What is the SK1 skills lesson and do I need it?
This is the second and intermediate Sea Kayak (SK) Lesson, which will give you an SK1 rating. If you have already been to Sac (and received your R1 rating there) and taken the Sea Kayak Skills Lesson, you don’t need to take this lesson. This lesson provides an alternative way to the Sac trip to get your SK1, and it basically covers some intermediate techniques that are essential for any sea kayaker to use in the real life situations.
What are the prerequisites for this lesson?
You must have taken the Sea Kayak Skills Lesson and passed the Swim Test prior to this lesson.
What should I bring with to the lesson?
1) Swimsuit
2) Warm-when-wet clothing if you tend to get cold (Plan to get wet practicing rescues!)
3) Towel and change of clothes (Again, don’t forget that you’ll get wet practicing rescues!)
4) Boating shoes are nice. Nose plugs are excellent.
5) Membership card
6) Sunscreen
7) Water
How long does this lesson take?
The lesson generally takes 2.5-3 hours
What will I learn in this lesson?
This lesson consists of four main parts:
1) Paddle to Picnic Point or further
2) Practice edging, bracing, sculling and hip snaps
3) Assisted paddler practice
4) Paddle float rescue
The first part tests paddler strength and endurance. These are essential skills for the club trips – not to paddle very fast but keep a moderate speed for quite some time.
The second part covers essential kayaking techniques that basically help paddlers not to flip over and keep balanced with the water. In order to realize the real world paddling situations, the instructors will push you to the sides to make you recover from that push.
The third part is aimed at the real world scenario about what to do when a paddler gets exhausted or sick. The rescuer have this paddler lean on their boat and then paddle both of the boats.
Finally, the last part covers the paddle float rescue, which is a solo rescue and might be very useful especially if you like to go paddling just on yourself. This part will be done at the end of the lesson as everybody will get wet! J
