November 2012 Newsletter

 

 

... the inexperienced become courageous and the experienced learn finesse... (Derek Hutchinson)
  

What's on
 After the long weekend on Palmaria (an island situated in the Ligurian Sea, at the westernmost end of the Gulf of La Spezia) we propose another outing to the seaside: four days amongst the creeks and inlets of the French coast between Cassis and Marseille. Enough to recharge the batteries in time for the forthcoming BCU instruction courses.

 

The following is on the cards for November:
3 star sea kayak course and assessment from the 13 to 15 November with Phil Hadley
3 star open canoe course and assessment from the 16 to the 18 November with Phil Hadely
2 star coach – final assessment - 19 November with Ashley St.John-Claire.

 

Once the above is over, we relocate for a ten-day sojurn to the nature reserve on the Isola della Cona in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. Together with the local club C.K.F. we hope to transform the courses that we will be holding into an annual sea kayaking event.

 

November is also when pool-based rolling classes will be resumed.
Thanks to the support of the acclaimed Canoa Club Milano, the Legnano public swimming pool will be available to all kayaking enthusiasts. From 8 November onwards, on Thursdays from 9.30pm to 10.30pm, rolling courses for river, sea and Greenland-style paddlers will be held in the heated and chlorinated main pool. You can even have a go at freestyle swimming if you enter the water an hour before at 8.30pm. What more could you ask for...

Kayaking snippets
 Something else on rolling, specifically the high or Greenland brace.
After the inspiring San Vito Climbing & Sea Kayaking Festival in October, I’ve realised once again the strict relationship between body, kayak and paddle. Some instructors start off teaching the roll through mastering the balance brace, others hand rolling, however I would rather one concentrates on a continuous high brace in order to perfect the final phase of the roll. As I once remarked, let the sea be your bed and the waves your pillow, fully relaxed while you gaze at the skies, scored with the furrows of your dreams!

Call of the Inuit
 "The Inuit kayak is the lightest and most narrow craft of its kind in the world. A kayak belonging to a hunter 1.6 metre tall should be about 5.75 metres long and 45cm wide..."

This snippet and other information regarding traditional Greenland craft can be found in the books written by Robert Gessain, colleague to the French explorer Paul-Emile Victor.
Gessain was a medical doctor, anthropologist and photographer, who visited Ammassalik for the first time in 1934 and returning several times until 1972, accumulating invaluable stories about the Inuit way of life in the process. Excerpts from 1950, 1969 e 2007, have been dutifully inserted in our website.

Over the horizon
 Derek Hutchinson, one of the founding fathers of the modern kayak, sadly passed away on the 10 October, surrounded by family and friends, aged 79. He was responsible for the world-wide dissemination of the kayak and inspired many to take up paddling.
He also designed tens of kayaks and paddles as well as (something not too well known) Greenland-inspired pictures and views, some of which still adorn the bows of our kayaks.
He was a brilliant innovator, a highly regarded teacher and a productive writer, as attested last year by Eric Soares (since then also passed away) of the Tsumani Rangers...

Thanks to Albert Gambina, we finally have a Newsletter written in English.
 
home
 www.tatiyak.it - tatiyak.blogspot.com - tatiyak@tatianacappucci.it
 Tatiyak a.s.d. - Via Giovanni Verga 53 - 20025 Legnano (MI) - C.F. e P.I. 06558570963 - © 2012 MF