Hans invited me for saterday-evening to try and exersize the bowrollrescue in the swimmingpool.
As I was on the run during the whole saterday, Hans was so kind to take one of his own kayaks with him: for me to paddle in. Thx.Hans
After a short "rolling warming-up" we started to try the rescue. First on an empty kayak which was (too) easy!?
Being victim, while Hans excersizes the roll is a comic situation, because, instead of to roll up asap, I must be waiting upside down. So occasionally I got short of air. I solved this by gasping air when possible and when really short of air I kept my paddle at hand to roll up myself. Upside down, I really felt naked without the paddle in my hands.
At the end we concluded that the technique was not as simple as it seems and we did not yet master it.
Sometimes we managed to turn up the victim´s kayak quite easily and indeed, we must take care not to turn the victum to capsize again on the other side. But it happened also quite often that it was impossible to turn the kayak.
Probably we did not get quite the point "how to".
Myself, I turned the kayak easily in the beginning, but afterwards, having more confidence I was just punished for that by not being able anymore to turn the kayak.
We also tried to push ourself, after having uprighted the victims kayak, against it to be able to stabilize the victim. This wasn´t too difficult, although there is a split second in which you don´t have complete control over stability of the victim. But probably this is better than doing nothing.
To compare, we practised also the "hand of god-method". Probably this costs a little more energy in our case, but seems more reliable in a way because it is not as complicated to learn and easier to understand the mechanism of it.
Surely we have to practise more wih the bowrollrescue.
At least it is an extension to the wet-exercises-list, helping to broaden the ability and skill to do whatever you want in a seakayak.