Peter’s Paddling Blog

The other night I went to a lecture on danish kayak history given by Bjørn Johansen and Ernst Christiansen.

Bjørn is carrying forward the legacy of deceased Jørgen Samson, who designed most of the kayaks build by Struer Kayaks. Bjørn is the designer of my Escape along with the Coastrunner and the Coastline trainers. Swedish Erik Arnstrøm recently wrote an article on Bjørn[in swedish].

Ernst is one of the major kayak dealers in the country, and have been active in the sport for a lifetime. He’s the force behind getting Bjørn’s designs into production not to mention some other ideas like this recently build K4 Trainer.

In this blog I’ve often referred to some of the kayaks I paddle as K1 Trainers. I’ve not been consistent, but often I’ve in fact referred to a special class of kayaks we refer to as turkajakker ~ touring kayaks. The Norwegians and Swedes refer to them as tour racers. This is unrelated to the “touring kayaks” in other countries.

This is a class of touring/fitness/racing kayaks defined by Samson, which is optimized and highly suitable for paddling in near coastal waters in Scandinavia. The Escape is a touring kayak pushing but not breaking the requirements of the rules. Quicker kayaks will have to race in the ICF class. Samson’s Tracer is an example of a kayak which barely doesn’t pass the tour requirements. To me these two kayaks lingers around the sweet spot of costal kayaks. I was not surprised to find that Bjørn likewise is a fan of the Tracer.

Touring kayaks class in Silkeborg two weeks ago.

If anything defines the classic danish kayak culture, its probably the development of this large range of touring and racing kayaks, which provides a smooth learning path from a beginner’s kayak to an full blood ICF racer.

Now it doesn’t take much insight in sociological mechanisms to imagine how the explosion like popularity of the sea kayak has been regarded with skepticism by parts of the old K1 community. Likewise parts of the sea kayak community has quickly turned its back on the traditional danish kayak culture. But that’s a different story.

Completely unrelated: Nelo just posted a link to this youtube video of the danish top race paddlers training. Kayak music videos are always fun.

Tuesday evening I posted a classified on the kayak federation’s board, looking for a Vajda Supersonic 01 size L in marathon layup(<8kg).
Less than 24 hours later, I got my Supersonic at close to half the price of a new one. Oh the joy!

While I’m used to the club’s Supersonic kayaks, today’s training on a completely flat lake was great.

Supersonic 01 at 7.5kg with Kevlar hull and carbon ends.

Former owner was on the US race team.

The pump is removed until I settle on a position for the seat and footrest.

With the Supersonic in my quiver, the Shadow will not find much use before summer as an ocean boat. At any rate I’m not going to sell it. I’m not really good at parting with my kayaks.

Speaking of the Shadow I did get around to install a pull bar on the Shadow’s footrest. Really it was plug and play. I bet Elio and Nelo use the same manufacture for their accessories. I’m ordering a pull bar for the Supersonic now.

Footrest equipped with pull bar.

Footrest installed inside the Elio Shadow/Dolphin/Golfinho

[politician mode on]
A good part of the weekend was spend along with the rest of the Sea kayaking board under the Danish Canoe&Kayak Federation, planning our activities for the year. We’re pretty much covering everything from touring, symposiums, educations, surf and racing. We’re working toward a presentation of our initiatives at the annual meeting of the federation late March.

The European kayak federations behind the European Paddle Pass(EPP) project met up in Dublin this weekend and agreed on the current EPP specification. Hopefully the thing will soon go public and we can start implementing it.

While EPP has already generated a number of heated discussions across Europe, my personal view is that EPP is a good thing(tm), simply because kayakers love awards. While some collect awards for winning or completing races, others want awards for demonstrating their technical skills.
I pushed for a “star award” discussion some years ago when I was chairing the Danish Seakayak Association. During that discussion it occurred to me, that much of the opposition against “star awards” is based on the fear of losing out in the kayak respect game. Will I no longer be a top dog, if I don’t have those awards? My answer then and still remains:

A personal kayak skill award system isn’t a zero-sum game. You don’t lose karma when some other kayaker gets an award.

Then there’s the fear that introducing a formal paddle education is the first step towards legislation in the area. I refuse to go that way. If one day some organisation wants to push in that direction, we’ll give them opposition there and then.

Just for the record I don’t hold any star awards myself and don’t plan to collect any. At least I thought so until I saw the flatwater EPP levels, which might be fun to pursue.

[politician mode off]

Ready! [sprayskirt is always trouble when in a hurry]

Set! [Morten here is our tactics - I draft you for 10km]

Go! [Carbon and Chaos]

The traditional draw for small prizes after the race. Sympathetic and very very democratic.

My 10km race Sunday in Silkeborg went terrible. My worse race to date. I lacked stamina and then motivation. It’s the last f*cking time I’ll hit the water 2 minutes before start. Morten and I had less than 200m warmup before the bell rang. I pretty much started to feel ok after 5 km, then it was way too late. I curse the sitting position in the Shadow. The former owner lowered the seat and I’m slowly realizing how much this hinders my movement in the boat and the transfer of force. Next race will be in the Supersonic.

Update: Yesterday just as I’m dozing off, my brain was working overtime trying to figure out why I had so much trouble transferring force at the last race. Then in a flash I realized what was wrong. The many hours of indoor paddling this winter has made me totally dependent on foot straps. It has come to the point where the top of my feet are always sore after a session on the ergometer.

I clearly remember during the race how it struck me that my legs weren’t helping out. I couldn’t really point a finger on the cause and settled on blaming the seat. Now it’s crystal clear to me, that the real problem was that I couldn’t pull with my legs. The relative low seat of Shadow accentuates this, while my legs points much more downwards in the Supersonic(if this makes sense).

I’ve found a pullbar which I never got around to install in the Moskito – now it’s going into the Shadow as an experiment.

I have this feeling that from now on, pullbars/footstraps are compulsory equipment in all of my kayaks. Live and learn.