Shrewsbury Canoe Club along with Dave Kohn Hollins of 'Riverflair' are running a weekend focused on the new BC White Water Safety Award - for CANOES.

13 & 14th APRIL 2024

Lead Coach: Dave Kohn Hollins

The White Water Safety award is designed to support paddlers to be independent participants on grade 2(3) white water rivers.

Course Content

Paddlers will explore simple strategies and safe skills that can provide the tools to solve common paddling issues. All modules are interactive, practical sessions, discussing and using equipment, and exploring possible solutions to common issues in a moderate white-water, grade 2 (3) environment.

The White-Water Safety course is a practical 'on the water' 2-day programme that consists of 9 modules.

1. Motivations and Decisions
2. River Trip
3. Emergency planning & procedures
4. Review and reflections
5. Chase boating and equipment rescues
6. Swimming and rescues
7. Retrieving people and equipment
8. Scenarios
9. Review and reflections

This course is intended to be a canoe specific course and will focus a lot more on rescues only applicable to that craft, such as canoe-to-canoe rescues, canoe to swimmer rescues, self-rescues, pins/broaches and entrapments, mechanical advantage systems to deal with greater loads and forces etc.

If a high number of attendees Dave is planning to team up on this course with Josh Telling so that the group can benefit from his huge amount of white water canoeing knowledge, and as he'll be working the course as well, you'll have two highly experienced coaches regardless of the group size.

Cost will be dependent on numbers. The ratio for the course is 1:6 (coach:participants). The minimum number for the course to run is four and we can have a maximum of twelve participants.

Course Fees per person are:

For a group of 4: £190pp

For a group of 5: £180pp

For a group of 6: £170pp

For a group of 8: £160pp

For groups of 10 - 12: £155pp

Initial deposit of £20- rest of the amount will be invoiced prior to the event.

Venues - most likely sections of the Dee, but if there is sufficient water elsewhere or too much of it in the Dee, we may well go further west into Snowdonia.

Please read up on this course and decide if its the course for you. For more info:

https://britishcanoeingawarding.org.uk/white-water-safety/

https://britishcanoeingawarding.org.uk/wp-content/files/11102023BCABWhiteWaterSafetySkillsComptencyChecklistV1-0March2023.pdf

or email Karen Darby karedavies@gmail.com for a chat if you are not sure.

Club coaches / leaders & members working towards awards can apply for a bursary as per club policy: https://shrewsburycanoeclub.org/page-18144