Bill Dvorak, with Dvorak Expeditions based at native Colorado here and we are going to talk a little bit about some basic Kayak instruction. Alright, what we want to do is just talk about some other basic equipment here we talked about the spray skirt, but probably the most important piece of equipment is what we call a Personal Flotation Device or PFD. And what this does is if you do come out of your boat you have to go for a swim it gives you positive buoyancy so you don't sink under the water. And the big is it has to fit you well. So it doesn't ride up over your shoulder. Joey (ph) actually has what we call a rescue vest with this little pull-tab and if she turns around -- what this gives you the ability to do is if she was stuck somewhere you can clip into back of her jacket with a rope and go ahead and pull her back if we needed to.
Then the beauty of it is that for some reason, she doesn't like what is going on she can pop-up that out and the whole thing slides free and that's why it is called rescue vest because we usually say you never want to be fixed to a rope out in moving white water unless you have some way to quick release out of it and this is the only way to quick release out of it that we currently we have is with the rescue vest.
The other she has got here on her vest she actually has a whistle because when you are out there in moving water it is very difficult to hear sometimes so we have a series of whistle signals that we can utilize, one whistle will get peoples attention. Once you have got their attention, you can sort of signal them to come back upstream with two whistle blasts or you go downstream with three whistle blasts or if you have three whistle blasts repeated three times that's actually a distress signal. The big thing is to just get peoples attention.
She has also got some gear in here. I think she has got a tether and some plastics, so again as a Kayak instructor one of things that we often to do is we have to go ahead and pick up people's gear. So you have the ability to go ahead and put some sort of a girth hitch around the paddle and tow it behind you so you can continue to paddle or you can actually clip into somebody else kayak and tow the kayak the behind you and get it into shore for them.
The last thing here would just be a helmet. And again we have got different kinds of helmets out there with the big thing it needs to be pretty solid and fit you tightly so that -- I like helmets that come actually down over ear so if you hit something laterally it is not going to smack in the side of the head. The one thing about having helmets that come over your ears, it is some times it is hard to hear.
Okay, another equipment that he has on his jacket, on his rescue vest is what we call a tether. So a tether will let you do a couple of things. One is if somebody has lost their paddle you can actually do a girth-hitch around their paddle that will cinch up. Now, he can paddle and not have two paddles in his hand which is awkward particularly if they have different offsets. The other thing he can do is he can actually clip this in into one of those grab loops we talked about earlier and go ahead and tow somebody else's kayak, clip that in and tow out behind him up off the middle of his back, so it is much easier to tow up the middle of his back than say off the tail of his kayak. And this is called the Tow Tether.
What we are going to do if we got a nice sandy beach here we are just going to put the nose of our boat out into the water, and get it maybe floating a little bit so stuck on the back side and then we are just going to go ahead and crawl in the boat and push yourself off once we get everything secure. And again it is nice to have a good solid platform to go ahead and get your spray skirt and everything on rather than being out there rocking around in moving water where you have to worry about what is happening to your paddle or what is happening to your boat.
It is nice to have one part of your boat sort pinned down so that you are nice and solid and you get everything in order before you actually push off. Once you get everything in order, you got spray skirt on then all you have to do is grab your paddle and kind of just push up with the knuckles of your hand and you right out into the water.
Alright again, basic strokes just making sure your nose goes in a straight line so you have to feel how hard you are paddling on each side and then get turned around you do a big sweep stroke and then taking your paddle right out to the side that can turn your boat all the way around. So it follows the paddle stroke around with his body so he gets his whole torso into it and you can go backwards just as easy as you can go forward.
Again you got to feel your stroke, make sure that tail of your boat doesn't change direction too much. It is always coming back down which is forward basic stroke, quick sweep to get turned around and right back up. So, the paddle stroke right at the front of the boat ends up in the back of the boat for the big sweep strokes, you can turn your boat about a full ninety to hundred degrees with each strokes either forward or backward. And notice that when he does a backstroke he is not rolling the paddle over. He is just using the backside of the paddle face, so your wrist rotation always stays the same.
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