Stocken Kayak Meeting 2007

Monday, August 27, 2007, 3 comments

Initially I planned to come up at thursday evening, but it had to be friday early instead – and perhaps just as fine considering the reports of massive mosquito attacks.

Friday started with a tour in solitude around the islands - afternoon was "work hours", i e talking about kayak building, paddling, paddles kayak design with old and new friends and lending kayaks for testing etc.

Friday night Freya, assisted by Dubside and Måns showed advanced rolling techniques.

As usual a lot of strip built kayaks showed up on the launching beach. Above all the number of Black Pearls were encouraging – I counted 9 of them at the same time at the beach (among them the black beauty built by Pål Gustad – he scored high in the rolling contest later!). Skinny greenland sticks were also plentiful.

The international participation were impressive with paddlers from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, England and the US. The instructor team were not less impressive: Dubside, Nigel Foster, Kristin Nelson and Freya Hoffmeister. Wendy Killoran dropped by on her European trip.

NIL-assessment of kayaking coaches was an ongoing event – unusually demanding in westerly winds in the 25-35 knot range throughout the weekend.

The Greenland rolling competition started saturday afternoon with the same concept as last year – though a bit trickier due to the wind. Since we had talked Dubside into participating, there will be no price for guessing the outcome. I believe the wind was the reason for fewer participants than last year – and only one in the ladies class. Come on, girls! It took some extra time to manoever the kayaks into position for the different rolls. A little drama spiced things up – one kayak overturned close to the rocks and the paddler failed twice at rolling up (he was not one of the competitors!), so my rolling time started with a greenland rescue operation.

A Greenland rolling competition is about doing a number of defined rolls with increasing level of difficulty – success at first attempt renders full points, if a second attempt is needed there is a deduction. There are 34 rolls to do on both sides, plus one on one side only. For different reasons we excluded a couple of the rolls: avataq roll (hard to attach an avataq fairly on the very diverse types of kayaks participating), rolling with a brick (we couldn´t find enough similar bricks or rocks) and the walrus pull (shortage of walruses – just kidding: the risk of injuries and damages).

This is the result:

Here are the complete results, with a short commentary by Sten E Karlsson (swedish only).

Two prizes, presented by Orust Kayak – a pair of neoprene mukluks (boots) and a light spraydeck – went to Pål Gustad och Måns Norsell, when Freya pulled their names in an improvised raffle.

In the hard wind the competition took far too long time and the spectators on the surrounding rocky slopes became fewer in the chilly wind, and many missed Dubside formidable performance at the end. For next year there are some ideas for a completely novel way to conduct the event, that may drastically reduce the time needed and at the same time give the spectators a much more exciting and understandable experience.

Saturday night was as usual dinner at the local open air restaurant with (as usual) miserable food, good beer in nice company, chatting on every conceivable subject with old and new friends into the night – only interrupted by Freya, who accompanied by spectacular pics told about her and Gregs circumnavigation of Iceland earlier this summer.

Even dogs...

Sunday was mostly lazy paddling inside the islands, with an icecream stop at nearby Gullholmen as the highlight – and a few spontaeous rolling classes along the way.

The Gullholmen finches loves icecream...

A short nap in the sun – Bengt Tydén with a good friend.

Erik and Pia wrote about the meeting: thursday, friday , saturday and sunday.

Ingvar Hjort published some nice pics (see comment below), as did Rune Eurénius, Tobias Bengtsson, Magnus Henriksson, Peter Svensson and Ulf Johansson. More to come surely...