I have been reading through the forum here and have a few questions for someone...hell anyone!

Quick backstory... I quit kayaking 7 yrs ago... 2 long Swims down some nasty big water in West Virgina and i reconsidered what i was doing... well now I am back and getting up to speed... to do so i picked up a liquidlogic CR 250 ( i am a bigger guy 230-240lbs...but smaller than I used to be) as i want to learn to playboat but still polish up my riverrunning stuff.

My question is this.

how the hell do i get this boat vertical in the flatwter???

When I try to double pump the bow just bobs back up. gain up momentum to dbl pump and nothing... i have tried the plowing ender and i either fall back on my ass or It pops out from one side... is the boat just too corky to get over? i dont think i can get it past 25-30 degrees

Well i am sure that I will have plenty more questions but any help to get me vertical i will treasure...

Oh yes i also picked up Playboating basics by EJ and have watched it over and over...

Thanks everybody

Head down. Keep your head down. Lots of other semantics but that is a big key

Also if your trying a ploughing ender it helps if you paddle forward at a pace and then lean forward to engage the bow, instead of just leaning and then paddling.
Good luck

Tom

Also let me just say that, it may look easy, but it's not! So don't get disheartened. I don't know much about the CR250, but I did see a friend paddling it and it looked like it had a fair bit of bouyancy in the bow and stern. Well, enough that trying to just force it under the water would be quite difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible (I don't really know the boat) but if you're learning and the boat is kind of big it will be quite hard. See if maybe you can borrow a smaller boat and practice it. If you do it in something smaller, you get the feel for what you are doing, then when you go back to your kayak, hopefully you can feel what's going wrong and you'll be able to master the skill much quicker.

You can always try to put water in it, it should work well with plowing. Also try to get it vertical in eddy lines, either via a squirt turn or by trying a cartwheel.
I also find it easier to get the back end down than the front end. So when you are double pumping you might try to do the whole thing in reverse, paddle backwards and initiate the back end.
Also try finding small waves to wheel over, get the timing right and you can wave wheel a creekboat... once in a million tries

Double pumping on a eddyline definately helps, I learn't cartwheels because theres a confluence between two rivers at my local playspot and you can just bomb downstream and double pump vertical using only one stroke, you could probably do it without a stroke but I'm not good enough.

what really helped me, as a transitional step, was finding one of those depressed eddies, where the top of the eddy line was like a mini pourover about 4 inches high. That way if my double pump was not on edge enough the top of the eddy line gave me a little bit of help, ender style.

Try this, I wrote it a while back it may help you:

Before you learn to cartwheel, you must learn The Double Pump. Bow stalling is a great skill to have but you don't need to know how to bow stall to cartwheel.

The Double Pump:
Here is what you need to do. The key to double pumping is not throwing your weight around. In fact, the less you throw your weight, the better you will be able to connect you moves.

Get On Edge:
Getting the boat on edge to double pump is exactly as it sounds, ON EDGE! Your double pump is not dependent on leaning forward. It is dependent on leaning out and away from your boat. If you boat is flat, the boat will slap the water and bounce back. You MUST put the boat on EDGE so that it can CUT through the water. The force required to do this is minimal, really. So get the boat on edge, so it can SLICE through the water and not slap the water.

If you lean forward too far it will do two things:
1. Flatten out the hull so you slap the bow on top of the water.
2. Force you to then throw your weight back the other way on the next move to compensate. So... STAY CENTERED OVER THE BOAT.

How do you get on edge? First, assume you will be capsizing as you find this balance point.

The Breakdown:
1) Get your arms away from your boat when you Double Pump, this offers
a better support-bracket.
2) Drop your edge about 55-65 degrees (in order to SLICE)
3) Lift you feet while maintaining the 55-65 degree boat side-lean as you do your Bow Initiation (Forward Sweep with arms away from your boat).
4) Swing your feet back under you as you initiate the Reverse Sweep part of
your Double Pump (it is tempting to stand up, but DO NOT stand up).
5) Once your feet are under your hips, you can finally lean forward, but
DON'T STAND up. At this point you should be leaning forward, but only once your feet are below your hips.

What you are trying to do here is keep your body neutral and make the boat rotate around your center of gravity not your boats. How do you do this?
LEAD WITH YOUR HEAD.

Your shoulders, spine, hips, and boat will ALWAYS follow your head. If you lead with your head, all will fall into place. Anyhow… that is a step-by-step breakdown of the Double Pump.

more useful articles here:
groups.myspace.com/FHIkayakgroup

Saddle-Up!
Boe