I always look forward to the Anglesey sea kayaking symposium where loads of people get together for paddling and socialsing. There are some people who I only see once a year at the symposium and there are loads of other friends who gather together for exciting paddling, evening partying & some inspiration. On Saturday night, Rotem Ron was incredibly modest in talking about her solo circumnavigation of Iceland ( an ‘unknown’ woman from Israel who decided to take on the huge challenge last Summer ). This was Rotem’s first big expedition and amongst other things she dealt with big surf landings on an exposed coastline – which has caused at least 2 other teams attempting the circmnavigation to give up. Yet when asked whether she ever doubted she would do it, she just replied, “No. Because I really wanted it”.

So Derrick Mayoleth, who created and maintains the Cackle TV website, aswell as having his own very popular website and blog, is here! The lad from Wisconsin has been dreaming of the famous Penrhyn Mawr tidal race for several years. Yesterday I encouraged him to visit it with Alun & I to find out whether it was a good dream, or a nightmare! Derrick was convinced that I just wanted to see him suffer, but that’s not true at all. I really love the tidal races and have a huge amount of fun there and Iove to be able to share that with people. To be fair, it was a bit like initiating Alexey into surf in Kamchatka – you get there and it’s much bigger than you hoped – not the sort of thing to introduce ‘beginners’ to at all. In fact the ‘advanced tidal race’ group from the symposium were there aswell and they only played gingerly on the edges. Just the surging white water noise of an angry tidal race can be hugely intimidating, then add the fact that you can see the water powering past rocks at what looks like faster than you can paddle. Finally you’ve got the huge breaking waves behind you if you mess up and you can see why people take one look and say ‘no thank you, very much’! But Derrick did really well ferrygliding across the current and breaking in and out of an eddy, that is he did really well until his paddle broke! Then after saying ‘no thank you very much’ for a while, he got back on after lunch and got stuck in! A successful and memorable initiation where Derrick overcame his fear ( read his account of it on his blog ) , As I said to Derrick, at least next time he goes to Penrhyn Mawr he can say ‘Oh, that’s nothing. You should have seen it when I was here the other day’!

JUSTINE AND DERRICK BACK AT PORTHDAFARCH BEACH

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