Freestyle Kayaking: How to Lunar Orbit

The Lunar Orbit is another of my favourite moves. It looks quite complicated but actually it’s much more simple than you might think.

It’s just a Stern Squirt into the bow end of a cartwheel. You start it from a front surf/ blast in a hole. You can even practice the motion of stern squirting into cartwheels on flatwater to get a feel for the move before trying it in a hole.

Step One:

Lift your bow up onto the green water so that you’re sitting in a front surf. You lift the bow using a big sweep stroke and place the nose of your boat slightly pointing in the direction you plan to rotate.

Step Two:

 As soon as you reach the front surf, drop your upstream knee so that your edging upstream (catching the water on your tail), at the same time as this tense your core & look around in the direction you’ll rotate and using the back of your blade pry the boat into a stern squirt.

Step Three:

Now your boat will have gone vertical and started to rotate around that prying blade.  To keep it in control have a marker directly upstream of you and keep looking ahead of the boats rotation ready to spot that marker just before you slam the bow down again.

Step Four:

 Having spotted your upstream marker, switch your pry stroke into a push stroke, keep your weight forwards and aggressively as you can push the bow under the water.

Finishing the move:

 After this last end you can either do a big back stroke to make sure you retain in flushy features or in more retentive spots you can continue into more cartwheels or other moves as this move links very well.

Main points to remember:

- Make sure you set your angle & edge correctly on the initiation.

-Keep your core tensed and use your pry to stop yourself from just catching an edge and falling over upstream.

-Look ahead of the boats rotation ready to spot that marker.

-Play around with how far back & forwards you lean during the move to get it fine-tuned.

Good luck and get paddling,

Pringle