Thursday 4 September 2014 Hayling Seafront.
One of the advantages of shift work is a midweek day off allowing a peaceful paddle in a place that at the weekends is heaving with people relaxing from their 9 to 5 jobs.
Low tide and a cross shore F3 breeze with a small swell coming from the SE made for enjoyable conditions. The waves ranged from 1 foot to 2 foot and were at approximately 45 degrees to the beach. Hayling beach has a large shallow area that is sheltered at low tide by a huge sand bar at the West end of the beach. I stayed within the large area that is chest deep or less and paddled circuits parallel to the shore enjoying the waves that came in from the SE. I even surfed a few waves that seemed bigger than the average.
In total I paddled for a solid 90 minutes and realized that I had made things far harder for myself than I needed to on Paddle 1. I had stopped edging and reverted to my "Inuk safe mode" of using brute paddle force to change direction. Edging in the Inuk was an affair that frequently resulted in me turning upside down before I could do anything, luckily it was also easy to roll back up. To be fair to the Inuk, the designed paddler weight is max 100 Kg and I am close to 15% over that naked in the mornings, so by the time I have all my kit on, some coffee and a decent breakfast inside me I am probably more like 20% over design weight.
Today I enjoyed exploring the Kodiak's secondary stability in small waves and massively opened up my edging envelope. I am continuing to improve my fitness in general, but I'm sure that some more time in the Kodiak, in a variety of conditions, will see me needing to use less energy to get from A to B as my technique improves.
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| Hayling Seafront looking West towards Portsmouth (taken on a different day near high tide). |
One of the advantages of shift work is a midweek day off allowing a peaceful paddle in a place that at the weekends is heaving with people relaxing from their 9 to 5 jobs.
Low tide and a cross shore F3 breeze with a small swell coming from the SE made for enjoyable conditions. The waves ranged from 1 foot to 2 foot and were at approximately 45 degrees to the beach. Hayling beach has a large shallow area that is sheltered at low tide by a huge sand bar at the West end of the beach. I stayed within the large area that is chest deep or less and paddled circuits parallel to the shore enjoying the waves that came in from the SE. I even surfed a few waves that seemed bigger than the average.
In total I paddled for a solid 90 minutes and realized that I had made things far harder for myself than I needed to on Paddle 1. I had stopped edging and reverted to my "Inuk safe mode" of using brute paddle force to change direction. Edging in the Inuk was an affair that frequently resulted in me turning upside down before I could do anything, luckily it was also easy to roll back up. To be fair to the Inuk, the designed paddler weight is max 100 Kg and I am close to 15% over that naked in the mornings, so by the time I have all my kit on, some coffee and a decent breakfast inside me I am probably more like 20% over design weight.
Today I enjoyed exploring the Kodiak's secondary stability in small waves and massively opened up my edging envelope. I am continuing to improve my fitness in general, but I'm sure that some more time in the Kodiak, in a variety of conditions, will see me needing to use less energy to get from A to B as my technique improves.
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