When I spoke with her last week, I really emphasized the need to WEAR a PFD and it was nice to hear a lot of other people telling the photographer the same thing.

We had a short briefing and paddled out to the Pond. Conditions were calm and we had a more structured practice than we have had in the past. We demonstrated each re-entry or recovery, and then had everybody trying them. Peter brought his Scupper Pro KAYAK and we demonstrated how a SOT can perform an assisted rescue for a closed deck boat. Everybody go to be both a victim and a rescuer.

While demoing the HOG rescue with one of our larger paddlers, I found I didn't have the strength to roll him all of the way up from a bow to stern position (it was almost impossible to lay him back on the deck). I did get him breathing air and called for an assist so we did get him up. We also had the two ladies in the group try this. It was even harder for them because of the differences in upper body strength between the genders.

We then did some rolling practice and Beth seems to have hers down well. She was 3/4 today. I wasn't quite as good. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong last week so now I'm doing something else wrong this week. As Patrick kept telling me, stop trying to think about it and just do it. Several times he was ready to start the applause only to see me screw up something at the end and fall back into the water. Chris kept telling me I should stop trying to breath.

We then went further down the beach to play in the small surf. There was a good rip going and you could see the eddy lines by watching someone's boat just turn for no apparent reason as the eddy was crossed. Mike Bode missed his first combat roll today as he went over in the surf. He signaled for a bow rescue, but since he was in the surf zone, nobody came to help. He finally wet exited, swam to shore and launched back out again.

Chris was nailing all of his rolls until he got hit by an unexpected wave in the surf zone. He didn't even try to roll and just wet exited. I paddled up to him, handed him my tow line and started to pull him out. All of a sudden, I felt no weight back there. I looked back and my tow line was still extended out. Patrick yelled to me to keep paddling him out, but I couldn't feel him at all.

When I realized he was loose, I headed back. Peter was there to start an assisted rescue. I clipped onto Peter's SOT KAYAK, and started to tow them out of the break zone. Peter and Chris completed this recovery in less than a minute.

Rachel was paddling her SOT for only the 9th time. She managed to do an assisted rescue, and demonstrated that she can also get back on her boat in almost no time at all.

Then it was time to head around the breakwater. Rachel was a little nervous, but Peter and Chris asked if she wanted to try a recovery in the rough water. She did, and go back in her boat in record time. Kevin and Mike 2 both were a little nervous to start, but soon looked like they had doing this all of their lives.

Afterwards, it was off to Daddy-O's for some much needed calories.

Steve Holtzman

I almost backed out of the wet water practice session that Steve Holtzman and Peter O'Sullivan hosted today at Channel Islands Harbor. Something that I ate last night did not agree with me, and I was feeling a bit puny this morning. But I decided to load up my gear and make a go/no-go decision at the last minute. It wasa good call, by the time I got to the launch site at Hobie Beach I was feeling much better.

The Old Farts had a pretty good turn out today. Ten paddlers showed up with skill levels that ran the spectrum. It was a good mix of experienced and soon to be experienced paddlers. Everyone was dressed to get wet and our enthusiasm was running high. I was actually beginning to feel pretty good about my decision to paddle. That was until the photographer from the Star newspaper showed up. He came walking over to join us with enough cameras and lenses hanging off of his body to cause serious back strain.

Turns out he was actually a very personable guy and he got along very well with all of us. The problem was I still hadn't gotten over my phobia of photographers on the beach which goes back to the time Steve Brown took a picture of me getting clobbered by a wave. Steve's picture ended up on the back page of Sea Kayaker Magazine. Since then I've had this suspicion that the probability of me getting trashed is directly proportional to the likelihood that it will get published.

So there we were on the beach going through our introductions and getting to know each other, when the photographer asked if any of us did white water paddling. In light of the fact that we were heading out to intentionally dump our boats and get wet, the group laughed pretty hard when I blurted out "White water, you'd have to be crazy to do that!" No doubt that statement will inspire a bunch of crazy people to criticize me.

Before long we had launched and were milling about in the Pond, the sheltered area behind the breakwater. Since I had dressed in a rash guard, hydroskin shirt, wetsuit, and paddling jacket my thermostat was creeping into the red zone. My personal goal today was to practice my off side roll, and this seemed like a good time to do it. But then I looked at the beach and saw the photographer there with a telephoto lens the size of a civil war cannon. And his big lens seemed to be aimed right at me!

For a couple of seconds I considered chickening-out. But then this little voice from my cuckoo-clock conscience squawked that I would never be able to look myself in the mirror again if I let a little thing such as humiliation on a national scale get the better of me. So over I went with a splash. The water was cold and green. I could feel my brain shutting down and my IQ going from SILLY to STUPID. I tried to remember some of the ideas that I needed to make the off side roll work. But my memory had gaged. The only thing that I could think of was that I was cold and that I wanted to breathe again. The hell with thought, let's just do it, Roll Baby Roll!

There comes a time when your body takes over because the mind gets overloaded. This was one of those times. And then the miracle happened; my roll worked! One moment I was underwater and getting confused, the next I was sitting upright, breathing air, and shaking off the cold like a wet dog coming out of a bath! It took a minute, but then it dawned on me, the curse had been broken, I forgot all about the photographer.

I think the gods might have looked at my karma account and decided that I had earned a dividend (from what I understand they do this every few hundred years or so). Today everything that I tried worked! My off side rolls never failed. My C to C roll was suddenly easy. The surf that clobbered 3 of my friends gave me a fun ride. And, I did not get trashed in front of the newspaper photographer!

Life is good. The next time I go out I will likely have plenty of dues to pay, but today was a day to savor.