The first weekend in October I attended the Delmarva Paddler's Retreat in Lewes, Delaware. The focus of delmarva is greenland kayaking and rolling. There are rolling demonstrations, on water rolling classing, boat building classes, ropes gymnastics and this year there was an on water kayak wedding. It was a full weekend. On the photo page there are three videos: a video of Alison Sigethy rolling to music, a video of James Hartford playing the bagpipes, and a video of the kayak wedding.

I took my SOF racing kayak and worked with Alison in the water on Saturday learning how to do a C to C roll. I thought I had my roll down prior to the Blackburn but I don't think I had a combat roll ... meaning I don't think I could do it under duress. That's pretty crucial because you usually don't roll your kayak unless you're under duress.

Kayaks of Greenland : The History and Development of the Greenlandic Hunting Kayak, 1600-2000

-Susanita

I wasn't able to make the Chesapeake Paddlers Association (CPA) SK102 skills weekend this year. But here is the best of the best photos and the best of the best trip reports. The photos are by Gina Cicotello posted on webshots. Gina is also a skin-on-frame baidarka owner. The photos of the clear coated baidarka in the album are of her boat. Notice how you can see the ribs when the sun hits the kayak. This is the effect I'm going to try to achieve in my SOF. The best trip report, of course, was posted by my racing friend Susan. You can read it here.

Susan also attended a racing clinic prior to SK102. The clinic was conducted by Holm Schmidt , who was a member of the 1988 East German Olympic Team. Holm and his wife Melissa were kind enough to offer this racing clinic to a few of us recreational racers (myself included) at Lake Anna. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend that either. But it sounded like a great weekend. You can read Susan's report on the racing clinic here.

-Susanita