Teignbridge Training Night

This was a sunny evening, but there was a little more swell than I’d anticipated, maybe 0.5 metres.

It took a while getting on the water. There were four paddlers in the pod, one experienced paddler recovering from injury, one relatively new paddler (second time out in his sea kayak) and two novice paddlers who had done a lot of pool sessions but this was their first time on the sea. They both had second hand Dagger Approaches.

Two experienced leaders were supervising, but I was left to take charge as a leadership training exercise. I launched one experienced paddler and then sent the four pod members out to join him one at a time (with a little bit of advice including being allowed to wait until there were some smaller waves coming in as well as a gentle shove). There was a little breaking wave action on the beach. We paddled towards Parson and Clerk. The swell was complex around Sprey Point; the time was not too low to be bouncing off the wall but low enough that the reef complicates patterns. I never got a chance to brief everyone on signals and group practice; however I had a gentle chat with the two sea kayakers to remind them that they innately travelled faster than a Dagger Approach.

We didn’t really have time to go past the Parson and Clerk. We did stop just short of Parson and Clerk and the leader checked with the pod, and took us round the rock to handle a slightly increased swell. On return, the waves had reduced slightly and we landed in a straightforward manner.