Took a bit of time this morning to get Jenny dialed into her new Greenland kayak on the water. For Greenland commissions I like to fit the paddler to the bare frame and then also do an on the water check with the finished kayak. For both safety and performance, the fit on these kayaks needs to be perfect.
A bit of a bittersweet moment for me because this is only the third time I’ve been in my Greenland kayak in the last decade. There aren’t words to describe how much I miss being on the water, but unfortunately the body doesn’t work so good these days.
Jenny brought her F1 down with her and it’s in surprisingly good shape for being 8 years old. I asked her if she used it frequently and she said “I do, and I’m not nice to it!”.
We did some impromptu Greenland roll practice, and what I noticed immediately was that if Jenny missed a roll she would re-orient herself and either scull herself back to the surface or roll up. This is a strong contrast to most sea kayakers who will go back to a set up position and try a couple more times before wet exiting.
This is the magic of Greenland rolling, all the time spent practicing and playing underwater unwinds the brains’ natural panic responses and orients you to the three-dimensional underwater environment. By making rolling into a game instead of a chore the combat roll becomes almost an afterthought, which is what you want it to be.
Believe it or not, Greenland rolling actually did more for my whitewater game than almost anything else. After five years off the water in my early 20s while I was rehabilitating a bad shoulder injury with a greenland paddle, I was shocked when I returned to technical creeking only to find that anytime I was getting trashed in a hole I was always halfway through some form of a Greenland roll and all I had to do was sweep one way or the other and I would come back up. I got a lot more oxygen that way and a lot less beat-downs.
In addition to updating all the Cape Falcon video courses, we made a gorgeous step-by-step video while building Jenny’s kayak that’s gonna take a few months to get it edited. Enjoy the new boat Jenny.
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