Year: 2011

I had an accident on Guadeloupe’s roads and spent some days in hospital. I don’t have a memory of the incident which means I’ll never know for sure what the cause of it was. The hospital looked after me as they would with any A&E victim then sent me home. They gave me a scan but they sent me home with the results which I then left in a taxi so I don’t know what they discovered there. The polis initially wanted me to stay for alcohol testing but then let me go home with my dad. So I took a quickly booked flight throught Paris back to Edinburgh. I’ve since been told thay my eyes are a bit of of line and I need to have one covered until it recovers. A shame since I’ll never get more into wave ski now or surf ski or exploring more of the mangroves. I need plenty of rest to recover and to gently get back into Kubuntu usefulness. Goodbye French Guadeloupe, I’ll miss you.

The problem:

The solution:

Tennis here is played with a raquette anti-moustique which uses mosquitoes instead of tennis balls. It makes a satisfying electric spark when you hit one.

It’s tricky to find things to go in Guadeloupe. Not because there aren’t many things to do, they are just not advertised, or when they are there’s no way of findings out when and where they might be. The idea of having an up to date website with a usable map on it does not seem to fit in with the island’s laid back lifestyle. My own house is on a street without a name for example, there really is no way to look up on the internet where the house is. On the positive side the bus service is not as bad I had been rumoured. The busses might not have a timetable but they do show up at fairly frequent intervals, they do give you change, they all go to the Gare in the central town of Pointe-a-Pitre where you can change to another one. They also play fun and loud Caribbean music all the time so even if it takes an hour to get anywhere it feels like a bit of a party while they do it. They don’t however run on weekends, or past 6 o’clock on weekdays which makes them pretty useless for most leisure activities.

However I did make it to the Xeme Panamerican Jeux de Surf which is heavily advertised. As usual with Gwada the best description of a location you can get is the name of a beach, but no maps have beach names on them. So I took a bus to the nearest town and wandered around until I found the beach somewhere on the outskirts. The competitors from the 20-odd countries were all waiting on the beach ready for something to happen. After a couple of hours something did with the first competitors being called. The first competition was Body Boarding. Now I’m not convinced that board surfing in general lives up to its sand-and-sex reputation but body boarding seems especially tame even for surfers. The competitors are in heats with 3 or 4 surfers in each and 20 minutes to do the best moves you can. 15 minutes into the first heat I’m getting worried that nothing is happening but then a large wave comes and the surfers manage some 360 rolls and spins. Next up is the real board surfers, they do manage some impressive twists and turns including a very nice mid-air 360 which was disqualified because he didn’t surf away from it. Actually I’m impressed they can stand up at all. Later I play a game of hide-the-illegally-purchased-beer-from-the-gendarmerie. Fun and games.

Panamerican Jeux de Surf

Naturally I’ve been looking for canoe clubs in Guadeloupe. There’s a handy government website called guadeloupe-sport.com which gives a boilerplate text to describe canoeing obviously taken from the Federation Francais de Canoe-Kayak because it includes discipines that are not possible here such as slalom or river running. It lists many clubs but only sometimes bothers to list anything other than a name. The only club with a website is two years out of date (and looks like it was made in 1995). So I hired a car and drove to St Francois where the local club hold and elite looking Surf Ski race each year. The building at the marina says “Kayak de Mer” on the outside but when I enquire how one gets to Kayak le mer I’m met with uncertain glances and a reply of “je ne sais pas”. It seems they don’t actually do anything with kayaks except hold the elite race.

So instead I make my way to the Sunset Surf Camp which is the only hostel on the island, and a very cool one at that. Unlike any of the other surf schools its website has clear instructions on how to learn some surfing, turn up at 9 o’clock and join in. Guadeloupe has a lot of rock reefs a few dozen meters off-shore which shelter the beaches from the large waves and create excellent surfing conditions while they are at it. So after a brief theory lesson we were swimming out to the reef. Board surfing involves a lot of swimming, which is hard work (the boards are heavy) and gives you a pain in your neck because you are lying down and looking up for waves to avoid. Then you have to swim even harder to have any hope of catching a wave. I catch one and it’s fun, skimming along with water just below my face. The next progression is standing up. I can’t do it. I can get on my knees but beyond that the board insists on tipping over sideways. After two hours I’m still no nearer standing up. A fun sport but alas far too much effort to reward ratio.

Next day I drive to a town called Le Moule where rumour has it there is an elite canoe club. Again with nothing more than a beach name to go on I drive around and find it on the outskirts of town. I enquire within but am told it’s lunch time and I should come back in a couple of hours, closing for lunch is normal in France and they close twice as long in Guadeloupe. During this enforced lunch break I am amazed to see a school of fish jumping out the water half a dozen times in succession. A choir sings songs in Creole to keep me entertained. After lunch I’m told yes there’s a club here, yes they do interesting things, come along first thing in the morning. Truly a tropical paradise.

Manu and Molem-Gliss sea paddlers

Mornings start early in Gwada, 7:30 in this case, I presume because they don’t have any light in the evenings. We load up the trailer with a bunch of sea kayaks and head south where a group of about 20 post-middle aged adults paddle along the coast through beautiful green water. The swell is large and some of the older members of the group end up off course but we steer them back together again. We find a small white sand beach and splash around for a while before heading back to the launch site past a hundred palm trees. Over Caribbean beers I am chin-chined for being the first Ecossais in the club.

Another enforced two hour lunch in which the only shop in town open selling anything edible is the bookmakers. I join a group for an entirely new activity, waveski. Waveskis are surf boards with seats and foot holds that you paddle. After the comfort of the sea kayak I find it wobbly and hard to control. Especially since I have nothing to brace against with my knees, only a seat-belt and foot straps to keep you in place. We paddle out to the surf, a group of about 15 boys, aged 10 to 16, plus Moul, the club’s famous Champion de Waveski Français. After some false starts I catch my first wave, the “boat” is super-responsive with the bow entirely out the water. I slide down the wave, back up again then try to gracefully come off the back of the wave but with no knee grips I fall straight in. Amazingly I manage to eskimo roll it only to fail to understand the momentum and roll straight back in again. On my next wave to do even worse and capsize immediately. After a few more waves I work out the trick, in kayaks you lean forwards to get more stability from your knees, in waveskis it seems you need to lean back to get more stability from your feet. By the end of the session I am catching them without fear of falling in. The surf setup at the Molem-Gliss canoe club in Le Moule is excellent, the reef is only 100 metres from the boathouse, there is a safety zone where you can paddle out to behind the waves and there are two sections with smaller and larger waves to give an option for your comfort. I have discovered an excellent new branch of canoeing.

My camera broke so no photos of me or Gwada waveskiers, but here is a generic photo to keep you entertained.

The nights were drawing in, the days cold and dark, the green man had done battle with the winter queen and lost. Time to fly away.

Florida was fun with my Kubuntu community and friends, the mickey mouse burgers, the free alcohol, chlorinated waterfalls and specs written. I could go home to the cold and the dark or I could go on. I choose on. I fly south over blue seas and tropical islands. At Puerto Rico my body is met with a wall of warmth. A strange land this: half American, half Hispanic, half Carribean. The pace of life noticably slower, the queues longer. I take what food I can from the airport lounge and fly on. More islands pass, the clouds of cotton wool floating by.

You can pick your food out of the sea here.

Guadeloupe appears through the clouds, green and fertile. No wall of heat this time, the plane is already warm. At customs comes my first test of French, will I understand? Words fail, they wave me through. Outside nobody is waiting for me, worry sets in, a foreign land and nobody to help, maybe my colocatiere does not exist, maybe there is no house and my money is gone. She appears, smiling and friendly, speaking impenetrable French. “Plus lentement s’il te plait.” I understand. I can converse. Je suis un francophone.

A beach in tropical paradise

The house exists, my studio flat has all I need. The dogs and cats are friendly. The swimming pool compact but pleasant. Carrefour is a drive away, a city to commercialism, I buy Guadaloupe sauces and fruits. Life here is expensive but various. We enjoy Guadeloupe food, the savoury fried bananas tasty, the chicken done to perfection. The beach is covered in palm trees, the sun strong but the shade welcoming. The sea is warm like I have never swum in before, a hot bath of blue.

Why Guadeloupe I am asked. No paticular reason but several inpaticular. It is French and they do not speak French here. I am jealous of people who speak a second language, I feel inferior. Here I have to speak French, I have no choice. It is France, and Europe. A little corner of the EU in the Carribean. A strange detour of a political border but one that works for my advantage, no need for visa or strange currency or work permit. It is a Carribean island, I have never been to this part of the world before, a new place. Time to explore.

I observed two days of Three Star White water kayak training and assessment with coach and assessor Bruce Jolliffe. This was part of a poorly advertised SCA scheme to give subsidised training to club coaches. (The events were mentioned in several places but their dates and locations were hidden away in a tricky to find part of the SCA’s coaching calendar.) I observed it in the hope of becoming a three star assessor and picking up coaching and paddling tips. We went on the Grade 1 occationally 2 River Teith on Saturday and the Grade 2 River Stanley.

We started on the flat with a breathing exercise to help us get good posture. Then some forward paddling commenting on the elements of good forward paddling. We moved onto backwards paddling looking at the difference in where our paddles entered and exited the water compared to forward paddling. The point was made that backwards paddling is a good warm up as it makes use of shoulder muscles not used by forward paddling. The exercise was given of paddling backwards in a circle and the students were allowed to practice that a bit and work out how to do it reliably. There was then the assessment of paddling backwards in a figure of 8, we had three students and two of them were the bhoys to paddle around.

We then paddled a bit downstream, this gives some time for the students to reflect on what they have just done.

At the first rapid we looked at break ins. The students were allowed some time to play then given individual questions to find an answer to “what speed should you go at for a break in?”, “what angle to go at?” “where do you leave one body of water and enter another?”. We had some discussion from that.

I was given the exercise of working out how many strokes it took to do a ferry glide. I did 12 paddling all the way across and 4 with a stern rudder. I was given the feedback to have my arms within a box position of my body (so the paddle is not so far behind me) and use more body rotation which would get more power transfer.

We covered river signals, we were advised against using paddles because they are easily mistaken for just moving paddles around (I fully agree with this). We were advised to acknowledge river signals by making the same one back to the signaller. We did some eddy hopping to show the beginnings of river leadership. He also lead us down a section with his position on the river being far to the outside of the turn, this was for leadership to be able to see around the corner, if being led in such a situation it isn’t always necessary to follow the same river course.

After lunch we did some throwbag practice on land. Starting by just throwing the bag without rope, then throwing the rope into a circle target. We did some re-throws too by collecting the rope into loops in our palms and throwing those, this is less reliable than a clean throw.

Back on the water we did braces. Bruce’s braces were very dynamic with a lot of body movement and the paddle skulling over the surface of the water. He finished with his nose on the front of his deck, as if coming up from a roll. This will take some getting used to. The point was made that high braces are likely to rip your arm out of your shoulder socket.

Rotation was also a key element of the draw stroke ont the move (and hanging draw). To achieve it you need to straighten the leg on the side you are rotating towards.

Similarly for an eskimo rescue there was a lot of rotation and nose being kept to the deck. We also practices eskimo rescues with a paddle (rather than with a boat’s bow). If the rescuer grabs you by the hand wait for them to put your hand on the paddle before rolling up. In practice eskimo rescues with a paddle are very rarely done. Then we did the eskimo rescues on moving water to test it at a 3 star level.

Throwing a throwline to a capsized swimmer was combined with deep water rescues. For my deep water rescue I put a boat on my arm to empty the water and then over the bow of my boat. He turned the boat over and continued to turn it back upside down onto the bow of his boat. He said this reduced lifting weight. (I’m yet to try it, I don’t think my technique has much lifting, and I’m sure I remember Dave Rossiter showing it to me for my FS&RT even though Jason insists Dave has long since changed his technique.)

We did a recipricol teching practice of draw on the move where students were infront of each other and used draw stroke on move as part of overtaking each other.

We did towing with slings and contact towes. He advised us to keep the sling untied because it could be a snag hazard (I’m not convinced by this, it’s not a snag hazard in my pocket).

He did an exercise where the students had to work out how to turn a boat in a circle with only one blade. Then they had to move the boat forward with the same stroke and work out what the difference was. (The answer is edge and where pressure on the stroke.)

Then we had some fun at Thistlebrig, the assessor got out first and wrote his de-brief notes then chatted to each person who all passed.

In my lengthy quest to get bits of paper saying I can coach I did my Moderate Water Endorsement – White Water with Kim Bull. There were three of us doing a day of training then a day of assessment.

We started off with him doing four short coaching sessions with us on ferry gliding. They covered the four fundamentals and the four teaching styles. Connectivity/guided discovery – where are you touching your boat and order those places from most to least important. Power transfer/practice – try at 30%, 40% and 50% effort. Posture/command – ferry glide and imagine there’s a string out of your head pulling yourself up. Feel/self check – think how it feels as you paddle across.

Next the three of us students did sessions on breaking in/out for each other. Sam did a session on stern rudder break ins and us to feel where the pressure is. I did a session on imagining it was a slalom, visualising the strokes needed then checking they were doing that. It turned into guided discovery when I was asked if bow rudder or stern rudder was better answer: bow rudder is for slalomists because you can turn it into a forward stroke) so we explored that along with the angle of the blade in the bow rudder (90 degrees to the current, not relative to the boat).

After lunch we moved down the river and Kim did a session on stern rudder break ins. This is not something I’ve come across before but apparently it’s the best way for beginners and others to break into the current. The stern rudder required feels a lot like a bow rudder, just further behind the boat. It’s not as sudden as a bow rudder and it does more than a support stroke.

We looked at coaching leadership, when we are making decisions on how to do a rapid we need to be aware of the process that lets us make that decision so we can share it with others who will then learn to be river leaders.

One more session from each student, tactics of ferry glides, s-bend break out and ins and I did a session on surfing a wave (which we didn’t really manage, tricky wave).

The next day was assessment day. 6 canoeists turned up. All in dry suits and with their own river boats, was this a sign they knew how to tackle basic rapids already? We each had to do two sessions both of 45 minutes. I hadn’t had much inspiration the night before on sessions and was still pondering what to do when one of them asked what a draw stoke on the move is. So I quickly improvised a session on just that, using a fairly smooth rapid and shouting “rock” at them to get them to react with their draw. For my second session I did the visualising slalom which I had done the day before, focusing more on getting them to have confidence in their break in. Turns out people with dry suits and river boats aren’t necessarily great paddlers.

I was told my assessment sessions were both very good and I would have passed. Alas I haven’t done enough coaching hours in the required environment to be able to pass so this was just for experience and I’ll need to do it again.

We used the River Tyne in northern England. Basic grade 1 maybe 2 rapids. Much talk of access restrictions, hassles from anglers and jealousy about freedom in Scotland. MWE is a useful course, not too lengthy, which brings together 4-star river leadership and level 2 coaching.