SISKA Fridays

Our first paddle of 2016 (well mine) was joining 5 other South Island Sea Kayaking Association (SISKA) members on the first organized Friday paddle that took place on Jan 15th. Typically the club has organized paddles on the weekends but from a recent survey many members indicated that they would like to see paddles on Tuesdays or Fridays as well. Having Friday's off has its benefits, one of which is being able to get out on the water while all working folk (right Robyn) can't enjoy it. LOL

Classed as an Energizer Paddle due to the pace and distance, our small group launched out of the beach at the Esquimalt Lagoon at 10:00am and headed towards the breakwater at Ogden Point. Having recently become interested in 'birding" I found the paddle to be a wonderful opportunity to identify the species that I have learned about over the past few weeks. I must say it added another element to kayaking which in the past I just simply ignored. I found it relatively easy to identify 12 different species including the male and females.

Our original plan was to land on a small beach next to the Ogden Point breakwater and have lunch but with the conditions being relatively calm we decided to press on and found a small secluded beach along Dallas road. After lunch we took our time retracing our route while being gently assisted by an ebb tide. The forecast for later in the afternoon was calling for the winds to increase from the SE and we hoped that maybe we would be able to get a few wind driven waves to play on. As it turns out the winds didn't arrive until well after we were off the water.

Still, it was great to get out on the water and participate in the first SISKA Friday paddle. We arrived back at the lagoon at around 1:00pm and we started hatching a plan for the next Friday paddle with the thought of launching in the dark to watch the sun come up. But that ... will be another blog post. :-)

From L to R: Gary, John, Bryan, Sheila and Lanny enjoying lunch off Dallas Road.

2016 Paddle #1 - Esquimalt Lagoon to Ogden Point
Distance: 9.01 nm (16.68 km)
YTD: 9.01 nm (16.68 km)

Working Through The Hand Of God

A couple weeks back we headed out to the beach at Esquimalt Lagoon with Kari Challenger to work on a rescue that we all hope that we will never have to do for real. Kari is a paramedic in Vancouver and recently we have had many discussions about providing CPR while on the water and how to perform the Hand of God rescue. 

For those of you who might not know what the Hand of God is, it simply is rescuing an upside down kayaker who might be unconscious or simply is trapped inside the cockpit which I have seen happen a few times. Thankfully in both cases another paddler was close by and righted the paddler with the Hand of God rescue. Could you perform a Hand of God rescue if that happend?

Kari and I spent some time watching videos on the internet prior to attempting it for the first time and we talked through the steps that needed to happen for it to be successful. For our scenario we had Robyn close by for me to use a T-Rescue as an option instead of wet exiting my kayak if the Hand of God didn't work out. She also was able to video how Kari managed both attempts allowing for review later. Robyn and I video all of our training sessions when working on new techniques and even when refining some of the basics.

A few comments about what happened. On the first attempt Kari did a really good job in getting me upright in a continuous motion. On the second attempt you'll notice that my kayak gets caught on hers which prevented her from continuously rolling me. The difference was that on the second attempt her lower hand didn't stay on the cockpit combing pushing my kayak down and away from hers. She then had to resort to using a lot of muscle power to finish off the rescue. In both cases then end result was the same but the little technical things make so much difference.

At lot of you are probably heading to pool sessions over the winter. Why not try and figure out the Hand of God rescue?

2015 Paddle #41 - Rescue Training
Distance: 0 nm (0 km)
YTD: 256.15 nm (474.39 km) Needs editing once Nuchatlitz blogs are complete.