Now It's Time To Put It All Together

“Ble, Ble, Ble, That’s All Folks!” and now it's down to doing it for real. We finished our last practice session today at Willows Beach before heading to the Deer Group on Thursday morning to test our skill set on a Paddle Canada Level 3 course with Cowichan Bay Kayaks.

The last time I felt like this was when I was flying radio control precision aerobatics and heading to fly for Canada at the world championships. Anticipation, anxiety and excitement with just a tiny bit of nerves to just get it done. We can only hope that all the paddles, kayak camping trips and hours of practice that we have put in over the past 3 years have paid off for what lies ahead this week. 

We are both feeling pretty good about our skills with only the rolling elements being of minor concern. Either we will have it or we won't but one thing for sure is that over the 5 day course we sure are going to try and make sure it works. It doesn't matter how the roll looks as long as we get out of the water. Easy right?

This will be our last post until we return and thanks to all of you for reading our adventures up to this point. We are sure that the next post(s) about the course will be worth reading until then .....

Ble, Ble, Ble, That’s All Folks!

2014 Paddle # 42 Practice Time (Again!)

Distance: Zippo! nm (Nada! km)
YTD: 235.02 nm (435.25 km)

The Ups And Downs Of Practice

Heading into the final week before we take our Paddle Canada Level 3 course we were back on the water last weekend working on a few skills that up to now have been going pretty good. On Saturday we needed to find an alternative practice area as the beach at Cadboro Bay was closed due to an outflow contamination issue from last week's rainstorm.

Checking the tides for other options we chose Ardwell Bay in Sidney and were on the water later in the afternoon when the tide was higher. With the incoming tide the bay had a lot of seaweed on the surface but at least it was easy to access the beach and a place we could get wet.

Our motto "If you don't perform well at least look great doing it" Robyn looking great!

  

Maybe it was a combination of a big walk in the morning, shopping at the Ocean River Event of Adventures or the heat from an unusual hot September day but one thing for sure .... we were sooo off today! I won't go too much into want went wrong but the short video clip below sums it all up.

On Sunday we thought maybe a change of scenery would do the trick so we chose Willows Beach in Oak Bay as our training area. We arrived early before the sun worshipers started to claim their piece of sand real estate for the day and focused on some self rescue skills. Having never launched at Willows Beach before we were pleasantly surprised about the ease of finding a parking spot and felt the access to the water was much better than our regular training area at Cadboro Bay.

Yup ... the whole beach pretty well much to our self

One thing that we didn't expect was how clear and cold the water was compared to Cadboro Bay which is due to the water movement through Baynes Channel. This was a good thing as it probably better suits the conditions that we will be paddling in at the Deer Group for the course. We spent more time on our rolls which were much better than the day before and over all we were IN the water more than out of the water.

We also did a few scramble or cowboy rescues just to mix things up.

Only one more weekend to work on skills and a bunch of homework to complete before we leave next week on our next adventure. Naturally we are excited about the course but the anxiety and unknowns of being assessed are starting to creep in. If anything, it should make for a great blog post!

2014 Paddle # 40 & 41 Practice Time (Again!)

Distance: Zippo! nm (Nada! km)
YTD: 235.02 nm (435.25 km)