Rock the Boat: Safety for Sale, While Supplies Last

Stories

Illustration: Lorenzo Del Bianco — Rock the Boat: Safety for Sale, While Supplies Last

“Which one do you do?

With the sling or without?

Are you on your back, or lying on your belly?

Do you inflate it first or after?”

Initially, it sounds like this might be interesting kinky talk. But no, it’s sea kayak rescues again. Sea kayakers lust after safety. Rescues are the hottest topic of sea kayaking conversation by a nautical mile. The number of different techniques is astounding.

Despite all the safety talk, sea kayakers often have surprisingly modest skills, eschewing an emphasis on judgment, conditioning and strong technique in favour of amassing safety gear and study- ing a near endless litany of rescue manoeuvres.

Safety, apparently, has nothing to do with good judgment or paddling skills. It’s all about rescues and rescue gear.

From the sounds of it, the best way for me to be safe is to cover every inch of my kayak deck with a sea of “international orange” rescue equipment.

Is it me, or does this seem like slamming the aquarium door after the sea horse has already escaped?

I’d rather invest my time practicing the avoidance of calamities rather than perfecting 20 different rescues to deal with disaster after it has occurred. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth 40 pounds of paddle floats.

Flares, floats, slings, signals, radar reflectors, radios, compasses and GPS units don’t, themselves, actually keep us safe. Rescue gear doesn’t save people—people armed with knowledge and forethought save people—often themselves.

Deep down, sea kayakers know this. After all, we are typically intelligent, older, post-secondary-educated pro- fessionals, not 20-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears whitewater punks (who, despite their cockiness, can actually brace and roll in rough conditions).

No, sea kayakers are mature. They live well and reside in desirable neighbourhoods. They drive Volvos and drink mocha-frappuccinos produced by environmentally conscious coffee-roasting companies. Sea kayakers have dinner reservations at Le Jardin and opera tickets for next week. Their lives are good. They should be highly motivated not to die.

But most sea kayakers don’t find the time in their cosmopolitan lives to learn to paddle well. Instead, they try to buy safety. And they are abetted in believing they can do this. There’s a veritable raft of rescue gear out there promising to keep them safe, even if they know nothing about kayaks or the movements of the ocean.

So where did this blind faith in equipment and the false sense of security it instills come from?

Perhaps it’s just part of a wider trend in a society bent on effortless accomplishment: find the most corrosive bathtub cleaner on the mar- ket so you won’t have to scrub, start a diet that starves your body of fuel so you won’t have to be active to burn it off, buy a Volvo (there’s that word again) and be safer on the road without having to slow down or change your driving habits.

Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that the vast majority of paddling instruction is offered by kayak retail businesses. This presents a conflict. It’s great that a store can offer instruction, but don’t expect that there won’t be a mandate to sell gear via the instruc- tional programs.

After all, it’s a lot easier to sell a bit of kit rather than the concept of conservative good judgment. You can’t buy good judgment, you can’t really teach it, and you definitely can’t bottle it for sale. If you could, I’d buy a two-four of it every weekend.

Alex Matthews is the co-producer of the instructional video, The Ultimate Guide to Sea Kayaking.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Occupational Standards: Sea Kayak Guiding

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/vastateparksstaff — Occupational Standards: Sea Kayak Guiding

When clients on a guided sea kayaking trip turn greener than the seaweed below, it’s not always from seasickness, more often it’s from envy.

Envy for a guide’s job is warranted when it’s summer in Johnstone Strait and the sun is shining, warming paddlers as they laze around on cobble beaches or dodge orcas surfacing in glassy waters under the gaze of snow capped peaks.

News flash Mr. corporate executive, Ms. school teacher with a pension plan: it’s not always fun in the sun. Replace that idyllic scene with four days of rain, with wind so strong boats

are beached, when there isn’t so much as a sparrow in sight and clients who have paid thousands of dollars to be sea kayaking are instead cloistered in their tents. At times like these I’d happily trade my job for the prospect of 20 years spent sitting behind an accountant’s desk, having my fresh water come from a cooler at the end of the hall.

Summers spent guiding disappear in a haze of trip after trip on the water. Snoozing in an often damp sleeping bag for 100 or more nights a year is a job requirement. Relationships starve as loved ones seek comfort elsewhere, leaving you with no enduring company except for the foot fungus nestled between your toes. You invariably miss weddings and parties. The novelty of the campfire burns out as quickly as dry cedar, leaving the smell of smoke to linger longer than it’s welcome in matted salty hair.

When it’s six in the morning on the fifth straight day of drizzle, most guides would happily trade glowing campfire embers for a timer on the coffee pot.

Then there are the guests. As a guide you get paid to do what others want to do. It’s about their experience, not yours. That means paddling at a starfish pace or missing that beautiful beach when the weak- er guests won’t make it through the surf break. Guests come in all manner of abilities, and dispositions, and there’s nothing a guide can do but deal with it—happily.

But.

Guides wake from the deepest self-pitying stupor with the first flinch clients make toward their back pockets. There may be no more clarifying moment in a guide’s job than the moment when he gets tipped by the client. There’s nothing like a few crisp bills in hand to make the guide realize the guests are usually great people after all and that guides get paid to do things others spend thousands of dollars to do.

Guides breathe salt air instead of taxi exhaust. They wake up to the sound of the ocean lapping at their tent door instead of the sound of sirens racing by. In the evenings they watch sunsets, not television crime dramas. During the day whales, seals, starfish and dolphins entertain them while city slickers have to make do with pigeons pooping
on statues and dogs barking from behind fences.

When the sun and whales cooperate and the clients are great or when the northern lights dance, phosphorescence swims in the waves and the conversation around the fire is easy, 10 dollars an hour (plus tip) seems like almost enough.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Dragorossi’s Fish

Photo: Rapid Staff — Boat Review: Dragorossi's Fish

Dragorossi, the new Italian kayak company, says it wants to bring something new to each and everything that they do. With the new Fish they wanted to offer the customer what they already expected in a rodeo kayak and at the same time create a design that would encourage paddlers to grow beyond their current ability. Dragorossi says the Fish is no more designed for experts than it is for beginners; in the hands of a paddler who has an open mind and is willing to explore and reach for bigger and greater things, the Fish is a dream come true.

Dragorossi designer Corran Addison was right when he said that he has designed a boat that makes you re-learn how to paddle. The Dragorossi Fish is like no other boat in the lineup and it scared the skirts off half our test paddlers, paddlers who score well in local rodeos. Persuading paddlers that Dragorossi’s new thigh-hook outfitting holds them in place is easy; convincing them it’s safe is going to take a larger campaign.

It takes a special kind of nut to enjoy this boat, and luckily we had a few of them with us. As promised, the Fish is a fast, hard carving wave boat. It’s a boat we’d like to play with in the ocean. Trouble is, no one—not even the nutbars in the group—considered him or herself good enough to really paddle it. They could rip up the face of the wave okay, but aerials and even spinning in this boat are altogether different—there is a different sweet spot. They wanted more time to get the knack of it.

PROS: Fast and razor sharp carves. Different.

CONS: Sketchy outfitting. Steep learning curve.

SPECS: length 6’6” | width 25” | volume 56 US gal weight 30 lbs | price $1699 Cdn/ $1400 US

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Necky’s Orbit Fish

The Orbit Fish is the perfect blend of whitewater and surf, continuing Necky’s legacy of ripping up waves. It is a true carving spud that responds instantly when loading an edge and railing it around. The split tail and stringers shred features both big and small. The Orbit Fish bounces into aerials or carves aggressively into them. And, it’s a surprisingly good river runner.

If surfing makes you feel all nutty, here’s your boat. It feels like a rocket sled with rails on the wave, carving just behind your seat.

The Orbit Fish is fast (maybe not quite as fast as the Seven-O, but it’s three inches shorter) so you can use the whole wave, land tricks and not flush. It’s also fast from edge to edge and fast and loose to spin. How fast to spin? Fast like an amusement park ride with some carnie skid at the controls. In learning to control the Orbit Fish you need to lower the volume on Def Leppard, slow the ride down and get set up. Then, it’s green grinding, blunts, air blunts and so on with absolute ease. However, unlike more symmetrical hulls it back blunts differently and requires re-learning.

If you want to see grown men cry, come to a Rapid freestyle boat test and watch tall guys try to cram into new boats. No tears from the string beans here though. There is plenty of leg and foot room in the Orbit Fish. As for the outfitting, it’s not that it’s uncomfort- able, it’s just that it isn’t really there. Everyone agreed it needs custom foaming on the thigh braces; the seat would need some lift at the front and, as is, the backband wasn’t in the right spot for anyone.

For 170-pound freestylers the Orbit Fish was a snap to throw down in flatwater and eddy lines. The bow never pearls and the hull jumps up on a plane in and out of eddies.

PRO: Good for green grinds, surfing, blunts and aerial blunts.

CON: Minimal outfitting. Might be too loose for beginners. Trippy stern. Unbalanced cartwheels.

SPECS: length 6’6” | width 24” | volume 51 US gal | weight 34 lbs cockpit 16”x34” | price $1529 Cdn/ $1099 US

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: LiquidLogic’s Vision

ORIGINAL LYRICS: The Vision is the culmination of four years’ work by Liquidlogic designer Shane Benedict. He’s taken velocity rails from surfboard design to give the Vision “insane edge-to-edge looseness and drive.” Designed to gain speed on the rail, this feature also gives the boat extra bite when carving. The Vision was designed to have incredible secondary stability and slicey ends to make for easy cartwheeling in the hole or on flats.

WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE A NUT: The Vision feels extremely loose because it is so easy to keep flat to the wave without accidentally engaging an edge. For the same reason it’s a smooth front and back surfer with bow or stern (whichever is upstream) down and charging for the trough, not bouncing all over the place.

This stable platform allows you time to tweak your position and angle to launch the next move.

The Vision will “butt” bounce but the biggest tricks of the test were from an aggressive carve on the new rails. Some testers thought the Vision was the best carver of the bunch and said it felt like a squirt boat (if anyone but Brad Sutton remembers what that feels like).

The Visions are virtually the same lengths as the Crazy 88s, but they seem to whip around a little quicker in holes and in the air.

WHEN YOU DON’T: Why bother changing something if it’s not broken? Look to find the same simple and effective outfitting as last year. Tall paddlers who couldn’t get inside last year’s Big Wheel will be tickled pink (and might try requesting a boat in that colour) now that Liquidlogic seems to have worked out the sizing for the Visions. Still, tall paddlers don’t get the advantage of the bean- bag bulkhead that the rest are realiz- ing is a pretty cushy innovation. When playing around in little holes and on the flats, the Vision is the smoothest end-to-end since the Skip and Pop (short the six inches of extra plastic).

PROS: Short. Light. Ergo outfitting. Stable wave rides.

CONS: Pokey down the river.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Pyranha’s Seven-O

ORIGINAL LYRICS: Pyranha says the new Seven-O delivers a fresh look at what the modern freestyle and play paddler is demanding. It mixes the energy and speed needed for dynamic moves with the control, sta- bility and smoothness of past designs thanks to slicier ends and a more stable volume distribution for reliable end-to-end transitions.

WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE A NUT: The Seven-O really belongs in a class of its own, a boat that may be ahead of the rest, or perhaps nostalgically behind (where the majority of paddlers hang out).

The Seven-O isn’t a spud boat like the rest of this year’s freestyle boats. It’s longer and feels narrower. It’s fun to zoom the Seven-O around on the face working out wide on the shoulder (where the rest flush) and trucking back across for a big blunt. This is a boat for long soul surfs mixed with blunts and spins. It doesn’t boing, boing, boing all over the place; aerial moves require speed and aggressive edge transfers.

Drop into the hole and you realize you are in fact in a longer boat. Cartwheels are slower and more balanced, as Pyranha intended. It will still loop, you just have to get high enough to bring the stern through.

WHEN YOU DON’T: Not paddling like a nut might be exactly what Pyranha had in mind for the Seven-O. They suggest that they are bringing back the “control, stability and smoothness” from the past, making it the best river runner in this year’s freestyle lineup and a boat that is one of the most comfortable for long days on the water.

PRO: Speed. Good river running. Slow rotating cartwheels.

CON: Lacking the carve of a long and fast boat.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Riot’s Inferno

The Riot Inferno 54 was conceived to perform the next generation of dynamic wave and hole moves. Acceleration and speed make large-scale aerial moves a reality and generous volume helps paddlers stomp their landings. Riot says their unique side-edge design with an extremely high rail improves carving and provides stability and forgiveness.

The Inferno is the first Riot freestyle boat we’ve reviewed that was not designed by Corran Addison. Never before has there been so much eddy banter from our testers about a Riot freestyle boat. Some thought it was the best boat on the river, and it wasn’t the fast-carving crowd saying so.

The Inferno wants to fly and pushes you into big aerial moves. It will even bounce in the trough of the wave. The nasty edges are gone, but so is the crisp acceleration and carving that core Riot paddlers claim to love.

Drop into a hole and the Inferno is alive beneath you. With only one size, cartwheels depend on your body weight and ab strength but expect lots of pop with each end. Fire the bow into the seam and the Inferno launches huge stable loops.

The Inferno offers all-day comfort with enough adjustments to let you change your paddling position to avoid muscle fatigue. Riot pimps out the interior like a Chicano low-rider, swapping drop spindles, air bags and hydraulics in favour of ratchets for the seat, feet and back band. The thigh braces are something new—they rotate and pivot—no more forcing your knees to bend like a flamingo’s under fixed braces.

Between play spots the Inferno is a spud boat through and through (read stable and buoyant). It feels shorter than 6’4”, especially in the stern. You need to work your weight transfers when punching holes to avoid being back-looped. Want out of the hole? The Inferno easily snaps from side surf to blast to exit.

Pros: Built-in bounce. Huge loops. Stable and buoyant. Comfortable outfitting with “revolutionary” pivoting thigh braces.

Cons: Could use more speed for green landings; could use more carve (may also be a pro).

Specs

Length: 6’4”
Width: 25”
Volume: 54 US gal
Weight: 34 lbs
Cockpit: 18.5” x 33”
MSRP: $1,099 USD / $1,499 CAD

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Code Name Rubber Chicken: A Calculated Assault on Cottage Country Creeks

Stories

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Code Name Rubber Chicken: a Calculated Assault on Cottage Country Creeks

If I had met Mark Harris at the top of Hatchery Falls, I wouldn’t have been able to resist letting loose with my very best clucking display. I’d give him the whole routine, wings flapping at my sides, head bobbing and feet scratching up the mud on the riverbank.

“Bock, bock, bock… BOCK-UH-OCK! What are you chicken?” I’d cluck at him.

Why would I cluck at a man I had just met? Hatchery Falls is just one of 200 waterfalls Harris has walked into and one of more than 400 he’s researched. And he hasn’t run one of them. Not one.

One thing he has done is compile what he believes to be the most comprehensive list of waterfalls for the province in his book Waterfalls of Ontario. Harris has done more research than anyone for whitewater paddlers looking for new runs on new rivers. He even created a website with the same name dedicated to waterfalls so that other waterfall junkies could compare notes.

Mark Harris did what he did for the love of waterfalls, not for paddling. But early last spring, with his book on the dashboard as our guide, we picked up where he left off.

It was early; too early for a group of paddlers I was sure. I was standing at the pumps talking to a fella with the name Luke embroidered on his shirt. We compared our daily agendas. He was headed north up Highway 35 to fix a freezer and I had to drive another couple of hours west along Highway 118 to Bracebridge, Ontario, one of cottage country’s most picturesque towns.

I was expecting another day of waiting for people to show up, after which a small caravan of egos would arrive and chase each other’s dusty tailgates around looking for spring runs down the wrong gravel roads. Luke nodded like he’d been there, and went inside to pay for his gas.

As I crossed the iron bridge into the old logging-turned tourist town of Bracebridge, the only vehicles on the downtown street were heaped with creek boats. Everyone was there already, I couldn’t believe it. Muskoka Outfitters owner and local paddler Peter Demos had the coffee on, and the boys were hunched over his sales counter transferring Mark Harris’ directions to a local road map.

Peter had been hounding me to get over his way for years. Cottage country is prime Canadian Shield geology with exposed granite and gneiss, home to classic runs like the Oxtongue River, Sharps Creek and a spring run in every valley—24 waterfalls are listed in the Cottage Country section of Waterfalls of Ontario.

The plan for the day was to truck and huck five waterfall descents in eight hours—Kevin had to be back to his cottage at six o’clock for an anniversary dinner with his wife. Our three 4x4s rolled out of Bracebridge, GPS units tracking and mini-VHFs relaying directions from the copy of Harris’ waterfall book in the lead vehicle.

Our assault on the creeks of cottage country wasn’t the first trip Ben Aylsworth had taken with his copy of Harris’ waterfall book as his guide. He, like most paddlers in Ontario, found waterfalls close to home.

Aylsworth remembers the day he got the book: “The book was a birthday present from my Mom and her fiancée. I hit one drop just a ten-minute drive from my mom’s home near Collingwood the very day I got it. It was a first descent called Hoggs Falls—a 25-footer or so into about a foot and a half of water. I really needed to boof. I penciled that bastard. In fact, I slammed it so hard the feeling in my left knee didn’t return until last month.”

I asked Mark Harris what he thought of his book being used as a paddlers’ guide to waterfalls. “Paddlers have been and continue to be a big source of waterfall information for me,” admits Harris. “Waterfalls provide different kinds of fun for different kinds of people. Although you couldn’t pay me enough to paddle over any but the smallest of these.”

When Firefly Books approached Harris about the project he knew it was perfect medium through which to convey the magic of waterfalls to others. “It was as though my strange hobby was immediately justified,” writes Harris. “I wasn’t crazy after all.” The only reason we’d call Harris crazy is that he doesn’t own a creek boat.

Thanks to Mark Harris, what I thought would surely be a circus, turned out to be the most organized assault on five rivers I’d ever experienced. It was clockwork and we’d timed the spring runoff perfectly.

After a warm-up run down McCutcheons and Peterson Falls near Vankoughnet we slipped into stealth mode for what would be our most covert mission: Tretheway Falls, site of an Ontario Power Generation generating station. Chainlink fences and barbed wire surrounded the access, complementing the warning buoys and menacing signs. The only access to the run was through the control side of the dam, a 12-foot vertical dam drop into a munchy pillow and surging undercut followed by a 300-metre class V run. In Harris’ inventory of waterfalls Tretheway is rated as mediocre, Dale Monkman—the only one of us who ran it—thinks otherwise. Even after his first run, the rest of us remained onshore, clucking like contented chickens.

“Unlike some of the other popular falls nearby,” writes Harris, “Hatchery Falls has not been spoiled by any ugly concrete bridges, steel dams, or channelization schemes.” What Harris doesn’t say is that Hatchery is a vertical staircase drop with no pool at the bottom, and on such a low-volume stream boney is as good as this one gets. Hatchery is a real gem, easily accessed from the parking lot of an old fish hatchery complex by a short float down the Skeleton River and a short walk back up on well-worn walking trails along the river. A classic cottage country truck and huck.

For seven years I’d crossed the single-lane wooden-top bridge on the way into my in- laws family cottage at the end of Muskoka Road 3. Every August I had walked the entire 150 metres of Lower Rosseau Falls and watched kids race milk carton boats down the ledgy slide.

In April it is a different story. The run is broken into two sections. The main current of the first drop heads full steam into a very long and ugly undercut. Keeping away from that ugliness is key to a successful arrival at the bottom of the first section. A good set-up for the next section is something you’ll appreciate when you see the river channels into a 6-foot-wide chute carved out of bedrock. You can park so close to Rosseau Falls that you could launch the boats straight from the roof of your ride. The falls spill into the stunning Lake Rosseau where cottages start in the seven figures. The portage trail crosses the summer property of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.

Last on the list, in the face of fading light and a looming anniversary dinner for Kevin, was Bala Falls which is not really a creek boat run, but was close enough that we could paddle it before dark. It’s over these falls in down- town touristy Bala that the Muskoka Lakes pour into the Moon River on the way to Georgian Bay.

While we scouted the first drop and raft-sized holes below the wooden dam a couple of locals excitedly shared their plans to tube it.

Ben Aylsworth and I just smiled. “This is one of the deadliest holes I have ever seen,” he said, watching Dale Monkman who was just then running the third chute in the dam. Then the locals saw the scale of a creek boat against the 50-foot-wide hole. They watched as his creek boat tumbled and surfed the hole’s full width and then popped out the far side. They walked away without a word, perhaps to find bigger tubes.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Turn Your Kayak More Effectively With The Duffek Stroke

Man whitewater kayaking — Duffek for freedom. | Destination Ontario

In the early 1950s, European slalom paddler Milo Duffek invented the stroke that bears his name and changed slalom racing forever. When it comes to adjusting a boat’s direction, there is no stroke that can compare to the Duffek in efficiency and effectiveness. But it’s not just for slalom paddlers. The same effectiveness that made it revolutionary on the racecourse makes it useful for all paddlers who like to exert influence over which direction their kayaks point.

By mastering the Duffek and working an offside tilt into your turns, you’ll be able to catch narrow micro-eddies and make quick mid-stream changes in direction anywhere on the river. Unlike the reverse sweep, the Duffek allows you to maintain your forward momentum. Compared to the trustworthy low brace, the Duffek offers little stability yet really lets you snap your boat around.

You must Duffek, Duffek good

The Duffek’s different uses involve different set-ups, tilts and stroke combinations, but the essentials are straightforward. Paddle forward in flatwater and plant a vertical paddle away from the front of your boat at about a 45-degree angle. The paddle blade should be open so you feel pressure on the power face of the blade. Keeping your arms solid for support, use your abs to twist your torso and whip the boat around. Think of it as bringing your knees to the paddle. Once the boat reaches the paddle, you’re set to follow-through with a forward stroke.

To help you visualize, think about swinging around a pole. Your paddle should be solidly planted in the water like a pole. You need to swing your body and boat around until you face the direction you want to go. That’s it really; just make sure that for now your top arm doesn’t come above your forehead, leaving your shoulder vulnerable to injuries.

[ Further reading: Breakdown Of The Most Common Paddling Injuries ]

Duffek into the current

When carving out of an eddy, cross the eddyline while tilting downstream and initiate the turn with a sweep. Plant the Duffek. Once the boat has turned and your paddle is next to your knee, pull on the blade with your forward stroke. As you enter into the current, you’ll feel the force of the water on the blade and your boat will turn very quickly.

Duffek into an eddy

When entering an eddy, the Duffek allows you to turn upstream quickly without drifting low or running too deep into the eddy.

Set yourself up to catch an eddy as you normally would. Punch the eddyline and initiate the turn upstream with a sweep. Plant the Duffek. Pull the boat to the paddle and then follow through with a forward stroke. In short boats, you won’t need to initiate with a forward sweep unless it’s a really strong eddyline or you’re approaching without a sharp enough angle. If you engage the outside edge of your boat immediately after your bow crosses the eddyline, the combination of an outside tilt and a Duffek stroke stops the boat from carving or sliding and it sticks your position in the eddy.

Duffek around the river

When we’re paddling around the river we always need to make minor adjustments to boat angle and the Duffek is the perfect stroke for this. Simply plant the Duffek in the direction you want to go, snap the boat to your paddle and paddle forward. The Duffek offers excellent control without compromising your forward momentum. This may sound similar to the draw. To avoid confusion, remember you use the Duffek to turn the boat and you use the draw to change lateral position, without changing direction.

Milo Duffek changed the world by developing a stroke combination with both stability (in the form of a high brace) and power (because it leaves your paddle poised for a forward stroke). Combine the Duffek with an outside edge tilt and you’ll discover that, 50 years later, you’ll enjoy having far more control over where you go on the river.

[ Paddling Trip Guide: View all kayaking instruction and skills clinics ]

This stroke in history

Prior to the Duffek, paddlers turned kayaks by using a reverse sweep. Effective, yes, but reverse sweeps slowed down the boat too much to be useful in racing. Milo Duffek, a native of Czechoslovakia, unveiled his secret weapon—the Duffek—for the first time at the 1953 World Championships in Merino, Italy.

As competitors watched Milo practice, word of the new stroke spread and the question became not if he’d win, but by how much.

This is where the story takes a dramatic turn.

Milo Duffek had come to Italy with plans that were more ambitious than winning hold. Duffek was going to defect. Escaping from his newly communist Czechoslovakia for the freedom of Western Europe was more important to him than a medal. As the story goes, Duffek purposefully hit the outside of gate 14 with his bow. This was a 100-second penalty in those days, and enough to drop him to second place. This second-place finish removed Duffek from the limelight and allowed him enough anonymity to skip town with the Swiss team.

This article originally appeared in Rapid‘s Early Summer 2005 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the archives here.

Sarah Boudens is a member of Canada’s Slalom Development Team.

Duffek for freedom. | Destination Ontario

Celebrating The Gull River’s Strong Undercurrents In Canadian Whitewater

Stories

As paddlers we are proud of our stories—epic highwater runs, bold moves, long swims. Many of our best stories persist and are retold until they are legends.

Other paddling stories are just the opposite: they are so mundane they do not warrant repeating—at least not at the time—and so the stories and people seem to be forgotten.

Looking closely, however, one can see that the story is not forgotten, but in fact is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of a paddling scene that it goes almost unnoticed. These aren’t climactic legends, but fundamental building blocks, people and places like Roger Parsons, Heinz Poenn and the Minden Wildwater Preserve.

semi-submerged photo of the kayak training course at Minden Whitewater Preserve

Rivers Of Change: Roger Parsons And The Minden Wildwater Preserve

Celebrating the Gull River’s strong undercurrents in Canadian whitewater

A young mountain climber named Heinz Poenn arrived in Canada from Germany in 1956 in search of adventure. After finding no mountains to climb in Ontario, he happened upon a Klepper folding kayak, taught himself to paddle, and found another paddling pioneer named Roger Parsons. The two of them organized a kayak race. The year was 1958, and the Credit River played host to Canada’s second-ever kayak event (the Fraser River in B.C. beat them by one season, a downriver race easily won by a visiting European). The rest is history, albeit an unappreciated and forgotten one.

In 1964 Poenn and Parsons decided they wanted to race slalom at the World Championships—big dreams for self-taught fanatics. At the time, Canada had no standing with the international kayak body so they joined the American team.

Poenn gained himself (and Canada) a seat on the International Competition Committee, opening the door for a Canadian team—which included himself—to paddle at the 1972 Olympics in Germany.

“We were way behind!” Poenn laughs. “We had only started into something that had a long competitive history over there.”

Returning from the Olympics, he and Parsons started talking about a training centre. They already paddled at the then-mild rapids on the Gull River in Minden, Ontario, close to Parsons’ cottage, and they saw potential for something greater.

“Being on the technical committee, I had detailed plans from the Augsberg slalom course [built for the Olympics and still in use on the World Cup circuit],” says Poenn. “We asked Ontario’s Ministry of Lands and Forests to change the river. They agreed, so we hired a backhoe and bulldozer and started moving rocks.”

From obscure river to whitewater destination

Originally, only the lower section of the river was paddled, below the falls, because the upper section below the dam was wide and shallow. Poenn and Parsons coordinated pinching the river, deepening the channel, solidifying the eddies and making a world-class slalom river.

“I was the only one to run the falls,” remembers Poenn. “They were considered too steep and shallow to be safe, so we got some locals who knew how to use dynamite, drilled some holes, and blew the edge off it.”

“Eventually land was acquired on the left riverbank for the now-famous campground. “The whole idea was for Minden to be a place for the paddling community to meet,” says Poenn who continued on to coach national teams, teaching a generation of top paddlers which included Gary Barton, David Ford, Claudia Van Wijk and Poenn’s son, Dieter.

“There was no fixed place for paddlers at the time,” Dieter Poenn recalls of his days as a junior racer. “But this developed into a perfect training site. We could build confidence on the lower section and work our way up. The river is still comparable to anything I raced on in Europe.” Dieter Poenn went on to race with Canada’s National Slalom Team, he eventually took on the role of high performance director.

Overhead shot of river cutting through the forest, rapids visible

Stefi Van Wijk: Carving Her Own Course On The Madawaska

Claudia Van Wijk, a former world cup paddler who now owns Madawaska Kanu Centre, recalls: “I used to live there for weeks on end. It’s one of the few places where you can drop in at anytime and find people to paddle with. It’s dam-controlled so it always has water, it’s close to Toronto and it’s still as technically challenging as any slalom course in Europe. Really, Ontario’s three destination rivers are Minden, the Ottawa and Palmer Rapids.”

[ Plan your next Ontario whitewater adventure with the Paddling Trip Guide ]

The Minden Wildwater Preserve is a story without an end. The river has undergone continuous improvements. People still arrive from all over, make friends and paddle. Beginners tip over in the run out at the bottom, and the top offers snappy moves that approach class IV. Running the dam is enough to scare anyone. The river is so deeply ingrained in the thoughts of the paddling community it has helped sustain that it sometimes goes unnoticed. To many paddlers, Minden is the Ontario paddling scene.

All this, from simple 1960s dreams of having a place to paddle.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of the outdoor program at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ont.

Cover of Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine This article was first published in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

The Gull River is so deeply ingrained in the thoughts of the paddling community it has helped sustain that it sometimes goes unnoticed. | Feature photo: Toni Harting