Playboating Course

Yesterday, I accomplished one of my goals for the season, taking a playboating course. This course was at Zoar, with Jim, the instructor, and one other student, Jaime.

In the morning, we went to a flatwater portion of the Deerfield and learned some moves, most of which involved turning sharply while doing a turning stroke and submerging either end of the kayak. Some of these moves were difficult and some were easy.

After this, we went back to Zoar to eat lunch at watch a playboating video with Jim braking down the paddlers' moves. I found it hard to see which way the boaters were leaning and paddling (front or back sweep) because of the extremely frothy water they were in.

After this, we went to try out our new knowledge on whitewater. With the recent floods, there was water spilling into the Dryway despite there not being a release and that is where Jim decided to take us. I was worried that I was not up to doing the Dryway yet, but he said that we would only be doing the first part before the really hard rapids and that having seen us paddle in the morning, he knew we could handle it.

I was pretty nervous in the car and until we got to the put-in, where I saw the first rapid and it didn't look too bad.

It wasn't too bad. The current was a bit too much for me to contend with at some of the waves he wanted us to practice on, causing me to flip before getting on them and roll after washing past the access eddy. We spent a lot of time at one medium-small wave and I got a lot of rides on it including one really long one. The lessons of the morning helped me to stay on and move around on it without flipping. At the very end, I found a hole and did a long sidesurf, which we covered in the morning, which was very good. I did not flip.

We took out just above the start of the serious stuff (Split Hair Rapid). It was a good day and I'm looking forward to practicing these moves some more on subsequent trips.