I’m back from five days on Hunting Island, South Carolina (near Beaufort) for a four-day Sea Kayak Camp with Ben Lawry, John Carmody and Peter Casson assisting. I travelled down with Rich Gagliardi from AKT and borrowed his Anas for the course. Overall, it was a great weekend – I learned a lot, pleasantly surprised myself in a few areas and was appropriately humbled in many others. I’ve posted a few photos from the weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t have a waterproof enclosure for my camera and so I don’t have any action shots on the water.

We spent a great deal of time in the surf, getting comfortable with breaking waves and the soup. These are conditions with which I have very little experience and needless to say, I rolled quite often – but I managed to never come out of my boat. That alone was a big boost to my confidence, but I clearly need to spend more time in those conditions.

One of the highlights was Ben’s forward stroke class. I’d heard such rave reviews about this class and wasn’t disappointed. Ben teaches a Swedish style (racing inspired wing stroke) forward stroke, which differs slightly from the style that I was originally taught, but it turns out that the mechanics of my stroke are really quite similar to the Swedish style – I just need to tweak a few things. Mechanics aside, my timing is terrible. Despite what I think my body is doing, its impossible to hide from the camera and the video feedback made it very clear that I’m wasting a big portion of the catch. How to fix it is the problem. Improving my flexibility and balance will help my reach, but I need much more than that alone. I am hopeful that I can avoid completely starting from scratch and just work on finding a better trigger to setup the power phase of the stroke.

But before I lose you with the details of my forward stroke, I should also mention the other big highlight of the course. On Saturday, we headed out for a long trip in the afternoon session that left us paddling under darkness for several hours of the return trip. Paddling on the open ocean in the darkness of a new moon is quite an experience. Night vision takes over, depth perception disappears, shapes and shades of gray replace color recognition. Sound becomes the primary sense, but the dull roar of crashing waves dampens that too. The body focuses on the movement of the boat as the waves slip past. The imagination wants to replace the missing sensory input with fears, and it can be difficult to keep that in check. The trip ended with a challenging and exhilirating navigation of the surf zone in complete darkness (3-4 ft breaking waves) – no one injured or lost.