I really enjoyed the lesson and although SUP-ing isn't that hard to figure out, I learned a lot about good technique. The most un-intuitive thing to learn was the hip to paddle technique where you bend over from the hips with straight legs, stick the paddle in the water, then use your core to bring your hips to the paddle rather than using your arms. Once I got this I was getting speed much easier. Since I was doing OK and wasn't getting tired (except for my toes who I couldn't convince to relax!), we paddled out quite far from Pelican Point, about 30mins out, and had amazing views of Perth city.
Andrew, Georgia and Heath hired boards and had a paddle while I did the lesson, then we went to Typika for some lunch.
Andrew wanted to spring Blackwall Reach as an idea on me today, but let it slip that it was something he wanted to do yesterday which gave me enough time to look it up and protest about it. He convinced me to just go take a look, and film him doing the jump. There was no way in hell I was going to do it.
We watched a group of guys doing the jump, and went to take a closer look because we couldn't figure out how they were getting back up. We had to ask them because we still couldn't see once we got to the place they were jumping from, and it turns out there's a little rock path you can climb quite easily to get back up.
Andrew didn't hesitate, and did his first jump off the biggest rock straight away; he's brave like that. After watching another girl (the only girl) take about 10minutes to convince herself to jump, I thought maybe I can do this.
Andrew had to explain the jumping part about 100 times before I felt like I understood it properly. I stood up on the smaller rock and thought, this isn't so bad, but after a couple of seconds my brain decided it wasn't a good idea and I stepped down to let the group of guys go again. I stepped up on the smaller rock again, and again felt like it didn't look so bad but my brain didn't want me to do it. This time I counted myself down and just did it. It wasn't hard and it was really fun! But it hurt my bum a lot. The climbing up part was the hardest bit really, and I'm glad I could watch Andrew for where to step (Andrew jumped in right after me).
I only did it once, but given there was no way in hell I was even thinking about doing it before we got there I'd say Andrew did a great job of convincing me!
