Irene's Kayaking Blog » boofing

Videos: How to Boof in Whitewater Kayaking

Irene — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:32:21 +0000

Here are three great videos by Shane Benedict from WhitewaterInstruction.com about different types of whitewater kayaking boofs. I posted one of these on here a long time ago but recently found them again and this time read the accompanying notes on their blog, which was also helpful – so here they are all together, with links to the pages with instructions.

The Boof from Whitewater Instruction on Vimeo.

LINK TO THE PAGE WITH DETAILS ON THE BOOF.

"Into the eddy" Boof from Whitewater Instruction on Vimeo.

LINK TO THE PAGE WITH DETAILS ON THE EDDY BOOF.

The Straight and Fader Boofs from Whitewater Instruction on Vimeo.

LINK TO THE PAGE WITH DETAILS ON THE STRAIGHT AND FADER BOOFS.

If you’re new to whitewater kayaking, boofing is a way to get your kayak over some obstacle, usually a ledge of some sort, in a way that keeps the bow up so that you clear what is usually a reversal at the bottom and land in control, centered over your boat and without sinking the bow. You’ll notice he breaks it down into three parts: the approach, the paddle stroke, and body position.

I am by no means an expert on boofing, by the way – as I’ve said before, most of my boofs require scuba gear. But I think these videos have given me a much better idea of what to work on.

Whitewater Kayaking Boof Instruction Videos

Irene — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:49:13 +0000

Shane Benedict from Whitewater Instruction has some nice whitewater kayaking how-to videos on Vimeo, here are two that I found on boofing.

This one talks about boofing in general:

Here’s one that talks about how to boof into an eddy:

There’s more on their Vimeo page, here’s a link to all of the Whitewater Instruction videos on Vimeo.

Video: Boofing Ned’s Needle on Boulder Drop, Skykomish River

Irene — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:21:01 +0000

Unbeknownst to me, Dave Morrison was taking video last Saturday on our Skykomish River run through Boulder Drop. Here are the videos of us going through Ned’s Needle at around 2,000 cfs, a friendly level at which the horizontally recirculating eddy below the drop is not really in play. (I hear that at over 4,000 cfs is when you really want to nail the boof correctly in order to not get held there.)

Here’s me and Jason Conlon going through:

Here’s Samson going through the Needle, not Ned’s. At 2000 cfs it’s really sticky but the more right-to-left line that he takes appears to work well, Charles has said the same thing but a lot of people seem to go left-to-right (I’ve seen good boaters flailing paddles when levels are sticky):

And here’s Adrian going through Ned’s Needle:

Thanks Dave, for taking the videos! It was an awesome day on the Skykomish, we are so fortunate to have such an interesting Class IV rapid less than an hour from Seattle.

Nice Kayaking Boof Instructional Video

Irene — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:53:57 +0000

I did a really fun trip on the Upper Green Gorge last Saturday, my first time down (thank you Claire Hews, for leading the way and showing me a clean line through Mercury!) Afterwards Claire pointed me towards this nice instructional video from the Nantahala Outdoor Center on how to execute a good water boof, it’s a good article and the video has explanations that pop up as people boof in slow motion, so it’s really easy to see the different steps.

Here’s the link to the Nantahala water boof blog post and video.

Update: After I posted this Claire told me that not only is this the video that taught her the boof, but when she does this boof now the song from the video actually plays in her head. Too funny.

Update 2011: Unfortunately that cool video on the NOC site is no longer working, but the post is still there and worth reading. In the meantime I’ve posted some more good boofing videos on this site.