At the end of February my wife and I escaped the relative
cool of Texas and headed to Naples, FLA where it was pretty hot until the sun went
behind the clouds. I decided that I didn’t need my shorty dry top, but that
might have been a mistake.
Anyway, here is my opinion on sea kayaking – it is a lot
more physically taxing than whitewater kayaking. I mean – where is the current
to push you along?
In addition, there are a few things you do “backwards.” For
example, when you do a bow draw (or Duffek) you tilt away from the turn in a
sea kayak, whereas you tilt into the turn in a whitewater kayak. Some of that
was hard to grasp.
Another thing is that those sea kayaks are just hard to turn!
Cannot spin on a dime.
On the other hand, when do you see dolphins when you are
whitewater kayaking?
We took lessons from Jay Rose, Owner-operator at
Paddlesports of Naples, a very competent and cordial young man who gave us four
hours of lessons. He got us started with the basic ACA instruction steps, which
we could relate to, and then we got into self-rescue. Another thing that is
different from whitewater kayaking!
As part of my ACA instructor certification we had to get
back into our kayaks in deep water. You’d think that technique would apply to
sea kayaks, but not so. I suspect that the kayak would just flip over.
Anyway, here is a video of me “gracefully” trying to get
back into a sea kayak.
Then it came time for rolling the kayak. Jay set me up with
some crazy kind of float, using it as part of the progression of learning the
roll. For some reason I actually got nauseated, either from leaning way back,
the salt water in my throat, sea sickness, or a combination of all three. This
is a picture of me with the float.
Finally, I said, “Give me a paddle and let me roll.” I
actually failed the first time because I was thinking too much. After that it
was just like rolling a whitewater kayak minus the flow of the rapids (which
can come in handy).
These are some random photos of our time on the water in
Naples.
Jay Rose and Me Getting Ready to Go Out
Our First Time in a Sea Kayak (Man, those things are big!)
Donna on a boat, smiling, because she did not have to paddle
it!
Finally, alas, it was time to go. Here we are waving bye-bye to the beautiful Florida coast.
Here are a couple of videos that show the difference between draw strokes on a sea kayak or canoe and on a whitewater kayak.
