How to Do a Roll in a Solo Whitewater Canoe

Video Transcript

"In a solo canoe, when things go wrong you flip, you can roll back up. In order to do a roll you have to have a boat outfitted in a certain way, one of the things, one of the main things for a roll; you have to have your legs really solidly inside the boat, and this boat has double thigh straps which really help. One closer to your knee to hold your knee in position and the other one back closer to your hips to keep your hips down inside the boat, the other thing that this boat has, are, harder to see, but there are foot pedals back there that I’m pushing against, and I use those foot pedals to push my knees up into the outfitting to make sure that I stay in the outfitting when I flip. And uh, a loosely outfitted canoe, its really difficult to roll, just because it’s hard to stay in the boat upside down. The other thing we have in this are is, are air bags that are pretty well blown up, the more you can, the more of the boat you can fill up with air bags, the better, because that going to displace as much water as possible and uh, when you come back upright it’s going to make it easier to paddle. There are even boats with automatic pumps, bilge pumps that will uh, pump the water out when you come back upright. But in this case, uh, we will be able to roll the boat and I’ll, I’ll have a fair amount of water but I’ll be able to paddle over to the side and if I needed to I could catch and eddy or something and get out of the rapid, um, the principles of a roll, are that a roll is just like a very, very low, low brace, so a low brace was out here to the side, for a roll I’m going to do that brace very, very far down in the water and one way to learn a roll is just to brace further and further into the water, until finally your gunnels are the way in the water and you’re actually getting your head in the water as well and that’s starting to become a roll. For a setup, for a 360 roll, if I flip to the other side, I’m going to set up by tucking forward, and one thing about rolling is when you’re, if you’re in an open canoe and you’re used to just coming out in whitewater you don’t have to worry about protecting your head so much, but if you’re going to stay in the boat, you really need to tuck forward so that you protect your head and the back, and your back, and your back is protected by your life jacket. Leaning back like this exposes your face and can be hazardous if you’re rolling in a rocky situation. So I lean forward, I put my paddle over to the side here and the underwater recovery, the underwater setup is going to be like this, I’m going to sweep out to 90 degrees, I’m going to flip my paddle over so that I’m using my back face, because on a low brace I use a back face of the blade and then I’m going to low brace up, keeping my head down and my head should be the last thing out of the water. That’s the way it looks above water, it’s going to look a little different under water, so now I’ll give you a couple of demos. "