Summer Paddle

(Instead of washing the gigantic pile of dishes sitting on my counter, why not a blog post instead?)

This was one of my favorite adventures this past summer, and most terrifying. I took a 4 day intensive sea kayaking class.

I was dreading the first day of class. Our first order of business was to learn wet-exits and re-entry. I stood on the dock watching my two instructors demonstrate: flip yourself upside down (under water!!), remove your spray skirt from the opening of the kayak, then swim yourself out. You want me to go upside down? Underwater? Just the idea of being potentially stuck underwater was making me sick to my stomach. Honestly. I almost puked right there on the dock.

Granted, we were wearing drysuits and personal floatation devices - so it was pretty much impossible to drown. But still. Our class of 10 paddled out on Lake Union toward a little inlet between docks. My teacher is like, "okay, give it a try!!"

How do you MAKE yourself roll your kayak? It took a few minutes to talk myself into it... then rolled. Water in your eyes, in your ears, in your nose- flailing about to get back to the surface. Success.

I've never had such bruises as I received during this class. Falling out of the boat was the easy part. Launching yourself back in? No so much. That involved even more technical flailing. Getting your weight shifted to just the right place, swinging your leg up to just the right spot. Holy moly- I still have a deep bruise that's still healing- and this trip was over a month ago!

There's such freedom in conquering something that made you afraid. Day one was 3 wet exits, Day 2 - zero wet exits and only practice on paddle strokes. Day 3 - more paddling strokes and wet exits. Shoot, I learned how to do this 2 days ago and I've already lost my moves? Day 4 - we did a day trip up to Deception Pass for some real paddling with tides and currents. Before we went under the bridge, we actually put helmets on. Um, what the heck do I need a helmet for? My teacher just chuckled.

Let me say that even during slack tide (ie- really no tidal movement) it was still awfully hard. At one point, things got a little hairy with the currents, and my instructor was like, "Um, Heidi, why don't you walk your kayak around the beach instead?" I should have been embarrassed that me and 3 others were singled out as not being robust enough for hard-core paddling in currents, but I wasn't. It was his job to make sure I didn't die. Maybe with another year of upper-body and core strengthening I could do it, but certainly not that day.

I love to kayak. I love to be on the water. I love to paddle through seaweed and near seals popping their heads up to see what all the racket is about. It was a pretty much perfct summer day on the water.

My trusty boat - D5

Helmets on, no turning back

We paddled to a beach for lunch, kind of looked like a kayak show...

I was nervous about open water, yet I was nearly taken out by a motoring sailboat behind me who wasn't paying attention! My instructor let out a few choice words for that sailor ; )