Beginner's Pool Session

[Gillian]

Last night was a BLAST . . .thank you to everyone who spotted and loaned gear and boats for new paddlers (Brian, Heidi, David, Jeff, Joe, Deb and Bob, Doug, Kevin, and Jason - if I've forgotten anyone I'm sorry!!).

We had about 10 paddlers there who got to try out great boats which is always a huge plus and we started off with a plan to have 4 or 5 folks in the water at a time and then switch off and on to teach some of the basics of wet exiting, self rescues and some basic strokes.

Well that plan kind of went out the door as we all kind of hopped in the water and it was impossible to hear so with everyone in a boat with a spotter nearby we did wet exits in a few groups and then we moved towards a spotter working with a couple folks at a time.

We had some great highlights including everyone doing a wet exit without and with a sprayskirt and everyone did a paddlefloat self rescue which was amazing to me because it took me awhile to figure out how to get myself up on the boat (last night i cheated and just jumped up from the bottom of the pool)

Ron did the first wet exit, Matt got the paddlefloat re-entry after he took a large knife out (I wasn't going to argue) and ripped the seat out of his boat

I was amazed as were many of us by how great people were and how open everyone was to trying out new things - Kevin had people crawling all over their boats trying to kiss the bow and stern, Brian had Ann doing braces by the end of the night . . .

In the last half hour a couple of us got in our boats to join in the fun and I blew 2 rolls but came up on the third time, and I finally realized why you keep trying instead of getting out of your boat . . . in real conditions it's of course essential to try and stay in, but in a pool, it's shear laziness that made me get that last roll - it was late and I didn't feel like emptying my boat

I hope everyone had as much fun as we did . . . .