C-Forum

Ran the LG this weekend in my newish-to-me Detonator. Or perhaps "floated down it like a turd in a toilet bowl" would be a better description of my overall day: swam at the bottom of Backender, got blown downstream on what should have been an easy ferry near the top of Canyon Doors and ran the second half of the drop backwards and full of water, swam at the bottom of some random rapid that probably has a name but seemed nondescript to me other than having a some V waves and small holes at the top and a big hole at the bottom, had a sh$% show of a line at PSH - spun out trying to use the corner of the ledge hole to sling me left and barely missed going into H. Hole itself. Even the rapids that I ran well had me feeling like I was digging really hard and going nowhere.

I have run the LG before in a Probe a few years ago and had zero trouble, in spite of the fact that it was my first time and I had only minimal descriptions of the rapids ahead of time. I am not a hack - I read water well, have a good cross stroke and am not afraid to use it in the middle of big stuff. On the LY this summer, I zipped that Detonator all over the place and felt fairly invincible. But this weekend on the Gauley, I sucked. Breaking waves repeatedly sapped all my speed and/or slapped me off course. Subtle currents would grab my edges - I'm talking stuff like the slower water on the upstream faces of waves. Features that, in a longer boat, I would use to get a free push in the direction I needed to go (like eddylines, slower water behind small holes, etc.) invariably would throw me sideways. Diagonal moves across the grain were really slow and difficult.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

I understand all too well how a few swims can destroy one's self-esteem. But cheer up. Based on your description of your paddling skills, I'd say you had a bad day, that's all. Maybe you were just a little bit sick, had allergies that sapped your energy and clogged your ears so as to affect your balance, or something like that. Or maybe you brought some of your off-river worries with you, which for me is a sure ticket to a day of swims. I'd give it another go before I beat myself up too much over it.

For a short boat like a Detonator, you have to drive it, so if you were a little bit weak for some reason and weren't paddling as hard as you normally would, the result could be the kind of day you had.

The Detonator really likes to go stern first in big water. It is loose in spite of its reasonable edges (double chines). You just have to paddle it very aggressively all the time.

I wish my paddling was consistent enough to be able to help!

I'm thinking along the same lines as riverken - sounds like you just had an off day and didn't meet your own expectations. I have them all the time!

Have you altered your outfitting at all? Could it be that you have shuffled forwards or back a little in the boat and changed the trim subtly since you last paddled it?
Changing trim affects centre of lateral resistance and could be a cause for spinning out and stuff because the balance of forces under the water is different.

Some times your the bat some times your the ball. Had one of "Those Days" on the UY recently. Why - a number of reasons but mostly I'm chalking it up to just suxing at it that day!

Go get it again - be positive and aggressive and kick butt!

Beer cures most things.
Have one, then hit the river the next day and sort that s*%t out.

You don't mention anything about having or not having a roll. Being able to combat roll might solve some of the problems.

Roll is about 50% in funky water. It was 0% on that trip. That of course was the proximate cause of the swims, but I consider a run a failure if it involves a roll in the first place.

It's probably just basic stuff. Bigger water isn't much different than smaller rivers except everything and consequently everything you have to do is bigger, faster etc.

I find it helps if you re always paddling in one direction or another.

It's absurd to view rolling as failure when you don't have a consistent roll and you swim. Practice that sht.

If I flip when all I'm doing is running a drop, then that was a failed run. It might be a failed run for a legitimate reason, like a missed stroke or misreading the water, or it might be a sign that I don't belong on that rapid. If I swim because of a blown roll, that's a double failure.

So yes, I need to perfect my roll so that I can recover from mistakes more reliably and have more chances to learn from those mistakes.

Wow, not a lot of support for you here!

I understand your viewpoint that capsizing is a failure whether you roll or not.
A good friend of mine is/was a very good kayaker regularly running grade 5 with a less than 50% roll, but very rarely swam because every other aspect of his paddling was so good he very rarely capsized, but when he did it usually ended badly. Me on the other hand, I have a bombproof kayak roll (still weak in OC1) and whilst a capsize does bug me, I almost always roll up and carry on. I wish I was as good as him and still have my roll!

I wonder if everyone who has responded is as self-critical as you (or I)?
Some people seem to approach a rapid without any clear expectation of their outcome, and they are never going to be disappointed if they end up off line, or hit a rock they shouldn't have, get spun and do part of it backwards etc. Sometimes when I'm running stuff on the fly without looking at it properly I also have no real expectation and don't beat myself up for screwing up.
But on something I think I know well, or have spent time scouting and deciding my line, I definitely do have expectations and I do get annoyed if I fail to meet them. In particular I will tend to notice if I am consistently meeting my targets on a river, or if I am missing them more as the day progresses, these days I classify as bad or days, days when I'm not on my game. Usually these days result in more portaging than those days when I hit everything spot on and start feeling indestructible.

I can't help you with why, I can only observe that I sometiems have days where things don't go as smoothly as I expect.

I've been using an artificial WW course for the last few months, it's always the same so is pretty useful for benchmarking myself. The result is that I can identify tiny mistakes I make on the course that other people wouldn't even identify as mistakes - it's actually pretty hard to read so I have a lot of these, but as the session goes on I can start to judge my own tiredness by how much I'm missing my targets. I think the course has 19 eddies, for my last run on Monday I wanted to hit every single one. I did, one of them required 3 attempts to get into though, was it a coincidendce that it was one of the last ones on the course? Of course not - it was simply evidence that I was tiring.....
Being tired definitely puts me off my game, and I'm not always aware of the tiredness until I notice my paddling starting to deteriorate and stop to think.....

Hope your next outing goes to plan and restores your self belief!

I noticed that there is a Probe for sale on this Web site. If cost is no consideration you could buy the Probe, and problem solved! Seriously, I've never paddled a Detonator, but I have paddled a Viper 12 for many years, which is similar to the Probe, and I always felt comfortable in big water in the Viper. On the other hand, the Probe is larger and might require more effort to roll. You could keep the Detonator for creeky stuff like the LY, and run the Probe on the LG.

I still have access to the Probe, but in most ways have outgrown it. In spite of its size, it's one of the easiest to roll canoes I've paddled. Perhaps that's why my roll in the Detonator is shaky - the Probe may have allowed me to get away with poor technique, similar to the way the RPM used to let kayakers get away with REALLY poor technique and still roll up...

Not giving up on the Detonator yet - probably just need more seat time to learn its quirks. Of course, seat time is its own challenge, since I have a lot of competing demands on my time...

So the themes seem to be:

1. Detonator must be paddled very aggressively in big water. I probably need to redefine what I think is 'aggressive.'
2. Get a better roll. Yep. And if I can't fix my bad technique, I probably don't belong on class 4.

I'll add one of my own - slow down, scout more, or at least run with someone who is willing to take the time to explain moves. The group I was with was a bunch of kayakers who didn't stop much, so I used up a lot of energy trying to avoid getting filled up by breaking waves that could have been avoided if I'd known in advance exactly where those waves were. I spent even more energy bailing at the bottom of drops and then hammering through the pools to catch back up with the group. Can't blame the group, though. I sold myself as being a solid boater who did not need babysitting...

I d say the group is a BIG part of the problem. I ve been there.