Kayaker Andrew Pollock

I’ll put a more detailed post up later but i thought i would give a quick update. A few months back Dave Fisher, Steve Fisher and myself went on a little surf kayaking trip along South Africa’s wildcoast. I have been sitting in on the edit with Dave as he is finishing up the TV show we are making from the trip and its looking pretty sweet! The show is called “wildcoast heat” and will be broadcast here in South Africa as well as being available for download off Steve’s site. To wet your appetite here is a still frame of me surfing a big one during some big swell we experienced halfway through the trip.

Since i need to get some content up i thought id start off with this clean blunt article i wrote a while back, enjoy.

Okay first off this is the way I clean blunt, I tend to paddle on large ocean waves so this technique will probably not work for everyone but there are still ideas here most people will be able to use.

I actually learnt how to clean blunt by accident a few years ago whilst I was testing a prototype that was really fast but didn’t bounce very well. I was trying to do a clean airscrew and because the boats bow didn’t rise very high as I took off it ended up hitting the water when I was inverted in the airscrew and because of all the forward momentum I had I didn’t crash and burn but instead ended up doing my first clean blunt. With this technique its important to think of a clean blunt not as a variation of a blunt but as a separate move entirely.

Okay so now you are on the wave, the first thing you need to do is setup. I find that because a clean blunt is clean it means you don’t have your paddle to use as a crutch when things go wrong so getting a good setup is even more important than normal. As with most moves you want to set up on the highest and steepest part of the wave. Now because this move is similar to the airscrew its better to not aim perfectly upstream but instead at a slight angle to the current in fact the take off is almost identical to an airscrew.

When you have a lot of forward momentum and before you reach the bottom of the waves face you need to initiate the bounce. As with the air screw you want to bounce off of your edge, not on the flat section of the hull as it allows you to get better rotation. This is also the point where the clean blunt differs from the airscrew a bit. With an airscrew you want to get your bow as high off of the water as possible but that’s not what you are trying to do here. Instead of translating all of your forward momentum into upward momentum you want to keep as much of your forward momentum as possible.

You want your bow to be just high enough that it will stay clear of the water for you to rotate almost upside down.


Like an airscrew you want to be leaning towards your back deck as the bow begins to rise. This is also a way you can control the blunt, the further back you lean the more inverted the blunt will become. With the blunt I do in this sequence you can see how inverted I get by leaning right against the back deck. On smaller waves this is not going to be possible so a neutral body position should work better.



So now you are in the air and inverted your bow should have started dropping. As your bow hits its going to cause the stern to pass over you and the boat is going to go through the bunt motion. To make the transition smoother you need to move from the back deck aggressively towards the front deck. This becomes more important the more inverted the move is.

At this point I like to put in a fast back stroke which helps you stay on the wave but mainly helps to stabilise you if you are a little disoriented. I also find that quickly looking backwards to find where you are on the wave helps you get back into the sweet spot faster so that you don’t flush.

A few quick tips:

Speed is key, you need to be landing with as much forward speed as possible.
Remember this doesn’t feel like a normal blunt, think of it as a separate move.
Be aggressive with your edge transition off the bounce.
Commit fully to the move.

Check out this video to see the move in action.

Later,
Andrew

Alrighty so after months of talking about starting a blog i have taken the first step and signed up. I’m still busy getting some content together and working out how this whole blog thing works but i should have some stuff up hopefully in the next few days.

Later,

Andrew