Most of the time. It's not enough

I have concluded that I am at odds with most or, at the very least, much of what is put forth as sea paddling's best practices, and I'm ok with that now. When I say "put forth" I mean the answers provided by instructors when I ask questions, what is published by notables in the various web and print venues, and the actions and non-actions I witness on and off the water.

I just subscribed to the electronic edition of Ocean Paddler magazine and was reading an article about a rescue technique in which it was stated that the swimmer should go to the bow of their boat and adopt the HELP position (HELP stands for Heat Escape Lessening Position). The other day I was out and mentioned this to a couple of instructors I was paddling with and mentioned, if we got into some decent conditions, I'd like to try this HELP on the bow thing. At least one of them said they advocate sending the swimmer to the bow. It might have been more than one I don't recall since my brain had sort of crawled into a shell of self doubt.

See, I'm not a go-to-the-bow kinda guy. I'm a close-to-the-cockpit kinda guy and I'm pretty damned adamant about it. I have several reasons for being that way, but there are two that stand out. The first reason is that it's what my regular (regular as in usual, not necessarily normal) coaches taught me. I'm not usually one to slavishly follow the teachings of much of anyone but my coaches are pretty spiffy and, having no evidence to the contrary, accepting their opinion didn't seem like a bad thing. The second reason is that, despite the guidance of my spiffy coaches, I have gone to the bow of boats under instruction from rescuers (and instructors) who were, evidently, part of the go-to-the-bow crew. While there at the bow I have twice been smacked on the head. Hard. I saw stars once, but that was a boat loaded with supplies for 5 days so it was heavy.

5 days is a great trip length by the way. It's long enough to actually feel like you've gotten away, and short enough that you have room for plenty of beer and wine.

Anyway, I was fine, I had a helmet on. I don't know enough about head trauma to speculate what might have happened if I hadn't but I'm totally comfortable saying it would have seriously sucked. These events happened in reasonable conditions, tide rips running from 4-5kts and standing waves from 1.5-3ft. I can't tell you how many times I've been at the bow during a rescue. More than 20 and less than 50 for sure. So most of the time being at the bow has not been a problem.

But here's the thing, and the realization I came to after coming out of my shell of self doubt. "Most of the time" is just not good enough. At least it isn't for me. Most of the time I don't get smacked on the head has to be damning with faint praise, hasn't it? Most of the time I don't need a chart. Most of them time I don't need a compass. Most of the time nobody gets hurt. Most of the time nobody gets scared enough to never get on the water again. Most of the time I don't swim. Most of the time I don't need my radio, tow belt, spare paddle, food, water, dry clothes, to read the forecast, to know the tides and currents...

Within the bounds of understanding I want all the time. And that means I'm going to wear my tow belt on lakes. And keep a compass in my life jacket. Bring a stocked first aid kit with me on every outing. And stay away from the pointy ends of boats during rescues, even if it's in a pool and to teach that to everyone who will listen. If someone tells me they're not bringing a chart onto the ocean, or they haven't checked conditions before a trip, or tells me I'm being silly for packing my dry clothes bag because we're just going over there, I know that I can add "because most of the time nothing happens" to their sentence.

I have no delusions that, in fact, all of the time things will work out no matter what I do. All the time is a goal, and a desirable one at that. At least I think so. But I'm entirely comfortable now in my belief that most of the time "most of the time" is not enough.

Is Sea Kayaker mag relevant any more?

When I started paddling about 5 or 6 years ago I would pick up a copy of Sea Kayaker magazine every time it came out, or nearly every time, and read it cover to cover. Cover. To. Cover. A couple weeks ago I picked up a copy of Sea Kayaker magazine. It was my first in a year and a half, maybe two years. I don't read SK mag anymore, but a friend of mine suggested I peek at this issue because it was pretty offensive (my word. I forget what he said exactly but he meant offensive.).

I can't tell you exatly what caused me to stop reading SK mag. I suppose that, as with any longish term relationship, it's never one thing. Rather is was sort of a growing loss of respect. A disinterest in the others point of view. I remember, when I was shopping for a boat, I started to go back though my several back issues reading reviews and concluded they were all the same. All boats were equally good, varying only in degrees of initial stability, from excellent to not so good, or whatever same-every-time words the 3 reviewers used. I recall starting to become less and less enthralled by the nearly form-pace-tone identical travelogues. Not that they were bad, more like "dude we've had this conversation a whole bunch of times before.". Just...worn. Ya know?

I do remember the thing that finally caused me to stop buying SK though. It was a technique article about some rescue that involved climbing on the front deck of a boat. It talked about conditions, like you could actually pull this thing off when it really mattered. There were pictures, of course. And one of these pictures shows some kid grabbing an upside down boat, and the next picture shows him lifting the bow of the upside down boat so he can empty it!

Now I'm not (yet) an expert on rescues. But I knew wrong when I saw it. I knew that nobody had done that rescue in what I would call real conditions. Nobody had gone to Yellow Bluff on an ebb, or Cattle Pass on a flood, and really tried it. Because picking up an upside down boat, in real conditions is hard. Climbing onto and balancing upright on a boat, especially in conditions, is hard. And I knew that because I'd tried it. A bunch. And so I knew calling this an "appropriate for conditions" rescue was misleading. So that was it for me and SK mag.

Anyway, like I said, this friend of mine calls and says to check out the latest issue of SK mag because it's offensive (again, my word). So I head out to pick up a copy 'cause, this friend of mine and I, we're pretty similar in our principles so I usually listen to what he's telling me. I mean, not that he isn't often wrong and needs correction or anything but, in principle, pretty similar. And I cracked open this issue of SK mag, flip the pages, same mag, nothings changed, so to business and head right for the editors column called foredeck. Which directs me directly (heh) to the letters section. And it was, as advertised, offensive (my word).

In a nutshell some knucklehead went out in conditions he was, at least in equipment and mentality, entirely unprepared for. No radio, no food, in a fog that prevented him from seeing a break he capsized in. Just really stupid, patzer issues that my regular coach would beat me with a stick for ignoring. But that, evidently, was a topic for an earlier issue. In this, the offensive (my word), issue it's letters about the column describing aforementioned knuckleheads stupidity. One guy calls knucklehead "arrogant" and "egotistical". And, to be honest, I'm with my unknown 'bro here.

In response to this, I think, totally justified name calling SK mag publishes what I'd say are letters from the least skillful apologists I've ever read. First up some guy starts off thanking my new 'bro for his insight, then says he wants to offer a feeble defense of knucklehead. Feeble indeed. He talks about "the history of the human race". He tries to draw parallels to surgeons and astronauts. He talks about "adventurous risk takers", mentions "we need them", and says that if their attitudes grate on us we should "look to ourselves, our inadequacies". I'm pretty sure surgeons don't go into surgery without knowing what the status of the patient is. Really, do you suppose the surgeon is in the OR apologizing because he decided he didn't need his scalpel that day and so didn't bring it? And the astronaut thing? Those guys don't forget stuff or decide that, "well hell, space isn't looking too gnarly to me today, I'm gonna head out without my radio". And talking about my limitations? First, look up ad hominem. Second, I'm gonna work as hard as I need to so nobody has to put their lives at risk to come get me. This isn't about my limitations, it's about some knucklehead selfishly taking more than he's entitled to because he lacks an imagination and has undeserved feelings of superiority.

(I am, if you can't tell, seriously disgusted with this horrible excuse for meaningful elucidation of an issue).

We're then treated to a letter from knucklehead saying (my interpretation), "well shucks, I promised my wife I'd pick her up, and it wasn't that bad for a couple days before so I just, you know, figured it'd be ok. But I hope you learn from my mistake". I'm not gonna beat knucklehead up here. He at least wrote this whole thing up, which I think shows some real serious integrity. I'm gonna stick with calling him knucklehead here though since, when I make mistakes like this that's what I call myself (but I work really hard to not make his kind of excuses).

Right, so I'm red faced at this point but turn back to where this ridiculousness started, the editors column, foredeck. I take a breath, pour a glass of wine, and start reading. And I'm told by the editor of SK mag that "It's safe to say that Michael Powers (the knucklehead ed.) is an expert kayaker.". Expert kayaker, says the editor of SK magazine. Lemme think...hmm...nope, don't think so. I'm gonna have to stick with knucklehead.

I didn't get much further. Essentially SK gave knucklehead the chance to take the high road, which he sort of did, and then tells us explicitly that he's an expert and implicitly, by publishing the he's-like-an-atronaut letter, that if we don't chalk this up to boys being boys it's due to some innate inadequacies of our own, and, again implicitly by publishing knuckleheads response, that this error is understandable because he promised his wife he'd pick her up.

That's just spectacular. God forbid I ever have to call the Coast Guard for a rescue, but if I do SK mag has well prepared me. I can just say, "sorry you had to jump out of the helo from way up there, swim to me in the 50 degree water and otherwise risk injury and death on my behalf. But I'm totally late to pick up my wife so I had to chance it and, besides, it's not that I was arrogant it's that you have inadequancies. Now take me home.". Hell yeah! Thanks SK mag!

So that's it. My friend was right I think, it was offensive (my word). SK mag has taken the editorial position that an "expert" kayaker is one who hits the Oregon coast with no food or radio and in fog. Their position is that if I feel this was caused by arrogance then I'm really not accepting my own inadequacies and should be grateful people make stupid, dangerous mistakes so I might learn a lesson that I don't need to learn in this way. And that if I have a prior engagement then it's ok to take terrible risks so as not to be late. That last might perhaps apply only to family though. If you're late for, say, a job interview and it's foggy and you forgot your most basic kit, best to stay on the beach. Maybe. I dunno, you'd have to ask SK mag.

These are not my perspectives. I define an expert differently. I think arrogance is am entirely reasonable conclusion to arrive at when doing a root cause analysis. And I'm sitting here hard pressed to think of any type of engagement that would have me say it's ok to put in without the proper gear just so I'm not late. I'm pretty sure, at the least hopeful, that my wife would rather have me late than dead. Nope, SK mag is really not at all relevant to who I hope I am and strive to be as a paddler.

But that's just me.

Paddling Science: Tale of the Tape

I've been thinking about the contents of my repair kit recently and that's perhaps a sad commentary on my life. In any case, one of the things that should probably be in a repair kit, says I, is some sort of tape. I happen to have a bit of Denso tape in my kit, which is really good for fixing things like a hole in a boat. But Denso is pretty expensive and can be terribly messy to work with. You really wouldn't want to use it for, say, well, anything but patching holes in boats probably. Honestly, it's a helluva mess to work with. So when someone in my club announced a surf zone play day (SZPD. I love acronyms) I thought, "Sweet, this is a great time to test some tapes. And to surf a bit.". An SZPD is, not surprisingly I hope, a day to play in the surf zone. This particular day turned out to be surprisingly beautiful. Blue skies, reasonably warm temperatures and gentle 2s and 3s that were only a little dumpy. I even put sunscreen on.

I'd chosen two tapes to test. Here they are:

I picked Duck tape because it comes in cool colors. There was hot pink, red, green, the orange you see here, and a bunch of others. If it worked I could get several rolls of different colors and make special tape designs on my boat or something. The other one, as you see, is Gorilla tape. I got that because the glue (Gorilla Glue) by the same manufacturer claims that it's 100% waterproof and for a couple of things I've used it for that's been true. I guess you could say I got the Duck because it was cool, and the Gorilla because it was pragmatic.

What with this tape testing being really scientific and all I didn't want to limit my tests to a single boat. So I enlisted one of the people who showed up for the SZPD and happened to have a plastic boat. Here are the test subjects:

The Romany there is mine and it's a fiberglass boat. The Necky is the volunteers and it's some sort of plastic. I decided I was going to simulate patching a small hole under the seat of each of the boats even though I wouldn't use the tape for that if I had some Denso with me. Here's the tape on the volunteer boat:

You can see there that the tape has been measured and cut with some precision because, as I said, this is a scientific endeavor. 

Here's the tape on my boat:

Note again please the extreme care with which the tape has been measured and cut. Also, it was agreed that in terms of Rippability(tm) the Duck tape was far easier to rip. That said the Gorilla tape was easy to rip, just not as easy as the Duck tape.

With the tape applied it was time to get on the water. Note that the tape was applied to dry boats. This being an SZPD the owner of the volunteer boat wanted to practice launching into waves. Here she goes:

Despite what you're seeing the waves actually did get a little bigger than what's in the picture here. I should also mention that I didn't get explicit permission to use the volunteers name, so I'm just going to keep calling her Volunteer. To protect her privacy and stuff.

Here our nameless Volunteer is after getting out:

For myself I carried my boat into the water and plopped in, so the tape on my boat didn't have the more real world treatment that Volunteer subjected her tape to.

In the event we were out for about 2.5 hours or so. I only got put on the beach once, meaning I only subjected the tape on my boat to one knuckle walk on the sandy beach. Volunteer swam a couple times and so ended up putting her tape through rather more harrowing circumstances due to trips to the beach to empty out her boat.

By way of demonstrating the really gentle conditions of the day, as well as my suck ass timing when it comes to taking action pictures, here's one of the participants breaking through a wave:

Suck ass timing.

I guess I should have mentioned this before, but the SZPD took place in Monterey, CA. Monterey is a pretty nice place I think. Here's a picture of our view from the water:

I've never been to the Mediterranean but I've seen pictures and I think they look like Monterey. Or vice versa. Whatever. It's awfully nice.

While I'm at it, take a look at this:

That's a rainbow and, at the end of the rainbow, are two coast guard boats. They were doing some sort of exercise. There were a heck of a lot of folks in life jackets on the white boat. The other boat kept zooming in, then out, then in. No idea what they were doing, but I've never taken a picture of a rainbow before so I'm glad this sort of came out.

Right, enough of that, there is science to be done here. Like I said we were out about 2.5 hours or so. Upon arrival back at our put in, here's the results:

As you can see,  the gentler treatment the tape received on my boat resulted in the Duck tape remaining affixed and the Gorilla tape actually looking pretty darn good. Meanwhile the Duck tape has fallen of of Volunteers boat and the Gorilla tape is barely hanging on.

So there you have it. What conclusions can be drawn from this experiment? Well I'm not a scientist so who the hell knows for sure, but I'm going to keep a little Gorilla tape in my repair kit. Many thanks to the unnamed volunteer for her assistance and to everyone else who was there for making it a nice day of science on the water.

Kayak Kamp with B&S

Ben Lawry runs this multi-day class he calls Kayak Kamp where, evidently, he travels to various places and, through the auspices of a local paddling shop, sets up Kamp. You can read about it here. One of the local joints near me, California Canoe and Kayak (Cal Kayak), organized Ben coming out my way and paired him with Sean Morley for the duration of the Kamp. Sean is a not bad, now local to me, paddler you might have heard of.

I'm always (always) on the hunt for what I consider to be good coaches. Last year at the Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium (jeez that's long. Just think GGSKS) I got to spend an hour or so with Ben. That's insufficient of course to decide if we (he and I) could work effectively together, but I really got some useful stuff out of that hour so I jumped at the chance to spend some quality time with Ben. Not like, you know, quality time. We didn't have dinner or anything...

The way this Kamp thing works is pretty interesting and, I suspect, pretty difficult to get right. First off there is no syllabus for the class. When you get there you're asked what 3 things you want to work on (e.g. navigation, forward stroke, rough water skills, etc) and that is written on a white board (NB: I believe it was 3. I might be wrong in the count, but it is a bounded list). This list ends up being what's taught in the class. Secondly, at least in this Kamp, the students are not interviewed to determine their skill level. There can be people who've paddled for years along side folks who've been paddling less than a year and struggle a bit with a T rescue in the calm. And there was. Finally, Ben is not a local. He's been to the San Francisco I don't know how many times, but he very clearly is not yet intimately familiar with the area. For that he relies on knowledge provided by the person from the local joint he works with which in this case was Sean, as I mentioned.

All of those combined challenges made me really curious as to how it was going to work out. I'm just a beginning coach but I have an inkling of how hard this stuff really is and this sounded damned difficult. But it all seemed to work out. I, at least, was satisfied. Of the, what, 9 or 10 things in the syllabus the only one not covered at all was navigation. But we did cover topics as wide ranging as surf landings to reverse sweeps in flat calm, to rolling. It was pretty impressive I thought.

I do like Bens style. He does a fair bit of this-then-thating. An example. First day and we're still not in our boats. He has everyone hold their paddle up in the air, blades high. Everyone close their eyes. Point at your blade. Open your eyes. Who got it wrong? So we don't need to look at our blades to know where we are, do we? I really liked that.

He also blurbs out some really intriguing stuff using this style. Everyone sit on the ground like you were in your kayak. Ok, have your partner try to knock you over by pushing on your shoulder. Ok, now put your knees together. Have your partner try to knock you over again. Which is more stable? Knees together right? So you're more stable with your knees together...any questions? . This kind of mind blowing unexpected stuff keeps coming for a little while at a pretty fast pace in bite size chunks. Blurbs as I say. But not blurbs in a bad way. I didn't really get a chance to experiment with most of this stuff, but it's interesting as hell.

Despite the fact that there is no before-you-get-there syllabus for the class, it's really obvious that Ben has one set up in his head once everyone get's their preferences on the white board. I've been in classes, sometimes with the very best of coaches, where they've pretty obviously run out of things to teach or don't quite know where to go from here. This didn't happen much at all here. I mean there were a few bumps. We went looking for an eddy line that wasn't there for example. But the recovery was really good I thought and continuity was well preserved.

I guess out of pure necessity Ben has to individualize quite a bit. I'm not really at the new paddler end of things any more but I very rarely found myself doing something I would consider myself reasonably skilled in. For example instead of doing T rescues in the calm me and Matt spent time with a scoop variation in which the victim is able to minimally assist. Ben checked in every now and again as one would expect and require. Really well done I thought. I did get a glimpse of the potential difficulties in this format of class though. At one point a portion of the class was identified as been more skilled than the others. They were taken aside and asked if they wanted to move into more challenging conditions. In the event the answer was no, but I could see how it would have been a touch less than optimal to have to have to split the class. Note that I'm talking from the coaches perspective here. I don't think the students would have suffered at all.

There was a bit of a mistake made during the class I thought. As I suggested there was a wide range of skills represented in the class and we ended up getting into conditions that were too uncomfortable for some folks. So instead of spending effort moving forward they were spending effort staying up right. Pretty classic issue. Ben had myself and a couple of others do some towing to help out. From a purely mercenary perspective it was a good thing since I got to do my first real life tow, so that was cool. The cause of the (I say) error was, I think, Sean being too optimistic about everyone's skill level and/or fitness and, I think, Ben perhaps not being conservative enough with respect to Sean's choice of venue at that moment. (Side note: I have a little more to say about this below).

Lawry is, I think, a pretty good coach which is really just a way for me to say I was able to learn from him and in my estimation others could as well. Umm...let me put it this way. I was talking to someone a little while ago and I said I can tell anyone how to do a forward stroke but, at this point, I can teach only a select few. One of my criteria for the good coach label, if you will, is that they don't need the "select few" qualification. So Lawry, I think, falls into that camp.

Hopefully they'll run this Kamp again next year. Or at least one on this coast. My impression was that there's a fair bit of depth that I haven't gotten into with Ben yet. You know, the subtleties of the sport that lead you towards elegantly effective simplicity on the water. So, yah,  I hope he runs a Kamp out here again. I'll go.

Circling back to the paragraph above about the mistake. I wrestled a bit with putting that in. Despite the fact that there are, maybe, 3 people who read this drivel I write, I still don't want say stuff that's hurtful or whatever. The internet never forgets. But I decided to include it and here's why. First I do conclude that the need to tow was caused by an error. Second I'm frankly sick to death of "best coach ever", "learned so much", "had a great time and learned a lot" type of comments (reviews if you prefer) when it comes to classes, symposiums, coaches, etc. There's another, third, reason also but it's a really big topic on which revelation of my perspectives will be offensive to one, insulting to another and redundant to the third of my 3 readers here. So that's for another post.

I'm where?

"Did you feel that? The wind changed direction to off shore.", I said to Katherine, my paddling partner that day.

Katherine, who is also the president of the kayak (or is it kayaking) club I'm in, had called for a short little coastal paddle. The plan, roughly, was to head out of Santa Cruz harbor, go right, and head down Capitola. It was a nice day, 4ft swell at like 8 seconds or something, winds like 5kts, patchy clouds, slight chance of rain. Just, you know, nice.

Now it turns out that I am, with very little doubt, an exceptionally well trained sea kayaker. This is not arrogance as there isn't much credit I can take for the circumstance. All I've done is seek out and train with the best coaches I could find and afford in terms of money and time. And while, in many regards, my on the water skills do not do justice to the quality of my coaches and training, when it comes to the non-motor skill bits of the sport I feel rather the opposite.

One "skill", if you can call it that, that I practice vigorously is dynamic risk assessment. Different coaches and instructors of mine have called it different things. Situational awareness. Environmental awareness. Attention to detail. Probably a few others. For various reasons I think dynamic risk assessment (DRA, because I'm really down with TLAs), is the most useful nomenclature and that's what I use. And DRA is something my regular coaches pretty much constantly talk and question about. Regardless of what one calls it though, all this is about is constantly evaluating the conditions in which you are immersed for changes that might demand a change in what you are doing or had planned to do. So if you're paddling along and hear thunder, maybe you'd want to think about getting off the water. For example.

So when I felt the wind coming from the shore I noticed. In fact the forecast had called for NW winds at 5 and, given our orientation, the wind was now NE. Still around 5 but, as I say, offshore. And offshore winds, as I'm sure you know or have been taught can be a really big deal. Not at 5, but if wind is offshore it's worth paying attention to regardless of speed. And it was this that caused me to make mention of it to Katherine. But I'm not at all sure what made me do what I did next.

I always (always) carry a compass in my PFD (life jacket, whatever) and I pulled it out and took a look. And I looked up and sez to Katherine, "Katherine, which way are we heading?" to which she replied, quickly and without much thought because she was watching some boardies, "West". Which is totally what I had thought because Capitola was directly behind us, it's on the Pacific coast so, sure, we were heading west. But she stopped watching the boardies when I said, "We're heading south." and looked at me for a second with a how-did-you-get-that-wrong look. So I paddled over and showed her my compass and damn. South.

On the one hand this was really good. The winds weren't NE and offshore, they were NW just like NOAA called for. On the other hand this was pretty bad. I didn't know where we were. I mean I knew where we were I the sense of, you know, there's Capitola right there for chrisakes. But in the sense of like mayday mayday, we're at such and so location I was pretty fucked. Had I been asked to swear on my life as to our location, I'd have sworn about one and a half miles west of Capitola. And since, at some level, mayday mayday is nauticalese for I-swear-on-someones-life you don't want to get what you're saying wrong very often.

So much then for my feeling good about my non-motor skills. Sure, I pay attention to the wind, the water, who's looking nervous, where the boomers are. All of that DRA stuff. But I couldn't have told you correctly where to find us if someones life had depended on it. Which, as I mentioned, it probably would have if I had had to tell someone at that moment. In my defense, this isn't a place I've paddled very often. Maybe once or twice. To my great chagrin though I didn't bring a chart.

It was an inexpensive lesson this time. I hope I learned something. I wonder what I'm gonna learn next and hope it's as inexpensive.

Too damn nice

I decided to paddle around Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island this past weekend. I wasn't expecting serious conditions but I really wasn't expecting this:

This is just outside the Berkeley Marina at about 10AM and is also the place we have done several rough water rescue practices. It looks a little different then. Here's why:

This is directly west of where the first picture was taken. I just rotated about 90 degrees from the first picture and shot it. It's hard to see but that's the Golden Gate bridge there. Just past that is the Pacific Ocean, and just past that is Japan. So when a west wind is blowing there's a decent fetch and you get some nice sized wind waves.


Despite the overly calm conditions it was of course great to be on the water. In general the San Francisco bay is a pretty nice place to paddle. That said it's a populous place and with that comes a great deal of human impact. Like this:

See that cloud right there in the middle? It's not a cloud. It's something to do with refining or chemical operations there in Richmond. All of those white dots towards the right are tanks. There's a bunch of other tanks but they painted those brown and from this distance you can't actually see them, but they're there.

To my eyes at least not all human artifacts are terrible. Here's San Francisco from the north west corner of Treasure Island:

That sloping down bit on the left side is the actual north west tip of Treasure Island (TI). TI is actually an artificial island built in the 1930's for some reason or other. Umm...right, Wikipedia says 1939 for the Expo, whatever that is. At some point it became a navy base. I know that because I spent two weeks there waiting to go to Okinawa while I was in the navy.

Since we're doing tourist stuff here:

Almost exactly between that island on the left (it's Alcatraz by the way) and that ship there on the right, to the right of the right hand tower of the Golden Gate if you can see it, is the venue for the Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium.

This here is just south of the west side of the Bay bridge:

This is the side of the bridge that didn't fall down in the 1989 Loma Prieta earth quake. The water is a little jobblier here because of currents. This was about 11:16 which was max ebb that day. The current was only about 1.4 knots or so, but I'd stayed close to shore to take advantage of the little bit of eddy current that was available. Why fight?

Ok, this is the south east corner of Yerba Buena (YB) island:

YB is controlled mostly or entirely by the Coast Guard and they have a bouy repair facility there and that's what this picture is of. Or at least a part of it. There's not much to indicate scale but those bouys are seriously big. Maybe the life ring towards the right hand side of the dock is a decent indicator. Actually here:

That's a little better. You can see that sea gull there on top too.

Up above I talked about the part of the Bay bridge that didn't fall down in the earth quake. The other side, the east side, of the bridge did actually fall down. So they decided to rebuild it. It's only 20 years later so it's still not done, but it's close to done. Here's a picture from down below of a portion of the old bridge that was modified to accomodate construction of the new bridge:

It looks kinda odd for a highway doesn't it? That's the S curve portion of the Bay bridge. They put it in to make room for the new bridge. Here's what it looks like from above:

So one night a while ago someone was going the speed limit, which turned out to be too fast, and went zoom, right over the side. Poor guy died.

Not too many people get to see the new bridge construction up close like you can from a boat. It's pretty interesting to see. It's just so big. Gigantic really. But of all of it I think I enjoyed this part the best:

Can you see that there? It's a ladder. Do you see that next to it? It's a two story building. I can totally hear the conversation that resulted in that ladder being built.

Manager type: ...and then a ladder. From the ground to the supporting structure.


Engineer type: ...Ok. Why?


Manager type: And yellow. It has to be yellow...What do you mean why?


Engineer type: I mean why. Do you know how tall that ladder will be? At least a hundred feet.


Manager type: So?


Engineer type: But who's going to climb it? It's a hundred feet straight up! Would you climb it?


Manger type: Well, no. But we want a ladder. A yellow ladder. It'll look really cool and you never know. Maybe the electricity will go out or something and we'll need to climb up manually to work on the bridge.


Engineer type: <stunned pause> If the electricity is out there's going to be a lot of other reasons why work is going to stop besides just not having a ladder right?


Manager type: <considered reflection> Maybe. But it'll still look cool. It's gotta be yellow though ok?


Engineer type: <sigh> Yellow ladder, more than 100 feet tall. Sure. No problem.


Several weeks later:


Manager type: I gotta fever! A fever for more 100 foot yellow ladders!

Manager type: Look, I gotta have more yellow ladders!

Manager type: Yah! Now we're rockin!


I'm not really a sports fan but  I do enjoy football season. It seems like there's a lot less traffic on the bay when there's a game and that's great. The bay can get seriously busy some days and it's entirely not pleasant to be a lone paddler then. So I was happy to run across basically no traffic at all during my little trip. There were a couple of boats but no big deal and everyone was sticking to channels and seemed to be well behaved. A little further north though it looked pretty crazy:

All of those white things are sails. For sail boats probably. I'm guessing there was some sort of sailing event going on but who knows. In any case I was happy to be as far away from them as I was. Oh, and I'm not sure if you can make it out, but see that red blotch towards the right of the picture? About a third of the way in from the right edge, right on the water? That's Red Rock. It's an island and it's for sale. Seriously. For $20,000,000.00 you can own it. I don't think you can build anything on it though.


So that's it. A an uneventful trip on a warm, calm day on a part of the bay. There are worse ways of spending ones time.

Really, can we finally get past this?

Imagine my excitement when I read that Heliconia Press was launching something called Paddling TV. Here's the press release if you like that sort of stuff:

Heliconia Launches Paddling TV

I guess not surprisingly sea kayaking is part of this as the imaginatively named Sea Kayaking TV. I found it at YouTube. Here's a link:

Sea Kayaking TV

Of course I ran right over there and started checking things out. Wow, sea kayaking on TV! Sort of. It's really on the web so calling it TV is, strictly speaking, wrong. But whatever, right? It's video stuff about sea kayaking! Maybe they'll be covering expeditions and expeditioners! Or different paddling destinations around the world! Excited, as I say.

I was a little disappointed to see that, at least for now, it's just a bunch of short instructional videos. Sigh. Oh well, maybe they'll do some of that culture and community stuff in the future. I don't know about you, but I have a fairly hard time learning from a video. I do have a few instructional videos. And I've probably picked up a tip or two from them. But without some form of feedback, be it another human or just  me feeling the water, I really don't learn very much.  But whatever. It's Sea Kayaking TV! It's a start and the cool stuff will be coming! Excited, as I say.

Anyway, what the heck, being I was there I decided I might as well take a look at some of this stuff. Just to sort of get a whiff of the operation. The one I chose was called Re-entering a Sit-Inside Kayak - Part 1. I got to watch an advertisement about something but it had bike polo in it, so that's way cool. And then some guy named, evidently, Ken Whiting came on screen and started talking. Good screen presence I thought. I like his delivery and stuff. I'm not a professional critic or anything BTW.

So I'm watching this video and, not surprisingly, it's pretty basic. It's about getting into your boat after all. But it's saying things like, "...your first job as a swimmer is to keep hold of all of your gear...", which is totally reasonable. It talked about air bags, and some other stuff that I thought was, again, totally reasonable. Which is great because really getting back in your boat is really not a particularly contentious topic is it? Well, at least I thought so. I got to the 1:37 mark in the video and basically started throwing up. Why don't you go take a look. Pay attention at the 1:37 mark especially. Keep your bucket close at hand. Go, I'll wait...

Right, so did you notice anything wrong? I did. How about this. Wrong. It was wrong. Here's one definition of wrong from the web:

incorrect: not correct; not in conformity with fact or truth; "an incorrect calculation"; "the report in the paper is wrong"; "your information is wrong"; "the clock showed the wrong time"; "found themselves on the wrong road"; "based on the wrong assumptions"


Let's review a couple of errors:

"...identify the bow of the upside down kayak...". Wrong. First step, tell the swimmer to flip their boat. This is so all of those handy dandy deck lines and toggles and easy grabby things are there for you to grab.

"...make their way to the bow of the rescuers boat...". Wrong. When in conditions the ends of a boat are the most dangerous places to be. They are relatively pointy and experience the greatest potential for movement as opposed to, say, the area around the cock pit. Which is where the swimmer should be.

"...they should go to the stern of their kayak where they can press down on the back of the boat...". Wrong. See above. Also, if the swimmer loses contact with the boat they are now rather a far way away. Oh, and have you ever actually tried to pull a boat onto your deck to empty it with someone on the back? How about a full boat?

"...the rescuer will hold the bow of the kayak...". Wrong. Because what the video is showing is the rescuer lifting up the bow of the boat. Now don't talk to me about the swimmer is pushing down and all that happy horse shit. First, I defy you to lift the bow of a boat loaded with a weeks provisions. Go ahead, try. Second, why do you want to lift the bow? Why expose yourself to a potential injury in conditions that knocked someone else over? There's a better way.

Really, haven't we gotten past teaching this method by now? It's slow, it's incredibly inefficient and in conditions, where you will most likely need it, it's dangerous. So here's a tip. If you want to take a beginning class, before you sign up, ask what the steps are in a T-Rescue. It doesn't matter that you might not understand the reply. Just understand this. If the person on the other end of the phone/email/text/whatever says, at any point, "and then the swimmer pushes down on the end of the boat", hang up and go seek competent instruction. You'll probably have a better time, you'll be more likely to stay with the sport and I'll be happier.

Push down on the end of the boat. Jesus.

Yoga or Drown

I've been futzing about with something called a balance brace. Sometimes it's called, apparently, a static brace. Here's a picture just so it's clear what I'm talking about:

That's not me by the way. You can tell it's not me because I can't do that. If that was me there would be several differences:

1. I would have a real paddle not a flat stick
2. I wouldn't have that little wood thing on my deck because I'll (probably) never hunt seals
3. My face would be about 3 inches under water and I'd be drowning

So, like I said, I've been fooling about with this balance brace thing trying to get it because it looks cool and, no need to tell you I'm sure,  looking cool on the water is a strong motivator to do more or less purposeless things with ones boat and body. But despite my motivation I can't get it. I think I'm in the proper position. I'm definitely on the side of the boat like that. I think my back is flat. The only thing I can guess is wrong is that I don't have the boat far enough off of me to hold me up. Which is to say, if my assessment is correct, I'm not flexible enough to do this thing. Reducing my potential OTWC (On The Water Cool(tm)) factor a bit and that's disappointing. One way to get flexible, or at least the one that pretty much everyone recommends, is Yoga (their capitalization, not mine). I'd rather have my OTWC go to 0 and drown than go to another Yoga class or even watch another Yoga video.

Look, who decided this Yoga crap had to be all about calm and stuff? It's damned annoying. The classes I've been to are all pretty much the same. You go into a basically and drab empty room. Sometimes there's some incense or whatever burning that, admittedly, has a not unpleasant odor. There's some ching-chingy type music playing. The students are sort of hushed in their conversation. Then you bend yourself into various positions of discomfort and at the end you take a short nap. The instructor does some hands-together thing and says some word that begins with an N and everyone get's up and quietly files out. It sucks my will to live.

Why not have a yoga room that isn't so empty and bland? Like have posters on the wall. Of awesome yoga dudes doing awesome yoga things? With explosions and stuff behind them! And maybe just open the damned windows instead of that incense crap. I'm inside most of the day for work. Why would anyone think a smokey inside would be a good thing? Right, so the ching-chingy music just has to stop. I'm not certain but I think I read they use it at Guantanamo. This is a delicate subject of course, music being such a personal thing. But maybe a little Metallica. I can imagine others would object to that choice and I'm (trying to be) flexible here so whatever really. But not the ching-chingy crap. Oh and if I want to take a nap sometime during the day would you mind terribly if I did it like most others? Drink a couple beers for lunch and nod off at work. When Yoga stretchy time is over I just want to get the hell out. I'm there to get flexible so I can maximize my OTWC factor, not lay on a too thin pad with overly quiet strangers trying to nap without a drink.

I'm really not sure that I'm ever going to get this balance brace thing though.

The Right Thing

The Right Thing is a fairly obvious concept. Something, whatever it is, is clearly correct despite the fact that no a priori correct answer is known to exist. It's not 2+2=4. That's of course right. But it's not The Right Thing. The Right Thing is more about an elegant or well executed solution to a (usually) non-trivial problem that has all the witnesses of the solution pretty much nodding in agreement, "Yup, that's The Right Thing". In the paddling world it might be the leg drop.

The leg drop, in case you're unaware, is (among other things) part of edging ones boat. I was at a lake once futzing about with some folks from my club and I mentioned the leg drop, which I'd just learned, and nobody had heard of the leg drop. So I explained and everyone tried it and nodded their head. The leg drop is an instance of The Right Thing.

One of the key components of an instance of The Right Thing is the oh yah moment. Blogs are a bad place to try to convey tonality but I'll try here. Oh yah, when it comes to The Right Thing, isn't uttered like "Aha", or "I see". The Right Thing "Oh Yah" is expressed more as "Excellent" or "Ahhh". Maybe like finding your number of a sleep number bed. Or having your first 18 year old Scotch after drinking 10 year olds for a long time.

The Right Thing is not always something particularly clever or insightful (The best instance of The Right Thing I know if is in fact both, but I'd have to talk about locking overhead versus time to create a mutex and that seems a little out of place here). But The Right Thing, whenever or where ever you run across it, is definitive. It establishes a bar, or a method of operation for whatever it is being considered.

I took (and passed) my BCU Level 1 Coach class with Body Boat Blade last week. It was I think The Right Thing. Let me show you four pictures to illustrate why I think so:

Some of the boats for the class

Paddles too

This is what we all came up with as having been discussed

Bill Lozano, from New York, on the left

What do all these mean? Essentially 3 things. First, a huge amount of effort went into obtaining use of the proper amount and type of equipment for the class. I don't think there was a single instance where anyone had to sit on shore or be in a boat, or use a paddle, that wasn't exactly appropriate for the task at hand. Second, the amount of information covered was large but, as one might infer from the acronyms (I'm a big fan of acronyms) and doodles and like that, it was presented in a form that can easily be remembered, is actionable and of course relevant (the word BLOG there is for BLOG, but I think that snuck in mistakenly somehow). Third, that's Bill Lozano there on the left in the last picture. Bill was flown in from New York, and took time away from his business, in large part to ensure that Level 1 Coaches are being taught (and assessed) as similarly as possible in this country. Note please that the fee for the class did not go up because Bill was there.

I take a fair number of classes (a couple a year) and so consider myself a reasonably well educated consumer with regard to paddle sport education. I mentioned that The Right Thing often times sets a bar or a standard for something. This class really set a bar for me. The obvious effort that went into the whole thing is, and probably will for some time remain, a standard that I'll aspire to in any class I run. The whole event was professionals doing a professional job. Nothing was dialed in, half wayed, or any less good as it reasonably could have been (I'm thinking in terms of more sunshine here).

There's a lot more to say about this class, and I will over time, but I think this was the most important.

Assessment assessment

Welp, like I said before, I failed my 3 star but I thought I'd talk about the experience a bit 'cause it was, after all, pretty cool.

By way of intro the 3 star is a BCU assessment for intermediate skills. That makes sense as there are 5 stars and 3 is in the middle. Brits are nothing if not mathematically coherent I guess. The specifics are in the 3 star syllabus which you can read here (warning: PDF).  The assessors were Leon and Shawn of Body Boat Blade and Bill Lozano of Atlantic Kayak Tours in New York. Bill flown by L&S to work on the assessment and other things, but more on that in other posts.

The venue for the assessment was Obstruction Pass on Orcas Island. I've been to Obstruction Pass a few times and it is an excellent place to play around. It has currents that are easy to handle, a nice eddy line to play on and generally low consequences for errors. The weather for the day was not as nice. The prediction was 10-20kts in the AM, increasing to 15-25kts in the afternoon, with rain.

For myself I was flat out tired and it showed. This was day 6 of 6 of paddling stuff and it had taken it's toll. I will strive to not do assessments on the last day of a set of instruction days. There were some kids (twenty X year olds) in the class who were also on day 6 but they seemed in good spirits with adequate energy. Fuckers.

So, how was the assessment? Pretty good overall. We were certainly on the highest end of the environmental conditions for a 3 star assessment. I do wonder if I'll feel like I cheated if I do this again (probably) and the conditions are rather more benign. There were several moments where the process felt sort of boot campy to me (yes, I was in boot camp once).

After lunch, still on the beach, it was announced we were going to have a friendly race, which was not something I wanted to hear. I was tired. The twenty-Xers were semi-chomping at the bit, trading small jokes and like that. Fuckers. Anyhow, Shawna tells us the Leon has a gash in his head, Bill has a hole in his boat, Allen (another guy/story) was cold, and she needed to make contact with the outside world. Run to your boat and bring back what you have to solve those problems. As fast as you can! And off goes everyone else. I trudged over got my crap and brought it back. Last.

Why was that a race? I'm well (well) past the age where I'm going to move quickly at the behest of anyone without understanding pretty much exactly why I should. Not that I mind moving quickly, but arbitrary and unnecessary are some of the fastest ways for me to get to derision and dismissal.

Similarly, on the water, there were frequent (endless?) admonished to keep up with the leader. Calls to stay together, don't get strung out. Frequently. A lot. Often. Now I get this one at some level. You can't have communication if you're not close enough to hear what's said, this level of paddling is about being a competent group member, etc. Makes sense. But I swear a little more of that and there'd have been boats ablaze. I just wasn't in the mood.

Outside of that it was a pretty good experience. Most importantly for me it was a complete assessment. That is, unlike the last time I did this, it didn't get stopped at lunch. We went all day, covered all of the syllabus and I got feedback on all of it. So I know what I need to work on, what I'm up to par on, and that stuff. You know, assessed.

And I'd be remiss if I did not mention Bill Lozano as a truly chill and pragmatic guy on the water. 2 examples and then I'm done.

We're doing eskimo rescues. It was a little bouncy and I'm upside down, sweeping hands back and forth, back and forth, as you do. Back and forth, back and forth...so it's been a while. Not long, just longer than normal. Finally I feel a boat hull and start grabbing for the bow. Turns out the rescuer sort of missed and I grab not a bow but a chunk of coaming and spray deck. But there's no way I'm letting go so I sort of drag myself up, he's doing a semi hand-of-divine-being-of-your-choice thing and I come up. The rescuer guy sort of starts explaining what went wrong to Bill who just says something like, They're not gonna just take a bow, they'll grab anything they can. As long as they get up. And next. Just like no big deal.

We're on the beach. I think it was after lunch. Leon is saying something about doing something that was gonna be a real pain in the ass for me (the twenty-Xers seemed unconcerned of course. Fuckers). Head to some beach or something that involved paddling into some strong ass winds and getting admonished (read:yelled at) to keep together forcing me to have to set fire to boats (see above). But I'm tired and cold, and I'm totally not in the mood to set boats on fire, despite the prospect of warmth and entertainment. But Bill, bless him, says quietly "I don't think we need to do that", and voila!, we didn't. Thanks Bill.

I'm a BCU level 1 coach!

Fairly quick update this one. I'm a level 1 coach in the BCU. I failed my BCU 3 star about 40 minutes ago. It's been a spectacular several days.

More later, I need a beer right now.

What next?

This Level 1 coaching class I'm taking is much on my mind these days. I'm not entirely sure where this train is heading but I'm happy to be getting on board. But, I guess like any trip into the unknown, it creates some real concerns. One of my larger concerns is all of the things that I'm not anticipating. 'lemme 'splain.

I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a coach and he told me a story I don't think I could have made up. They're in a class doing what turned out to be a 2 mile crossing. Evidently the conditions were fairly benign, which makes sense since the class is geared towards the improving beginner side of things. Anyway half way into the crossing, a mile from land on both sides, one of the students stops paddling. Just stops and announces, "That's it, I can't go on." Some discussion ensues (surprise) and the student breaks out the "Well, I hurt myself" card. The hurt card of course trumps anything when you're coaching (that whole duty of care thing) so the student had to be towed a mile. Of course the hurt miraculously disappeared and the student was fine for lifting boats, and the next day of the class, etc.

When I heard this I laughed (a lot). But then I got to thinking. If anyone asked me to write down a complete list of things that might go wrong when paddling I'm pretty sure "a student gives up just because" would not be on the list. I mean sure, I'd write down "student becomes exhausted", "student chooses not to participate", hell even "student (really) gets hurt and can't go on". But "give up just because"? UhUh. And what I realized is that if I'm going to actually do this coaching thing I'm going to be faced with this sort of stuff.

If I can used terms I'm used to, essentially I have to be more or less prepared to deal with the set of outputs of autonomous non-linear systems. To be sure the set is bounded. I'm probably never going to have to deal with some student spontaneously combusting seated in their boat (although the solution there is easy. Roll! Roll!).  But really, the surface area of the problem space here is pretty damned large. And really there are two components to this. The first is what should I reasonably be prepared for? The second is what am I reasonably responsible for?

An example. I've got a group on the water with no convenient outs (I said convenient, not easy) and one of the students starts complaining about being too hungry to go on and they have no food. What do? On the one hand, I really don't feel like it's my responsibility to provide food for this person. On the other hand, carrying a snack or snacks in my day hatch is a pretty reasonable preparation I can make (perhaps interestingly, that preparation is to support the other students in the class, not the hungry one). I'm guessing that as I think more about and do more of this coaching stuff more and more of this kind of thing will come up.

When I start considering all of this some of the proscriptions that the BCU coaching scheme has makes sense. Like, strictly, as a level 1 coach the BCU says I can't work on my own except for "taster" sessions on protected waters. Having the time to gain the experience to understand the problem space, at least to an order of magnitude, seems rather useful.

Ya gotta get wet to stay dry

I'm heading up to Body Boat Blade in a few days for, among other things, my 3 star assessment. This is actually my second go at this. I'm still fairly bitter about the last time I did this so I won't talk about it too much but, to be clear, I'm not bitter because I failed (I sort of expected to). Rather because how the assessment was run. Anyway...

I think my bracing is my weakest skill. Like I suspect most people I don't get out on the water enough or as much as I'd like. Work, family, etc all conspire to provide me ample opportunity to stay off the water. And then when I get out one of the last things I want to spend my few hours on the water doing is practicing, say, bracing. I want to go see stuff, enjoy being outside,  all of that. Which I think is a somewhat long way of saying I don't have enough discipline.

So today I went out to the nearbyish lake to do some bracing. It's about 20 minutes away and, this being California with a budget crisis, it costs $8 bucks to touch boat to water. I could drive 40 minutes or so to get to free water but that's too much time out of a work day so $8 a throw it is.

For some reason I always get nervous when I'm going to get wet. But then, when I am wet, I'm fine. Weird. Today I was going through a pretty simple exercise. Lean, low brace, fail, high brace, up. Or that was the plan. I've done this thing a fair bunch of times so no big deal. But today it was lean, low brace, fail, high brace, fail, surprise, roll up. Tried it again. Same thing. It's supposed to be lean, fail, up. I was getting lean, fail, fail, up. That's an extra fail.

In learning to do this high brace stuff my normal coach (normal as in regular or routine. Any other presumed meaning is potentially specious) gave me a great progression to work through. What's nice about it is that I had the tools at hand to sort of start from scratch and figure out what was causing the extra fail. Thankfully, after about 10 minutes, I was back to normal (normal as in regular or routine. Any other presumed meaning is potentially specious). Well, not entirely. I decided today to stick entirely to might right side. I know this is wrong, I should work on both sides, but I pretty well flipped out that I'd lost my high brace and wanted the entire rest of the day to be successful. Tomorrow I'm going back and I'll work on either my left side exclusively or both. Depends. I still have quite a way to go with my braces. I use the paddle too much, I don't have the control to do it as slowly as I've seen it done and like that. But I go all the way over until my back hit's the water and reliably come up. I think (hope) that's good enough for what's coming up. And it's certainly something I can work with.

But all of this is sort of beside the point. I've come to believe that getting wet in controlled conditions is the single best way of staying dry in real world conditions. Believing you can brace up, roll up, cowboy back in, re-enter and roll, etc gives you the confidence that keeps you relaxed and loose in the real world. And being relaxed and loose is pretty important if you want to stay upright in jobbly water. What I need to do is get out more and practice. Pretty much like most people I'd guess.

Fascinating

Some folks in the Netherlands got into some trouble and took the time to do a post mortem on the trip. Here's a link the the .PDF. It's 20 pages but just a great and worthwhile read.

The politics of paddles

I mentioned in my last post that a bunch of folks in my club went around Pt. Pinos. One thing occurred that illustrates, I think, one of the difficulties of paddling in a group of peers.

On the way back one of the paddlers decided to go inside. To be sure he asked if it would be alright so huge props for that. It wasn't a big day out by any means but still the coast is the coast and waves big enough to cause a serious hurt were breaking. I wasn't the trip leader but I did say something like, "I'm not sure I can get in to help you if something goes wrong", which was mostly true. I mean, depending on where something happened, I could probably have made my way in and gotten a tow line on or something.  

Now, there were others in the group. I won't say I was the most skilled in the group, because I wasn't, but I think I was pretty representative of aggregate skill level of the group as a whole. Perhaps John, or Amnon had confidence they could get in to help in case of problems, I dunno, I didn't ask. One thing is pretty certain though, the amount of resources available to render assistance was not proportional to the number in the group.

Right, so in he goes. We all of us stayed outside paddling along. Periodically we'd lose sight of him. At one point we lost him for perhaps two minutes or so in what proved to be the most dramatic portion of his inside run right at the point, a clear violation of pretty much all aspects of CLAP. And that's pretty much the story. As usual (but not always) nothing happened. He had a grand time, nobody got hurt, radios and tow belts were not deployed, and everyone returned home happy.

Someone who spends a lot (a lot) of time on the water once told me, "when you're on the water as much as we are, anything that can happen does happen" and then proceeded to tell me about the time someones shoelace got hooked on a foot peg while they were upside down, and how somebody else got their PFD got hooked onto a back deck cleat (while they were upside down), boomers stripping decks and PFD pockets, heart attacks, and rather a litany of incidents and issues. And I've really taken that to heart. I'm very, very safety conscious on the water. First because I don't want to get hurt or killed, second because I don't want to see anyone get hurt or killed and, third, because I think it's ones responsibility to not have to call in help because they might get hurt or killed. (That might sound a little maudlin but I'm not a doom and gloom guy. Honest.)

Which leads me to the point of my little story here. Had this been, say, a paid excursion or some other event where I was "in charge" I would have said no to the guy going inside. I deemed it unsafe or, more specifically, too risky. In a club paddle though that sort of hierarchy doesn't really exist. It's not terribly easy to say no to something like this, even when you're the trip leader. Perhaps you don't want to seem paranoid, or not fun loving, or a wimp, or whatever. The whole duty of care thing suddenly comes under attack by a bunch of other human constraints. And that happens a whole lot on club paddles in a variety of forms. Groups get widely dispersed, people lose sight of others, folks have inadequate equipment or skills for what they're doing, and like that. I guess that's entirely normal and, like I said, usually it works out fine.

But every time I see something like that all I hear is, "anything that can happen does happen".

Around Pt. Pinos

Someone folks in my club organized a trip around Pt. Pinos (southern point of Monterey Bay). 11 of us ended up going for what turned out to be an entirely civilized trip. Actually it was perhaps the lowest key paddle I've ever been on.

I am never, ever, up front in any group I paddle with. I don't know why but I always seem to lag a bit and am generally the slowest. Yesterday though I was up front pretty much the entire time on the water. So, as I say, low key. Everyone was just cruising gently along seemingly without too much interest in anything but being on the water.

Predicted winds of something like 20 - 25 kts (depending on which forecast you read) totally didn't happen. It was certainly less than 10, maybe 7 or so. Swell was also a really low key 3's, with some occasional 5's. We only went probably 9 miles or so total with a lunch break in the middle.

Hey, here's some pictures:

Normal confusion at the put in.  There were 4 Romanys, a record for us I think. Sorry for the splotch in the middle.

Grouping up right off the beach. Kelp, kelp, kelp. Terribly annoying stuff. Notice though the blue skys and the fog in the distance.

And here we are in the fog in the distance. Those rocks right there are Pt. Pinos by the way.

This is a crappy picture but this is us heading for a beach for lunch. The beach is right on the 17 mile drive and we were, I dunno, half a mile off shore. See that building in the distance there? The one that looks like a hotel or a resort or something? It's a house. A single family residence. The place is full of that sort of ostentation. Oh yah, fogs gone. See?

Our lunch beach. More of those houses in the background. Nice beach though. Someone said it was called Dead Man's Beach or Death Beach or something like that. I think they might have been joking though.

Inside the kelp line about a mile or so off shore. That big assed building there on the right? The one that looks like a resort? It is a resort. The whole line of buildings is. It's called the Inn at Spanish Bay or something like that. Excellent scotch menu.

That's it.

Why am I doing this again?

I'm heading out in a few weeks to take a BCU Coach Level 1 class. I'm not sure why. I'm not really big into certification, at least not in my professional life, but I will admit I like the BCU system. I got into it (slowly, oh so slowly) a few years ago because I'm inherently lazy. After looking at the star awards I decided that following their progression would save me from having to think too much about what I would have to do to improve my skills. Just follow the BCU yellow brick road and, eventually, Oz. And more or less that's been true. I mean I still had/have to think a bit, but I got throguh the various control strokes, got my bracing and a roll that I'm sort-of-but-only-kinda confident in, and like that.

The coaching thing though is another story. The fact is the BCU is a pretty anemic organization here in the US and that makes it profoundly difficult to actually stick with the system unless you pretty much devote a lot of effort to traveling fairly large distances to work with other BCU coaches. See, essentially, the coaching scheme is a mentoring thing. For example as a level 1 coach (assuming I make it) I'm really supposed to be working under the direction of a higher level coach. Where I live there are basically no BCU coaches so, if I am to follow the progression strictly and work within the remits of my level, I would have to travel somewhere to find someone to work with. Not to say there aren't good instructors around here, just that the BCU scheme has it's own vernacular and ways of doing things. Working under a non-BCU person wouldn't help me terribly much. Sort of like learning Java (programming language) but then working with a C++ guy.

I did look at the ACA of course. There's a boat load of ACA folks around here. But I have to say I find the ACA system rather slap-dash. For example I was spelunking the net the other day and ran across a blog where a bunch of people got there ACA level 3 coastal instructor certs. On a lake. Not a Great lake. Just a small tiny lake. Ocean conditions were simulated by using the wakes from wave skis.

Now stop for a second and read that paragraph again.

No, you didn't. Read it again.

Right, so let's review:

• Level 3 COASTAL instructor certification. There are only 5 levels.
• On a lake. I've been on the ocean a few times. I've been on lakes lots of times. I have always (always) found them to be very different environments.
• 
  
  
  Using wave ski wakes to simulate ocean conditions. I've ridden over quite a few wakes, from all sorts of craft. I'm gonna have to go with really different than the ocean again.

I mean, really, what does that even mean, "coastal" if I can get certified as a mid-level coastal instructor on a lake with wakes? Speaking for myself I couldn't feel proud of that. Clearly this may be an certifier issue. You know one guy phoning it in or adhering to the letter of the cert but not the spirit. But, fuck me, really? A lake? Doesn't anyone in the ACA check up on this stuff? Apparently not. And if not, I have to ask, why not? Don't they care? Are they so ignorant of human nature that they're confident nobody will abuse the system and thus devalue it to the point of useless. Hell, worse than useless. Misleading? Misrepresenting? I dunno, but it feels bad man.

See, the real problem I'm having with this is that it puts the burden of valuing the cert on the consumer of the cert, be it student or co-instructor. Suppose I'm looking for an instructor. I have in front of me two level 3 ACA instructors to choose from. To make an informed choice as to who is more skillful or qualified or whatever I have to know a bunch of things. That there's a lot of wiggle room in that cert. Did you get yours on a lake or in the ocean? Even on the ocean, what kind of day was it? Flat calm can happen on the ocean too. And if I'm co-instructing with a level 3 person I'm in a worse position. I would essentially have to question someones skills but without the benefit of being a paying customer. Awkward no?

And, finally in this now rant, there's no way I want to be part of a system where, maybe, I work my ass off, with the best of intentions, adhering to the spirit of the curriculum and then get compared to some schmuck who found an easy certifier and kind of sucks. Or have to justify my creds because of someone like that.

Which leads me all the way back to why am I doing this BCU thing? Frankly I don't see a way forward in the system for me. Not easily anyway. But at least, if I do keep going, my creds are gonna mean something. Objectively mean something. Still, I'm stuck with a couple of entirely non-optimal choices and that sucks. I'll just have to see what happens I guess.

Phone calls from unknown numbers

In broad terms I hate my telephone. Well, it gets email, and does some other things so really I only hate the phone part of my phone. Excepting a couple of Luddite friends (you know who you are), if you can't send email I probably don't want to talk to you. I have kids and happen to work closer to home than my wife, so they have my phone number which means I can't turn it off. And that leads me to my version of a little kayakie/paddley story that is almost trite it's been told so many times.

I bought a new drysuit several weeks ago. It's a Kokatat GFER and I was replacing my Kokatat Meridian. The basic difference is the Meridian has a waste band that goes over the tunnel of a spray deck, ostensibly to keep out water, whereas the GFER doesn't. My Meridian was in fine condition but I was pretty much done with the waste band thing. It made the suit a little harder to put on, and it took quite a while for the area under the waste band to dry. I had occasion to try the GFER for a few days, loved it and bought one.

Anyway, my Meridian was in more or less fine shape given it's age of a few years (I do try to take care of my gear) and I had planned to sell it. Before that I wanted Kokatat to check it out, replace the gaskets for me and generally give it a clean bill of health before I did. So I called them, they gave me a price and an RA number and I sent it off. I didn't think much about it after that, they had told me it would be two or so weeks because of their backlog.

Last week my damned phone rang. Of course it was in my pocket so I had to stop working (I type for a living), dig it out of my pocket only to see that some number with, for me, an odd area code was trying to get ahold of me. I hit the go-away-or-send-email button to make the phone shut up and went back to typing.

Now, it is a fact that I suck at many, many things. Golf. Rational discourse when drunk. Getting up in the morning. Lots of stuff. But, if I got to pick, I'd have to say I suck most at dealing with voice mail. I won't rant about how truly evil I think voicemail is, but I hate it in the same way a 2 year old hates peas. Its irrational and annoying, but what're you going to do? So I can go days, sometimes many days, without checking voicemail. That day though I only waited a few hours before I did. Maybe I was just in the mood for greens, I dunno.

Turns out it was someone from Kokatat calling about my drysuit that was in for repair, and mumbling (because that's all you get on voicemail, mumbles and a string of 7 digits) about some warranty issue. So I call back the next day, a human answers(!) and connects me with the guy who called. Took like 18 seconds or so and I'm talking to the actual guy who left me the voicemail who I was suddenly feeling a little better about. Email would have been better, but this didn't entirely suck either. Right...deep breath...and this guy informs me that the Gore-Tex inside my dry suit was delaminating or something. And, before I could get a breath to whine, "but it's not my fault", he says, "but it's not your fault". Speechless is another thing I suck at but right then I was actually doing a pretty dandy job of it. Then voicemail guy goes on to say, "what we'd like to do is replace it". Now I'm really in the whole speechless groove, sort of reveling in my new found lack of suckitude in this regard when he hits me with, "at no cost to you". Further words were exchanged but, frankly, I don't really recall what they were.

I've heard this same story about Kokatat a bunch of times. On the web, on a beach, all over. But it always sort of struck me like hearing a Bigfoot story or something and treated it like that. Smile and nod, take a step or two back, whatever, just don't antagonize the crazy and cause a violent response. You know. But, take it from me, it's true. Kokatat has real customer service and backs their (expensive as hell, let's face it) product to the hilt.

By way of closure here I still hate my phone. And I still really hate voice mail. But I will be checking it in a slightly more timely fasion from now on. Probably. I still prefer email.