My initial kayaking education at the Kayak Academy, SK101 & SK115, was a great foundation and helped me feel comfortable to go it alone and paddle my local waters of the San Juan Islands. But I always knew that I wanted to continue my kayaking education. So between paddles I searched out the next phase of my kayak instruction. And lo and behold, I found it in my own back yard. Somehow I missed that there was an excellent source of kayaking knowledge locally on Orcas Island.
And that source was Calvin Croll of Future Water Paddle Sports. Calvin’s background includes working with Outward Bound, BodyBoatBlade and private coaching. And in January of 2019 he solo circumnavigated Vancouver Island in the “WINTER”. So yeah, expertise in my own back yard.
Calvin and I agreed to a first coaching session with me traveling to Orcas Island with a meetup at the Obstruction Pass boat ramp. And this was a fabulous session. But one preface, prior to this one-on-one coaching session, I had never experienced anything in a kayak that felt difficult, risky or concerning. In fact during my initial courses at the Kayak Academy I was really surprise how stable and safe I felt being in a kayak. All the “tasks” we practiced made sense and came pretty easily with a little practice.
But this lesson wasn’t happening in the calm waters of Lake Sammamish State Park. It was taking place in the tidal races of Obstruction Pass. The day started out easy enough with Calvin providing tips to help clean up my basic skills and a calm water self rescue. Easy, peasy. Then we meandered our way out into the currents of Obstruction Pass. And my first realization was that my “relaxed” Greenland paddling style was a bit light to make much headway in the strong currents. After correcting / adding a more powerful paddling mechanism we headed out into the eddies. We worked on crossing eddy lines, which I only sort of grasped. But the reality of my niave ignorance occurred when Calvin tasked me with during a self rescue in the dynamic water of the eddy. I succeeded so that’s good., But there was a difficultly that I hadn’t experience before in my limited kayaking experience. It was quite apparent that there could be a combination of events that could overwhelm my, limited, skills. This was a good ratcheting down of my overconfident ego. There was an old saying that I sort of remember this way.
We ended our session by finishing our Obstruction Island circumnavigating and I was sent home with homework to continue working on the skills Calvin had shown me. Calvin is such an amazing local resource and I’m looking forward to future sessions.
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