Maligiaq Padilla is a 17 year old boy who is the 1998 Champion Kayaker of Greenland. He was in the US visiting relatives, and BASK invited him to come to the Bay Area and demonstrate Greenland Style kayaking techniques. Greenland style kayak paddles are long, narrow, and un-feathered. Feathered means the two blades are rotated almost 90 degrees to each other instead of lying in the same plane. The idea is that the forward moving blade slices the air on edge while the backward moving blade is powering through the water. A Greenland paddle has both blades in the same plane. When Europeans first saw Greenland paddles, they thought the natives were stupid for not putting large round ends on their paddles. The Greenland natives thought the Europeans were stupid for having large round blades to catch the wind. Us Europeans decided that we would keep our efficient large round blades so we could power a boat harder through the water.
Finally, around 500 years later, a European engineer did an analysis of the Greenland paddle. We discovered that a narrow paddle is NOT less efficient than a large round paddle! A smaller paddle moves a little faster on each stroke, but can be stroked more often. The total amount of effort exerted by a paddler is the same with either style paddle for the same speed or distance. HOWEVER, a thinner paddle puts less stress on your joints, so you can actually use it longer and injure yourself less often.
Both Maryly Snow and I have damaged our shoulder joints a little trying to learn to roll a kayak, so a paddle that involves less stress on your joints sounded like a good idea. I downloaded plans off the internet (http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/cbrown/pdlemk.htm) for carving a greenland paddle out of a 2x4. I made two of them, one for me and one for Maryly. On April 18th we took our paddles to a BASK Greenland paddle practice to try them out. We had our sit-on-top boats and didn’t feel we could participate in all the rolls and braces. Instead we just worked on our forward stroke, which is slightly different than how they teach you with a “sport paddle”.
On the first day of Maligiaq’s workshop on May 16th he demonstrated 30 different rolls and braces in the cold water of Princeton Harbor while we watched from the beach. He wore a neoprene jacket that started out as a hood cinched around his face. The neoprene swelled out into a loose fitting jacket with tight wrists to seal water out. Then it flared into a spray skirt that attached to his boat. As far as I could tell, the only places that got wet were the exposed hands and face. After a talk by kayak historian John Heath and the demonstration we all adjourned for a chicken BBQ at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club.
Seeing Maligiaq’s one-piece hod/jacket/spray skirt convinced me that I would not be overdressed in my 7mm divers wetsuit. I was going to dress to get wet so I could learn something new. The next morning I put my hood and jacket over my normal farmer john. Then with a spray skirt on I squeezed myself into the little river kayak that I have been using to learn the roll. I figured that we would be hanging around in shallow water close to shore, but Maligiaq lead us half way across the harbor to deeper water. The wind promptly blew us the rest of the way across towards the sea wall, so he apologized and lead us the long way up the harbor into the wind to try to find a calmer spot. All the paddling in a tight-fitting boat with no seat back had me straining to keep up. Later when I finally quit, my stomach muscles and thighs were so sore I only made it back to shore by stopping and resting at every buoy.
Maligiaq demonstrated something at the start that I think is called a resting brace or resting scull. He would hold both hands near one end of the paddle, twist his body in one direction then fall over backwards into the water on the opposite side of the boat. His head would disappear, then pop back up as he gently sculled the paddle back and forth on the surface. From that position he could continue the lesson, telling us that to do this right you had to relax. I found an intermediate step by leaning straight back onto the rear deck of my boat and sculling from there. Then I rotated my body farther and farther out until I finally did learn how to do the resting brace.
A few times I failed and the boat flipped upside down. Since I was originally planning on doing this in shallow water near shore, I wasn’t exactly prepared for deep water. The boat had no flotation bags and would flounder if I came out of it. It would be practically impossible to get back into the thing, and I hadn’t brought a bilge pump to get the water out anyway. Swimming a mile back to the beach was not a good option. So I had no choice and HAD TO ROLL BACK UP every time this happened. Fortunately I had practiced in The Plunge (a heated indoor swimming pool) with this wooden paddle and could usually roll back up. With the incentive of the cold water and poor rescue options I did manage to roll back up every time.
Following Maligiaq’s recommendations I relaxed more and more and paddled less and less vigorously. I was able to get into the relaxed posture so well that another kayaker, Jan Sommer, zoomed over to see if I was dead! Maligiaq can do this so well that he can drop the paddle and still keep his face just out of the water. When I stopped paddling once, the blade started sinking and the boat flipped upside down again. Instead of setting up for my “sport paddle roll”, I started sculling the paddle back and forth under water. It worked its way back up to the surface. The surface came down towards my face. I did a very easy version of the “hip flick” that is supposed to be the key to good rolling. My face came out of the water and I found myself doing the resting brace again with my mouth calmly breathing air. From here a long sweep to the rear brought my head back up over the boat to sit up. I had just successfully done a sculling roll!
I am convinced that this sculling/resting/roll is the key to learning a low-impact (easy on your joints) kayak roll. I practiced it in The Plunge the next Thursday evening with the wooden paddle and also with a plastic sport paddle. Because of the extra flotation in the wood, the “primitive” Greenland paddle is actually easier to roll with than a modern sport paddle. Once I had the moves down right I was able to do a sculling roll, a sweep roll, and a bracing trick I’ve seen river kayakers do. When I use the term “bracing” it usually means slapping the water or leaning with the paddle into a breaking wave. But I’ve heard river kayakers use the term to mean rolling the boat half way back up with a slap of the paddle. I’ve watched them fall over, slap the water with the paddle, and bounce back up. When I tried this, the boat usually continued on over until I was upside down. But after Maligiaq’s workshop I see that what the river boaters are doing is related to doing a resting brace. The trick is twisting your body to point your face up, and slapping the water with a backwards sweep. Now I can do this so vigorously that my head goes underwater but the boat doesn’t continue over and we bounce back up!
Several weeks later I was on a SCUBA diving trip and had some extra time after a dive. While still wearing my wetsuit and hood, I took both of my sit-on-top kayaks out into Van Damme Cove and tried rolling them. To do this I had to wear thigh straps and remove the big high seatbacks so I could lean back far enough. I was able to do the resting brace in the short Frenzy kayak and eventually roll it up on either side. The Scupper Pro kayak has a lump behind the seat that got in my way when trying to swing back up from the resting brace. So I was unable to get it to roll before I got completely exhausted and had to quit.
Back to the cold waters of Princeton Harbor, the workshop was interrupted for an interesting demonstration. Jim Kokek is a boat builder, the man who builds the infamous kevlar Tsunami X15 “rocket kayak”. He was out on the bay with the latest model of the X15, a boat that looks like it fell off of a passing UFO. Maligiaq was paddling in a skin boat that he had made from nylon stretched over a scrap lumber frame he put together in the previous two weeks. Jim tried out the wooden paddle (also recently carved) and was able to roll his boat up with a great deal of effort. Then they swapped boats in mid water and Maligiaq taught Jim how to roll up with a spear thrower (a flat piece of wood smaller than a paddle blade). To do the rolls, Jim had to put on Maligiaq’s jacket/sprayskirt so Maligiaq put on Jim’s helmet while sitting in the X15. An Eskimo in spaceman garb.