An All In Rescue
Chris Wood and I decided to head over to Hanson Dam this afternoon for some warm water rolling practice today. I needed to see if I could recapture my elusive roll which is seems had decided to take a vacation and left. The last couple of times on the water, every roll I attempted failed. I also needed to get my mind on to something other than current events as the Special Forces A Team that my youngest son is part of deployed to Iraq for an 8 month deployment today.

Chris was already on the water when I arrived and he paddled in while I unloaded my boat. I asked about water temperatures and he just said warm. Not knowing if this meant a shorty Farmer John wetsuit or just some shorts, I walked over and put my hand in. The water must have been close to 80 degrees. After changing shirts, I decided to stay in shorts. After all, I had no intention of swimming in the warm water anyway. I did put on a Hydroskin shirt.

Chris did the first roll and it was perfect. I tried one and all I could here it saying was "I'm back!" as I quickly and effortlessly came up. I then decided to try using my carbon GP and promptly blew the next roll. I then went back to my wooden GP and seemed to have lost the roll as I missed about 3.

Next thing I knew, Chris was capsized and wet exiting. I asked him if it was intentional and he said yes, that he wanted to try something.What he was trying to do was to re-enter and roll up by pulling on me. Unfortunately, I didn't know this and all I felt was somebody pulling me over into the water. As he almost came up, I went splash as he pulled me completely over. I couldn't roll because both Chris and his boat were in the way. Good reason to learn an offside roll.

Chris was laughing and I thought he pulled me over intentionally. He finally stopped laughing long enough to say it was an accident. Both of us at the same time decided that we would need to do an all in rescue of some sort. This is something we have never practiced at any of our practice sessions and it turns out Chris has done once in a CKF class that he just took from Jen Kleck of Aqua Adventures.We maneuvered the boats so that Chris was able to re-enter his capsized boat and by using the bow of my capsized boat, he pulled himself up.. Then we did a standard T rescue and I was back in my boat. The T was a lot harder here than in the ocean as I didn't float as high in the fresh water as I do in salt water.

All in all it went fairly easily, but I guess we should start incorporating them into our practice sessions at the pond.

We then did a bunch more rolls until we got tired. I missed several more and finally my muscle memory kicked in and I completed the last three attempts. Chris only missed one roll and that is when he was trying my paddle. As soon as he switched back to his own, he started making them and making them, and making them. After he did six in a row, I told him to stop showing off.

All in all a fun day on and in the WARM water.

Steve Holtzman

Submitted on June 18, 2005