The Kayakers are Coming!

(Convoluted nod to Tolkein there.)

Pete, Mike and I stayed overnight Sunday instead of driving home after the ICE. Weather permitting, we had decided to head to Meyers Beach and paddle along the mainland sea caves.

The weather was great the next morning. While en route to the beach, I called my brother to file a float plan for the sea caves, and added that we might also paddle out to Eagle Island. We had contemplated doing that over Memorial Day weekend, but hadn't said anything about Eagle when we left our float plan, and for that reason as well as others, we had decided to skip the trip to the island that time. But I had learned from that experience, and wanted to keep our options open this time around.

We got to the beach, launched, and paddled east. About a mile along the caves, Mike proposed heading out to Eagle. Having just finished our ICE, we dutifully performed a risk assessment, and while we were talking, a bald eagle flew out from the shore, circled overhead, and winged back to shore. Clearly a sign that we should make the trip, so we headed out.

Eagle is the westernmost island in the archipelago, and the second smallest at less than half a mile long and a quarter mile wide. It's closed to visitors from May 15 to September 1st to provide a safe haven for several types of nesting birds, including Great Blue Herons, Double Crested Cormorants, and Herring Gulls. We were fortunate to be in the Apostles after Sept. 1st, and to find a perfect day for a paddle out to the island. There was very little wind, and the predicted dense fog advisory had been lifted. The weather was a bit hazy, but clear.

As we approached the island, we paddled over the Eagle Island shoal, a shallow area to the south of the island. For us kayakers, the shoal added interest as we looked down at the rocks in the clear water. To sailors, clearly a different story.

Nearing the southern shore, we could see a sea stack that had separated from the rest of the island in a vivid example of how these islands exist in a geological blink of an eye. What was left behind by the glaciers is being worried and eroded away by freezing and thawing, tenacious roots of vegetation, wind and water.

The island itself was more interesting than I had imagined. I was expecting more of the eroding bluffs one sees on the western side of Sand, but there were numerous rock formations. After returning home, I read about the various waterbirds that nest in the trees, and I mentally kicked myself for not looking for the nests, but c'est la vie.

After rounding the island, we stopped for lunch on some flat rocks in the gap by the sea stack on the southwest corner, then headed for home. The day continued to be a bit hazy, and Pete the poet noted that it seemed like we were paddling through molten silver.

We reached the mainland, then headed west to our launch site. About half way back, I noticed a tandem kayak approaching but didn't pay much attention to it. Then I heard someone say "Hi, Peggy", and realized that the intrepid Brian was in the tandem, along with his mom. I'd met Brian when he was our guide on the Outer Islands trip earlier in the summer. His mom had never been paddling with Brian, so she was getting a great introduction to the Apostles by seeing the mainland sea caves on a calm day. Brian had circumnavigated Lake Superior the previous year, and his mom had provided logistical support on part of the route. She told us that it had been quite a challenge each day to find where the heck Brian and his paddling partner had stopped for the night.

Our next paddling encounter was with a woman who had a border collie sharing her kayak. The dog was sitting up in the front of the cockpit and having a wonderful time, although she started barking when I came up to chat and got inside the perimeter she considered her territory.

Back at the beach, we landed, carried the boats up the stairs, loaded them on the cars, and then headed for home. It was a little gem of a paddle to cap the ICE weekend.

ICE

No, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ICE is the American Canoe Association's Instructor Certification Exam. And no, it's not about canoeing, it's about kayaking.

At the end of May, six Inland Sea Kayakers club members and seven other folks took the Instructor Development Workshop for sea kayaking up at Living Adventure in Bayfield, WI. The IDW is the first step to being certified by the American Canoe Association to teach. We survived some very cold water and learned a lot, and then had the summer to sharpen skills and enhance our knowledge of kayaking.

Fast forward to the end of the summer and it was time for the evaluation weekend, where we would all find out whether we would be certified as ACA instructors, and if so, at what level. My goal was to be certified at Level 3. The next level up is an Open Water certification, and I knew that I didn't have enough open water experience to teach at that level.

Team ISK arrived in Bayfield on Thursday evening. The course didn't start until Saturday, so we had one day to ourselves. While enjoying a tasty breakfast at the Egg Toss Cafe, we decided to head out to Basswood Island. After crossing the channel, we landed on the south end of Basswood, took a short walk to the old brownstone quarry, and returned. A nice paddle, and it gave me an opportunity to get over my big lake jitters (paddling on Lake Superior is NOT the same as paddling on Lake Calhoun!)

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my presentation for the ICE. We had each been assigned a topic to present in a classroom format, and mine was Weather Theory. That was the topic I really, really, really didn't want. My idea of weather was reading the forecasts on Weather.com. One of my brothers still teases me about the time I needed to know the wind speed and direction and headed to the computer instead of opening the door. (In my own defense, it WAS winter, and my deck is protected from the wind…)

With such an open ended subject, most of the two weeks between getting my assigned topic and the beginning of the course were spent learning something about weather. That left Friday afternoon and evening to pull it together into a coherent presentation. It all worked out fine, even if it was a bit of a late night.

Saturday morning, ten candidate instructors gathered at Living Adventure for the ICE. Bonnie was our instructor trainer and Gail was her mentor and co-trainer. We spent the morning with half of the group giving their classroom presentations. Over the lunch hour, we were assigned the on-water skill we would teach, and in the afternoon we headed out onto the water. After each skill was taught, we all demonstrated it and were checked off by the instructors, after which they threw in more coaching.

We would have liked enough wind to get some rougher water practice in, but if one was willing to give that up, the setting and weather couldn't have been more perfect, including a pair of kingfishers who performed a noisy flyover and provided intermittent commentary from the shore.

One of the skills to be checked off was doing 3 rolls in one minute. My roll had gotten a bit iffy in the last few weeks, and Tony and then Tom helped straighten it out. I was exceedingly pleased when my rolls were successful and I got that one checked off the list.

When we were working on high braces, Bonnie said "You're all doing the beginner's brace just fine; how about a real brace?" We all looked at her blankly. She demonstrated, rolling over until her torso hit the water, then high bracing up. That's actually supposed to be easier than an in between brace, where you roll to a 45 degree angle and brace up. By falling all the way to the side, your body stops your fall as it hits the water, and then all you have to do is get up with your brace and hip snap. I tried it unsuccessfully, capsized, then attempted to roll back up and ended up doing a wet exit. Fortunately they didn't take back one of my rolls due to the failed attempt.

At the end of the day it was wonderful to head back to the hotel with half the exam completed and my presentation over with. Yummy dinner at Maggie's and I crashed early. Next day we had a fascinating presentation by Gail on liability, including spirited game of Liability Jeopardy. (What is Assumption of Risk?) (Team Superior Trio did not do well.) Continuing in the serious vein, Bonnie talked about instructor judgment.

After the Sunday morning student presentations, we each met with Gail or Bonnie and answered questions about charts and navigation. I seem to have gotten the easy instructor on that one (Gail). Bonnie asked her students to calculate the current magnetic variation if the annual increase was 6 degrees and the chart was 7 years old. Much mocking occurred on the water afterwards when nobody had been able to multiply 6 times 7.

The afternoon was devoted to rescues with some incident scenarios thrown in. Did I mention the gleeful laughs from Gail and Bonnie when they were about to hand us something particularly "interesting"? And there were a few decidedly non-pastoral "Sucks to be you!" comments tossed in as well.

When I had to do a wet exit in order to be the victim for Tony's demo of the T rescue, I couldn't resist trying a "real" high brace first. Figured if I was going over anyway, I might as well capsize while attempting to do something useful. Turns out that there's something about having nothing to lose that must have made me more relaxed, because the high brace worked this time. Bonnie was right ... it was easier than a half way over brace.

Rescues went fine, though we had one bonked head (skin was not broken), one case of incipient hypothermia, one lost evaluation sheet (we could see it on the bottom but nobody wanted to swim down there), one lengthy discussion of how to do a rescue while the victim was "unconscious" and under water, and one lost tow rope.

The final presentation was how to do a self rescue in a tandem. Gail and Bonnie were the rescuees (they'd gone back to get into the boat while the rest of us did an unsuccessful sweep for the lost tow rope). They paddled out and did a splendid low brace turn, then a roll. Before capsizing to set up their rescue, they also modeled the classic "divorce boat" behavior with style and enthusiasm, if not grace.

And then it was time to get the boats loaded up and wait for our evaluations. Bonnie and Gail holed up for a while to compare notes, before coming back and being kind enough to tell us we had all passed at either a level 2 or 3. We then met with them individually for our personal evaluations. Bonnie was my evaluator, and we talked about the need to get the experience to teach things many different ways.

It was a tiring but a great weekend. All of the ISK folks were certified at Level 3. My main piece of feedback to Bonnie was that I wished it had been a 3 day format. The mechanics of doing the exam took most of 2 days, but the teaching that Gail and Bonnie were able to offer in the interludes was fabulous, and a reminder of how much more there is to learn. It's clear that kayaking isn't going to get boring for a very long time. I feel rather self indulgent for all the fun I've had kayaking this summer, but I'm well and truly hooked.