Friday 15 March
Rescuing, Eskimo Rolls, Surfing and Falling (quite a lot of falling in fact)
So if I fall in, or fall over and i'm hanging upside down under water I feel pretty confident that Patrick is there and can rescue me. He demonstrated how can lean over my up turned kayak reach for the shoulder part of lifejacket and pull me up and out of the water. However when it came to my turn to do the same to him I dont think he was filled with the same reassurance as I had been. My first attempt at pulling him up I knocked his head on my kayak - well done Claud, just really make sure he is unconscious! My next attempt I capsized my own kayak and still couldn't get him up, I'd started laughing and could not find the strength. I'm sorry Patrick but you just cannot fall over unconscious!
I had started using a different kayak, one I was not used to climbing back into once I had capsized and after several attempts I got as far as lying down and decided I'd just stay like that and paddle - why not, it hadn't been done that way before? haha!
Then came the ESKIMO rolls! I'd heard so much about them and watched Benoit doing them casually during many training trips. Now it was my turn... googles on... and GO!
It was great fun, and although I didn't get it first time I didn't want to give up. I also had a little Crab friend had found his way onto my kayak and every time I rolled and came back up he was still there. By the end of this training and tour I'll hopefully have mastered that roll... until then we had some kayak surfing to do! (All part of training of course!)
Unfortunately that was the last kayak until I returned from a quick 3 week visit to the UK, but I was looking forward to it already!
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