nonsense
Prior small boat experience is relevant to kayaking. I had logged a lot of hours on Sunfish & sailboards before I started kayaking, and it certainly helped. Wind, waves, weather, and going swimming when you made a mistake were all familiar to me. It’s why I was comfortable with a 22" wide Avocet as my first kayak.
Not to skills
To say that sailing skills translate to kayaking skills is ridiculous. You may have knowledge of the marine environment, weather, trip planning, but not kayaking skills, which is what I’m referring to. Many of the incidents I read about involve people who claim their small boat experience in sailing or rowing as equivalent. Where it gives you an edge, as a beginner kayaker, is you may have good judgement for the marine environment due to you education but you still don’t have the skills to complement your level of education. I will grant that you will progress more quickly as your skills increase, provided you had good judgement in the first place.
Sorry, but that is too patronizing
Willi, you ask what makes people to shun learning?
Well… assuming that you always know better than anyone else who buys a boat does not make you an expert kayaker, in fact it makes you into a kind of smugly patronizing “expert” who is the reason why people are adverse to taking courses. People, however willing to learn, are not out to make themselves a punching bag for a man on a runaway ego trip. My experience with coaches in practically every sport they they are just that - an adrenaline-fueled junkie on an ego trip, out to prove himself at the expense of someone who did not have just as much practice/experience as them. This is really just pathetic, to the point of being funny sometimes.
Sure, I can always use a tip, and there is ton of things I do not know/have no idea how to do. Do YOU know everything?
I bought my own boat a year ago, after a year of renting and I can paddle 15-20 miles trip in it easy, wearing practical (and expensive) immersion gear. In fact I enjoy wearing drysuit for the extra security it provides. Never had any training, but watching videos, talking to people and reading books. Does it make me less a man in your eyes? Fine by me. Just don’t paddle over to give tips.
There is no instant gratification in as you put it “floating”. There is a sense of achievement from learning on your own. Now let me ask you, is there sense of instant gratification in having people look up to you as an “expert”?
Peace V
judgement
– Last Updated: Jun-25-12 4:48 PM EST –
If you exercise good judgement, a lack of skill will rarely be an issue. Paddling skills without judgement are far more likely to get someone in trouble.
I agree that someone who says "I sail, therefore I know how to kayak" is delusional. But someone who says "I sail, and so I have a good feel for what I need to learn to be safe in a kayak" will be way ahead of a landlubber.
And do you really think that working with a rudder and centerboard has no value for understanding how a bow rudder or hanging draw works? Or that dragging oneself onto a sailboard is nothing like kayak self-rescue? Or that understanding how a sail's center of effort affects steering has no relation to how moving the paddle's center of effort can turn a hull? Or that the principles of efficient rowing -- use the big muscles first, clean catches and releases, etc. -- have nothing to do with paddling? It's all basic kinetics and ergonomics.
Agree.
In my post above re: the “person with lessons who thought she was better than she really was” had absolutely no knowledge about the tide cycle and inlets. And no WW skills either. If you understand something about the Rule of Twelfths, kayaking near inlets during the 4-5 hour is not a good idea even if you have had a few lessons. Unless you are really, really good at kayaking and enjoy that sort of thing. Otherwise, the CG may be picking you up because your re-entry lessons weren’t so hot either to get you through that situation.
Angstrom DOES make a valid point
To already know what it’s like to get dumped due to capsizing, and to already have an understanding of what wind and waves do to a small boat and how they interact, would CERTAINLY put you ahead of the game when starting out kayaking, since dealing comfortably with a capsize and understanding some of the ways that it can happen are clearly part of the skill set an open-water kayaker should know. Paddling skills themselves are not the only thing. Think about the fact that there are a lot of boating accidents that turn out badly for no reason except that people panic or are otherwise unable to deal with what could be a fairly simple recovery procedure.
All sorts of skills can be an aid to learning to kayak. Even swimming skills will make a huge difference, as I found out when I took a rolling class once, just for the heck of it. Everyone says being upside-down in a boat is supposed to be such a disorienting thing. I’m here to tell you that if you are comfortable in the water there’s nothing remotely disorienting about it - it’s not any different than being upside-down on land. But I learned to swim at a late age so I can clearly remember what it was like to be a poor swimmer, and back then, taking a rolling class would have been a totally different experience for me. The point is, anything involving familiarity with water and small boats will be helpful, even if not helpful within the very narrow focus of your post.
An interesting thread
– Last Updated: Jun-25-12 4:58 PM EST –
This has been quite an interesting thread concerning the issue at hand. I would like to add my own take and suggest the following.
I believe that the original article was interesting but was presented very negatively. The same article could have been presented positively and shown solutions rather than simply presenting problems.
In general I see things as follows:
Someone with or without an excellent skill set and instruction but no common sense can be a danger to himself and also to others.
A wise man, without instruction, knows to remain within his limits.
Unfortunately wisdom cannot be taught to the unwilling.
Here’s a minor nit-pick
You say “Skill requires deliberate training and education.” As to the “education” part of that statement, there’s already been a whole side-bar discussing the fact that this is not necessarily true. As another example, I wonder how many people today can solo-paddle a tandem canoe through heavy whitewater as skillfully as it was done by Bill Mason? Do you think he was “educated” by something other than his own experience? Think he signed up for classes? Experience can be a very good teacher in the right context, and the main aspect of proper context is frame of mind. In other words, you can have a certain experience, but your way of observing and understanding what happens, and thus what you learn in the process, is up to you. Some people suck at figuring things out on their own, and others are quite good at it.
Roy…
You nailed it.
Training
The key word in my statement was “deliberate”. Training need not require a professional instructor (though it will help) as MOST people, NOT ALL, will not intuitively sort out effective or efficient strokes on their own. It requires acting with intent, not just drifting about accumulating seat time. It requires figuring out what works and what doesn’t and working to refine it.
This constant invocation of accomplished paddlers from before the days of instruction (you’ll have to go far back for that, by the way, as the ACA is 130 years old) used to justify why learning can happen on its own is full of holes. there are virtuoso’s in all things, where the concepts just come to them but to hold that up as the way it always is, is fallible.
To prove your point for you: I didn’t pursue instruction until I’d been paddling, off and on, for 14 years. I read, a accumulated seat time, I survived hair raising runs down some local creeks with minimal injury. I learned to roll from books and videos.
Now to prove my point, the reading and watching of videos was followed by deliberate practice and working out how to apply it. It also led to dislocated shoulders when I was 19. When my roll was reliable, many years later, it was made so by help from others who would observe me and tell me to keep my head down, drop my elbow, etc. I didn’t pay for it, but I was certainly coached. That is training.
Your first paragraph…
… says pretty-much the same thing as my summary statements. I think we agree on this.
Fine
Agree then! See if I care!
Honestly! As an instructor I meet many people who have spent no time deliberately trying to learn how to kayak, canoe or whatever. Most are receptive to good advice depending on how it’s presented (I certainly am).
On the other hand I meet many people, in my role as an instructor, who come to the business where I’m employed or the club I also teach at, enroll in a class and then actively fight the education they asked for. They won’t get the paddle in the water or sit upright. they want to argue every point, to the detriment of the entire group. Very frustrating.
Exactly
agree and it extends to other experience
The more experience I get with various outdoor activities the more I learn things that transfer to new ones. I learned to check the weather carefully and know how to navigate from a variety of non-paddling activities. I learned what surf is safe and which is dangerous from my body surfing and SCUBA days. More people have gotten killed by not checking the weather than by poor paddle strokes.
A lot of that experience let me know when I started paddling when I was safe and when I would need more instruction (formal or otherwise) to meet the challenge.
What is a skill, anyway?
The skills that are learned in ACA classes, or passed from one Greenlander to the next, started out as some ancient kayaker, through trial and error, figuring out that a particular movement or series of movements worked best, and then passing on that experience to his fellow paddlers. When you find out through experience that a particular series of movements works well, and so you use that movement combination going forward, that combination has become a skill.
Sure, in some ways it might seem like “the hard way” to learn skills by your own experience rather than having someone else teach you, and could end in death if you are an Inuit, a rec boat in warm water is a lot more forgiving. I really doubt there are many people out there using true whitewater or seakayaks in their intended conditions without starting out in rec boats or with an experienced ww or sea kayak friend.
Others have said it as well as or better than I could, experience in other small boats does give you a good starting point for kayaking, at least rec yaking, and even sea kayaking and ww. You have the muscle memory for balance in a small boat, ability to judge how certain water conditions are going to affect the stability of a small boat, as well as recognizing and respecting weather and the power of water.
An example - a few summers ago I went white water rafting in Taos for the first time. This was before I had done any canoeing, just kayaking, sailing and rowing, and pretty much only on salt water, never in white water. That morning the guides were talking about how it had been the most dangerous season for them in a long time. At the first shore stop in the morning the guide asked me to to move to the front of the boat, because he had been watching me and wanted a stronger paddler up there. Water skills do translate.
Splashing ain’t paddling
– Last Updated: Jun-25-12 7:31 PM EST –
Intuitive is most certainly ain't
99% of newbie do a forward stroke all wrong
practicing incorrectly for years means they have
sucked for many many years and are too stupid
and unwilling to learn since "they know it all"
Keeping an open mind and being willing to absorb
material from a wide range of media and people
allows paddlers to evolve and not stay stagnant
Most people DO NOT figure it out even after
repeated rental and even after buying a rec boat
Ignorance Wins
definition of terms
Skills: When I refer to skills perhaps I refer to “hard” skills, such as sweep strokes, bracing, edging et al. It also refers to why and when these skills would be applied.
Experience: While we can globally refer to experience in the outdoors, really what I am talking about is seat time in the craft of your choice. Many dead paddlers involved in incidents are spoken of in glorious terms regarding their outdoor acumen and experience. They are still dead due to a poor decision in spite of prodigious outdoor experience. The simple fact is that my hiking experience may inform my trip planning in a kayak but only translates minimally.
I will certainly allow that experience is gained by surviving bad judgment.
This isn’t the first time I’ve said this and it won’t be the last. I didn’t learn calculus by “discovering” it(discover may not be the best term but you probably get my drift), Newton and Leibniz did that a few centuries ago. I don’t need to figure out how to roll a kayak as others did that centuries (millenia?) ago as well. ANd for those divers out there, how do you think the dive tables were made? The Navy bent and killed a lot of divers (thus is the creation of NEDU)
Why do people that are involved in activities that present elevated levels of objective risk insist on learning everything by their own mistakes? Many skills (see above)in kayaking are counter intuitive, such as bringing your head up last in rolling. Many people have hurt themselves trying to learn these relatively simple skills, due to the counter intuitive nature of them, on their own.
If you’ve not been paying attention, I PROMOTE education and training read up on it, take lessons, watch videos. It doesn’t have to be through paid instruction, but in terms of development your learning curve will be steeper and that is generally demonstrable.
If your goal is to paddle around a pond fine. I don’t care, I just don’t want people to drown in silly situations that are easily rectified through a little bit of education!
Who here has heard this, “I’m not planning on tipping over.”? Well who does? Certainly not the folks that I fished out of the Tacoma Narrows with no PFD, no immersion protection (48deg water)and no clue how to cross the powerful eddy line that forms up off Pt. Defiance. Neither did they know that the water flows fast from the beach where they launched into the Narrows, Guess what their plan was if they did capsize? Swim for it. A little chart work and checking the tide tables could’ve saved them a swim that involved minor injuries and two cases of hypothermia. Even more embarrassing to some here, they were rescued by a group of us taking 3* training.
I know I sound like a prick, but every incident that involves outside rescue in easy conditions and ends up splashed across the paper or the internet brings us one step closer to losing more access…and no one is making more. In every case I read about they are all “experienced, intermediate paddlers” What about that incident out in Eastern Washington that was posted here? A few kids drowned after they capsized and their “guides” didn’t know how to get them back in the boats? Training and education would’ve saved those lives.
I’ll put away my soap box now, just don’t expect me to feel bad the next time some yahoo drowns in an entirely predictable scenario. If they were unequipped, unprepared and uneducated enough to place themselves in obvious risk I’ll feel bad for their kids, ticked off that this may be what tips the access scales and hope that stupid isn’t genetic.
How often does it matter?
– Last Updated: Jun-26-12 11:31 AM EST –
First, gotta disagree with that whole "splashing" thing. As much as you love to cite it, I just don't see it happening. Most people can easily figure out a method of entry, application and recovery which makes no splashing. I call it more useless hyperbole on your part. As far as being intuitive, I agree with Reefmonkey that it is. Put a newbie in a rec kayak and in a matter of minutes they can turn left and right and go straight well enough to actually enjoy their time getting from here to there. By the end of the season there really isn't anything most people can't do, *in terms of the skills they need to paddle the places most people go*. Remember, most of these folks are on small, quiet waters of the same sort where their great grandparents would have "gone courting" (dressed in their Sunday best, no less) or done lazy fishing outings in a 12-foot wooden rowboat. I wonder if anyone gave grandpa this much shit about how he feathered his oars.
Second, it's not just newbies. I'd say 99 percent of KAYAKERS use poor technique (I'd estimate that maybe three or four of the kayakers I've done trips with have good paddling mechanics and the rest, upwards of 70 of them so far (and probably closer to 100), are strictly "arm paddlers"). But so what? The kayakers I paddle with, poor technique and everything, put in a decent day's paddle and are happy with everything about the trip. So who cares if they go only 20 miles in a day? I mean, besides you, anyway. Who cares if some of them only go 10? Not everyone NEEDS to be a 50-mile-per-day paddler, as much as you apparently think they should be. If they go the distance that makes them happy, have enjoyed the trip and are up for doing it again the next day, leave it up to them if they want to be more efficient. Some of them WILL want to be more efficient as they learn more, and those are the ones that will do something about it (mostly without formal lessons, I dare say), but why fret over the ones that don't? It's not that they think they know it all as you imply. It's simply a case of them being happy enough with what they can do. Your motivation for being so concerned about the fact that lots of paddlers have no desire for perfect technique is the part that's most puzzling.
Anyway, it was six years ago that I posted this photo with the accompanying title and subtext being the same then as now.
http://tinyurl.com/79vw7eq
At the time I was saying that sometimes there's no need to fret about the quality of the boat, but I was ignoring the importance of paddling technique. Little did I know at the time that the woman in the red kayak was in mortal danger!! We sure dodged a bullet on that trip.
One other thing about "splashing". The OP says newbies have "no fluidity of physical movement, and of course, little forward motion", but if you look at most young men who hit the water for the first time, there's LOTS of forward motion no matter how poor their technique might be. They are at the edge of hull speed half the time because they don't realize 95 percent of their energy is being wasted getting that last 0.8 miles per hour. They think because they are pushing harder they are going faster, which of course isn't entirely the case, but one cannot deny that ARE going nearly as fast as the boat can be made to go. They just aren't doing it in the best possible way, and also are not realizing that slowing down just a little would save tons of energy. The whole idea that a beginner makes "little forward progress" is just insane. We've all seen newbies going 4 mph for two or three hours at a time, and look at the tables that show how much propulsive thrust is needed to make various kayaks move at typical cruising speeds. It's only a few pounds! Anyone can do that. The difference shows up when there's a need to do it all day long, a need that most people never encounter.
Bloody right!