Intro School 5/21-5/22/05

Recreational kayakers beware! Lucas and I along with Mary Buckner and Lisa McCarter were assigned a class of 18 recreational kayakers for Intro School. After conducting the boat rodeo roundup that included a trip to Murfreesboro to borrow from the Murrays' Armada, we arrived at Montgomery Bell State Park just in time for the last of the milling before bed.

In the morning, after edutainment from the likes of Charlie, Kelsey, Lisa and others, we met with our co-instructors to discuss a lesson plan. A little late, but who's counting. We met up with our class and spent sometime on land talking about boats and paddling. We headed for the lake at lunchtime.

After lunch, I brought out my teaching bag and dressed about 1/4 of the class (everyone who showed up in cotton). Then we set out to see if we could learn a few things. We did stroke instruction in a circuit and then toured the lake a bit before returning to the boat dock for wet exit adventures. By mid-afternoon, an audience of fishermen, women and children had amassed by the shore.

Tim Keen had warned me that rescues with recreational kayaks were next to impossible and I passed that information along, but we tried them anyway. Lisa and I demonstrated the two re-entry techniques. We had no problems because we had floatation. Most of the recreational kayaks do not. Although there is ample space behind the seat in most kayaks for float bags, no one makes a recreational kayak size. Maybe with the surge in popularity of recreational kayaking, some manufacturer will step up. Anyway...

Our first student was successful with both the wet exit and the reentry... until she sat upright. Then the kayak submarined beneath her, diving stern first. We discovered that rescues worked if we could get some of the water out of the kayak first.

We finished drowning everyone around 3pm. Everybody seemed appropriately tired. Lucas and I took my canoe and his kayak out for a quick spin before rejoining everybody back at camp. Dinner was fantastic, prepared by the Tennessee Wildlife Gourmet. The entertainment was good, too. I had fun writing the quiz and both Lucas and I enjoyed helping with prize distribution.

On Sunday, we split up into three smaller groups for on-river instruction and adventuring on the mighty Harpeth. We put in at a park in Kingston Springs and took out above Highway 70. It was nice to see another section of the river besides the Narrows. Lucas paddled in a tandem rec kayak and I paddled my borrowed aircraft carrier. It was a bit of a handicap teaching eddy turns and peel outs because my boat required extra paddle strokes beyond what most of our students needed. It seemed that everybody had a good time on the river and everybody was comfortable with Harpeth-sized maneuvers. I look forward to seeing a couple of the students at the June whitewater school. :)

We arrived at the takeout in one piece and finished the day with two hours of milling and boat loading. Our trip home wasn't too far but we made it feel like more of a typical river trip by driving to Murfreesboro and back again.