West Coast Words – Slicey Boats

I’ve been thinking about getting some of these thoughts down on paper and sharing them for a while. No one wants to put themselves on a pedestal and get high and mighty about how other people should paddle, but after the second grom dislocated his shoulder on the same rapid on our local grade 3/4, and having taught both of them, I’ve been left feeling like maybe I’ve let them down a bit.

Like a lot of us, I cut my teeth in the Mini Mystic and then the Mystic. We paddled that same river every weekend. Slicing and playboating weren’t cool in our eyes. We wanted to paddle harder whitewater, and we did it in creek boats.

Then we left the Coast and started teaching kayaking for a living. That’s where we joined the slicing world.

We started paddling our RPMs everywhere. We had so much fun, but we also started having a few of those “that could have been a lot worse” pinnings. Eventually we worked out our comfort zone and put some limits around the style of river we were prepared to take those boats down.

Then came the modern slicey boats.

Who needs hard whitewater when you can turn moderate grades into a skate park?

Naturally, we started pushing them into harder whitewater, and the same shit started happening again. I  realised that on some of those runs I was basically just surviving the rapid so I could slice at the bottom. For me, that feeling wasn’t the same as paddling a modern creek boat and actually feeling the flow of the river.

So I’ve put limits on myself again.

If I’m in my slicey boat, I want to be making the river into a skate park. If I’m just trying to survive the rapids, I’d rather be in a creek boat.

And I think there’s an important lesson in that, particularly for younger paddlers coming through.

When you paddle a slicey boat, you’re deliberately decreasing your margin for error. That’s part of what makes it so rewarding. Easy rapids become interesting again and rivers you’ve paddled a hundred times suddenly feel completely different.

But the consequences of mistakes increase too.

Paddle your creek boat on your local grade 4 until you can make all the moves. And if you’re bored, you’re probably not doing it right. There are always more eddies to catch, harder lines to find. Learn to put your boat exactly where you want it, not just get yourself down the rapid.

Once you’ve built a really solid base at that grade, then getting into a slicey boat lets you add another layer without adding a massive amount of unnecessary risk. You already have the skills and awareness behind you.

If you’re going to paddle a slicey boat well on moderate whitewater, I reckon you want a solid grade 5 skill set. Not because you need to paddle grade 5, but because you’ve chosen a boat that gives you less margin when things go wrong.

That’s also the beauty of slicey boats. You don’t need to paddle hard whitewater to keep progressing or make kayaking exciting. Your local grade 3/4 can become a completely new river.

Slicing has given me a whole new perspective on kayaking, and I absolutely love it.

But looking back, I’m also really glad I cut my teeth on grade 4 in a creek boat.