Tuesday, July 14, 2009

This is insane!

I'm sick of the darkness from preventing me from training, so I had a bright (not) idea....I would use a head lamp and try to paddle in the dark. Now I have trouble paddling the Mirage in the dark, and really struggled last time I tried to paddle a K1 at dusk, but I thought that if I could get some light on the water it would help.

One main problem is my balance. Without the water, trees and other objects as visual clues, I find it extremely difficult to balance in the K1 (more so than usual LOL). The other problem is that I don't have grip finders on my paddle and I also find it difficult to keep the proper position of the blade in the water. I figured that the light from a head lamp could help with both these things.
I figured that I'd better have someone with me for safety reasons, and I convinced Anton to come along. As we were standing in the cold darkness we both agreed that "This is insane". Anyway, we paddled about a km up the river and headed back to the boat ramp. My headlamp was as good as useless, but I thought I could play around with it and maybe improve it. But after a few more attempts at paddling it was now pitch black and I was struggling too much to continue. Bummer! I think if we could have started even 15 minutes earlier I would have had enough light to do a decent paddle. I have not given up yet...maybe a light taped right at the bow would be better, I'll keep trying a few more ideas over the next few weeks.
I convinced Anton to keep paddling off into the dark. In his Flyer, stability wasn't a problem and I reasoned with him that 2km was not worth the effort, so he may as well do some more. So off he went, with me taking some photo's just to show how insane he was.

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