1 HOW TO PLAY The Blunt
FREESTYLE’S MERITORIOUS INTERMEDIATE MOVE BY TODD LAMONT
Remember when you were a Boy Scout or Girl Guide and you worked hard to earn all those merit badges? There was a sequence to them: finger-painting came before watercolour, just as fire-starting came before survival skills. Some badges you couldn’t get before achieving others.
The same rules should apply on the river. Too many intermediate paddlers jump into the new- est playboats and try to earn their aerial merit badge too early. The blunt is the dynamic move that opens the gateway to advanced boating.
In a blunt, dig your bow into the face of the wave, throw your stern almost vertically off the wave and swing from a front surf to a back surf.
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Begin high up on a wave so that you can generate speed carving down the face of it and so that you will
have room to complete the blunt while still on the wave. You can still blunt in the trough, but it will likely cause you to flush. Initiate your blunt with one last aggressive forward thrust stroke on the downstream side when you are no more than halfway down the wave. This will give you a boost of speed and allow you to pop the bow up out of the water in anticipation of throwing it back down into the wave.
Turn your body aggressively into your spin and snap your boat onto its other edge while putting in a back
stroke on the upstream side. This short stroke starts at your hips and ends at your knees.
With shoulders perpendicular to the wave crest, throw your weight forward, forcing your stern up into the air
so it pivots around the bow as it slices into the wave. Think of swinging your butt into the air as you keep your eyes looking into the wave. How much you tilt your boat deter- mines how vertical you go. Too little tilt and you end up doing a roundhouse. If you tilt too aggressively you virtually do a cartwheel on the wave and fall on your head.
As your stern comes back down flatten out your edge so you land flat in a back surf. Use a backstroke to
accelerate and stay on the wave and give you a rudder at your bow. Enjoy the back surf or spin back up to the foam pile for another blunt.
A common mistake is to put too much emphasis on the strokes while forgetting about proper body movements and timing. If you time the body movements correctly—squaring your shoul- ders at a right angle to the wave and throwing your butt in the air—you shouldn’t even need a paddle to blunt. Scout’s honour!
Todd Lamont teaches kayaking at Madawaska Kanu Cen- tre and still hasn’t earned his watercolour merit badge.
Bow down and stern over 4 Wind up, plant and tilt 3 Start high on the wave 2
Land flat and back surf 38
PATRICK CAMBLIN ON BUS EATER, OTTAWA RIVER. PHOTOS: ROBERT FAUBERT
RAPID
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