Southwest Sea Kayak Symposium

From March 31 to April 2, Aqua Adventures Kayak Center hosted the annual Southwest Sea Kayaks Symposium at San Diego's Campland. On Friday I teamed-up with Fiona for an all-day incident management course out of Mission Bay. We had breaking tow-lines and capsizes. And Fiona even managed a 'Cleopatra's needle', but that took some 'sabotaging'.

Fiona gave an evening lecture about her 2004 circumnavigation of Great Britain and Ireland. I slowly realized an 'embarrassing moment' was upcoming... Argg... that picture of me with a banana; is it still in there? Yep! it is... On Saturday I almost had an another 'embarrassing moment' when a family of five showed up for my class that, when I asked: "Are there any questions?", replied: "What do we need?" With the instant help of Marc checking out kayaks and gear, I had this class running smoothly for the rest of the session. It was a 'foundation strokes' class and I should have known that the most basic thing to kayaking is kayak, paddle and PFD! On the Sunday I had the honour to work with Doug van Doren on a rolling session. His 'roll-o-man' gets full marks for getting the body movement for rolling clearly across; a perfect coaching tool. Latest developments on kayaks and camping equipment? Eleven dollar 'no-name-pull-out-instant-dome-tents' for the coaches to sleep in. And a solar-powered Nalgene night-light water bottle. Fiona got rewarded for pinning the wooden Pygmy kayak the other day, joining the Aqua Adventures 'rocking the tide-pool' club and received her own 'members only' t-shirt!