Eskimorollen leicht gemacht

Celliers Kruger von Fluid Kayaks aus Südafrika schickte uns diesen Bericht, in dem sein Teampaddler Rowan Walpole beschreibt, wie man einfach und effizient die Technik des Eskimotierens lernen kann:

 - If you are new to kayaking, learning to roll will be one of the first skills that you need to master. A couple of people have asked us to include an article that covers rolling. I hope that this helps!

Basically, while upside down, you want to get your paddle blade onto the surface of the water, directly in line with your hips. You want your paddle blade to be flat on the surface of the water. Once your paddle blade is in that position you simply put in a good hip snap, making sure that your head is the last thing to leave the water, and you will pop up. This is complicated by the fact that you are upside down and that the paddle doesn't provide enough support for you to have a bad technique.
 
The following is one way of rolling. It isn't the only way, but it does work!
 
Step One: As soon as you go over, or even before you go over, you want to be in the following position. It is essential that you get this right or your roll will not go well. If you are right-handed you will place your paddle along the left side of your boat. You want both of your wrists to be in contact with the side of the boat. When you are upside down, tuck forward in the boat and slide your hands towards the sky, keeping your wrists in contact with the boat.

       
Once you have stretched as far as you can, cock your wrists so that they are folded over the bottom (hull) of the kayak. If you can't get your hands that high, simply cock your wrists away from you to flatten the paddle blade. As soon as you are happy that all this is correct, move on to step two.

         
Step Two: This is where it starts to get a little bit tricky. You need to sweep the front blade (the one closest to your right hand) along the surface of the water until it is in line with your hip.
 
To do this you need to think about what your front and back hands are doing. Your back (left) hand is the pivot point that the front blade sweeps around. If you let this hand come off the boat, it will make it impossible to get into the correct position. Your back (left) hand stays in contact with the hull of the boat during this movement.
          

Your front hand sweeps the blade into the correct position and the important point here is that the blade needs to stay on or near to the surface of the water. If the blade sinks in too deep, you will not have as much leverage to flick off, which will negatively impact your roll.              

When I was learning I found that keeping my front (right) arm straight, and thinking about moving my shoulder into my eye-socket, stopped me from bending my arm and sinking the paddle. As soon as you have the paddle in line with the boat at 90 degrees then move onto step three. You can't delay too much here because you are stretching to keep your paddle high, and the longer you hold it the lower it will sink.

 
Step Three: This is where you bring the hip-snap in. You snap towards the paddle. As you do this, you can pull the paddle towards your hips, but the bulk of any force should be generated from your hips. Your head and upper body are the last things to come out of the water, after your snap has brought the boat underneath you.

        
This is very important: you are flicking the boat underneath you, not forcing yourself up and over the boat.
           
With a good snap and not leading with your head, you should be able to get this after a few tries.

There are lots of videos demonstrating the roll on sites like You-Tube. Good Luck!

By Rowan Walpole