Learning to Roll

Rolling a kayak has to be one of those bucket list things if you are an outdoor person, or maybe I just think that way since I’ve wanted to learn since I was a little kid.  I do blame it on my parents, of course.  If it would not have been for those Fisher Price kayaks I had as bath toy things might have been different, ok maybe not.  Getting to a point where I can roll has been an 8 year ordeal, with set backs do to not being able to get out in my boat very often do to, kids, Afghanistan, work, kids, you know life.

In 2003 I had finally saved the money to buy the kayak I fell in love with after my first test paddle of one belonging to a WildernessSystems rep, the Arctic Hawk.  This is no ordinary boat and I didn’t know the path it would lead me.  The lines of this Greenland kayak appealed to me, I could see myself paddling through ice fields on wilderness adventures in this ancient design.  The first summer I did learn my wet exit and self rescue but I wanted more, I wanted to roll the thing.  I had a former co-worker that agreed to teach me, bad idea.  His roll wasn’t bomb proof so trouble shooting mechanics he just wasn’t very good at.  He was also a white water paddler, and was trying to teach me a C to C roll, which made since I had a Euro paddle at the time.  After a summer of trying I wasn’t even close but really good at wet exits and self rescue.  Over the course of the next year I paddled every week that the water wasn’t frozen, I was planning on getting it down the next summer.  Well by the end of the next summer my wife and I had our first child and I was in Afghanistan for a year.  While I was gone I read a lot of books, mostly mountaineering and books about Greenland kayaks.  In my reading about kayak history I ran across the Greenland paddle and found videos of Greenland rolls on the internet.

When I got home life still got in the way.  For the next few years my wife and I only got to paddle a few times a year and mostly when we were gone on mommy/daddy get away weekends.  When we got out we wanted to paddle the time just never seemed right for us to spend the day in shallow water with me trying to roll.

This summer things changed, we bought my daughter her kayak.  Now we had to spend a day in shallow water get her accustomed to her boat.  Leading up to her trip I spent time studying Greenland rolls on Qajaq USA’s website and YouTube.  I had made the switch a Greenland paddle a few years earlier so the C to C roll was out and layback or Greenland roll was in.  While she played in the water my wife spotted me and I worked on my roll.  I only hit her with my paddle a few times before I started to figure out the mechanics and moved to deeper water.  Then all of a sudden it clicked and I started popping up like a cork.  After about 15-20 rolls I was ready to throw up from the spinning so I stopped and we did other things.  About three weeks later I went out for the day by myself and tried to roll again.  Not so good.  Two wet exits later I figured out what I was doing wrong and popped right up.  Now when I go out I try to throw a roll in just to make sure I don’t forget.  I am only able to roll up on one side now and the water is getting colder so expanding to the opposite side and more difficult Greenland rolls will have to wait until next summer.  I am now looking for a hood to wear so I can roll all winter, we’ll see how it goes.