Well, phew, it was sultry today. I think my office decided to cooperate with ConEdison (not to mention those poor folks who got stuck in a blackout in Queens for 8 days) - somewhere around 4 it started getting stuffy, and at 5 p.m. sharp my computer crashed, so I decided it was time to go fall in the water, as planned.
It was the perfect activity for such a scorcher of a day. The only question in my mind, as the sweat ran down my face as I pulled out my boat, was whether I even wanted a boat. There was a certain appeal to the idea of just jumping off the dock & going swimming. As it was, Goofy, Mr. SeaLevel & MC were all waiting for me, and THEY were all in boats, so I decided that if that's what all the cool kids were doing, I'd do that too.
And it was great, too. I'm so nice & unwound now - and the best thing is, it turned out that our rolling & rescue session was soon enough after our Greenland day in Sea Cliff that all of the stuff I'd been working on that day (especially this really excellent storm roll exercise that I'm absolutely thrilled to have been introduced to because it involves 2 rafted kayaks instead of a person standing next to a kayak, so it's perfect for our no-shallows environment) stuck & stuck well enough that I was able to do it in my Romany.
We didn't really end up doing rescues, just lots & lots of rolls & braces. Funny thing happened when I went to call for a t-rescue practice, which I did at the point when I'd rolled like 50 times on both sides & had a lot of water in my boat which I wanted emptied out. I did my usual wet exit & came up expecting one of the guys to start in on the rescue - but they all refused & said I had to dump my own boat by lifting the bow, then do a re-entry & roll with a pause to reattach the sprayskirt before the roll.
Seems they'd all run across some video somewhere...
So, OK, I did it. Bow lift needs a little more oomph - Romany's a heavy enough boat that when I tried to push it up into the air, it went up a "skoshie bit", while I went down quite a lot, under the water in fact - there was still quite a bit of water in the boat & I can't really say for sure whether I actually got any out or not, I wasn't completely swamped in the first place. Maybe a harder kick coordinated with the lift. The other funny thing was that I've done most of my re-entries & rolls lately in swimming pools, without a PFD - getting into the boat involved a sort of upside-down reverse somersault which just wasn't gonna happen with that Lotus L'ocean keeping me all nice and floaty & completely unable to submerge my upper body (which is of course precisely what a PFD is meant to do!). Anyways, I did get it to work, although it could be better - it will be another fun thing to work on, I guess. Especially when it's this hot!
Well, I have finished both my laundry and this most wonderful cool non-alcoholic nightcap I made up in honor of the heat wave - basically a float made of Jamaican ginger beer, orange juice, and a scoop of Haagen-Dazs raspberry sorbet, YUM (and I bet it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if a little dark rum found it's way into such a concoction - I just didn't feel any need for that sort of elaboration tonight) - and I've got the window fan at maximum speed, and I think it's time to turn in. After such a good rolling session I think I might even sleep pretty well!
Hope everyone's
Sky for FH20 (no, really, I was thinking of him when I took it!)
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