it as about the same as three roll attempts on a breath - but 1st is stowing (on deck or shaft tucked under upper arm), 2nd is affixing skirt, third is grabbing the paddle and rolling up.
Probably really not worth the effort except as an exercise in paddle control and hang time though. As already noted, R&R can be done open with only a manageable amount of water getting in. I was surprised how little in my SOF - benefit of small coaming hole and low volume cockpit combo.
thanks
all these views and discussion helps greately! now to work on getting a bit more comfortable hanging! It’s coming though.
tuck the paddle
tuck the paddle in your arm pit. you can still use both arms and not lose the paddle.