Most people who paddle with me these days know me as a kayaker, but my earliest paddling was done in canoes, and on a whitewater river my preferred boat has always been a decked canoe (C1). In a whitewater C1 you kneel and use a single-bladed paddle.
My first C1 was a Gyra-Max manufactured by the Perception company of Liberty, South Carolina. If I'm not mistaken, the Gyra was the first roto-molded C1 commercially available. Eventually I would move on to some more sophisticated designs, including slalom race boats; but that Gyra saw me through some epic formative experiences.
It took me a while to get the hang of the balance and boat control that a C1 demands on whitewater. I guess one positive result is that I developed a pretty bombproof roll. This photo was taken on the Pigeon River near Hartford, Tennessee, in 1993, at which time I'd owned the boat for a year. I think Mike Davis was the photographer.
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