If you’re interested in learning to roll or just want to improve your technique, the Rolling Clinic in the Twin Cities is the place for you. The clinics are free and held at various lakes in the summer and indoor pools in the winter. Alex Pak is the main instructor but the members of the clinic collectively help one another improve their rolling skills.

The Rolling Clinic website has several video clips demonstrating various rolls. There are videos for everything from the standard Greenland roll to hand rolls to behind the head rolls.

If you’re going to be in the Twin Cities, make sure to sign up on their website for a rolling sessions.

http://www.rollingclinic.com

Here’s the trailer for Pacific Horizons, a new sea kayaking film by Bryan Smith. The film showcases segments on Dubside, Quadra Island Tidal Races, Skookumchuck Narrows, Keirron Tastagh and Jeff Norville’s circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, San Juan Islands, The Oregon Coast, Columbia River Gorge, Remote West Coast Vancouver Island Locations, Queen Charlotte Islands, and much more.

The DVD isn’t coming out until late 2007 but at least it’ll keep us northerners entertained while the lakes and rivers are frozen over. Hopefully, this is just the first segment in a series of films by Bryan Smith.

For more info and photos, visit: Pacific Horizons

When I saw this, the first thing that came to mind was “nice photoshop job” but after a little digging around online, found out that the photo is genuine. It was taken from an article titled Shark Detectives in the September 2005 issue of Africa Geographic magazine and was taken by a group of researchers studying great white sharks off the coast of South Africa.

From the Shark Detectives article:
Sitting in a 3.8 metre sea kayak and watching a four-metre great white approach you is a fairly tense experience. Although we had extensively tested the shark’s reactions to an empty kayak and had observed no signs of aggression, this gave us little comfort as we eyed a great white heading straight for us, albeit slowly. Just a metre or so from the craft it veered off, circles and slowly approached from behind. It did this several times, occasionally lifting its head out of the water to get a better look. Then it lost interest, and as it continued on its way we were able to follow a short distance behind. Once we’d come to terms with having nothing between ourselves and a four-metre shark except a thin layer of plastic, our kayak made an ideal research platform for observing great white behavious in shallow water. Its advantages are twofold: it is inconspicuous and appears not to cause the sharks to alter their behaviour for long, and it allows us to watch them in a natural situation, as it is not necessary to attract them to us with food.

Read the full article here: http://www.whitesharktrust.org/pages/mediaarticle/media25.html

This photo was taken from the same sequence of photographs and appeared in the December 2005 issue of The Big Issue magazine.

Read the full article here: http://www.whitesharktrust.org/pages/mediaarticle/media26.html

It’s so nice that we don’t have to worry about sharks or gators while paddling in Northern Ontario. The scariest thing I’ve come across while paddling was a nudist washing himself in the McIntyre River.