Ready, Set... Draw

My FWP class tonight was held at Bonita Cove. Jane and Theresa were also there. Theresa brough her canoe. Yes, I did try it out after the class. Boy it hard to keep on of those things going straight. It felt like my first time in a kayak.

Jeff had us working on the various draw strokes. Bonite Cove is great for that kind of pratice. There is a nice string of No Boating bouys to mark a swiming area. These serve as great points of reference to track your movement against. Also there is no boat traffic to worry about.

We started with the base draw stroke. This felt good. I normally do my draw stroke in a repeated fashion, so I slice my blade back to the extended point and start my draw over again. Jeff had us pulling our blade out toward the stern after each draw. I think I was able control the bow and stern pulls, so that was good. At a deeper level, feeling more connected with my boat, the fact I could get on edge and just more 'in tune' with the boat made the stroke more powerful.

Then we moved on to sculling draws. Boy, was I doing this stroke wrong! I knew something was off since I never seemed to be able to move the boat much using this stroke. It turned out that my blade path was in an arc rather than running parallel to the boat. That was my Aha! moment of the night.

We wrapped up the class with 'draws on the move' / 'hanging draws'. These are fun and easy to work into any paddle session. I could never tell if I had really moved the bow and stern together during the draw. Jeff suggested that we toss in a sweep stroke to offset some boat movement.