Brittle stars, sea slugs & ospreys are some of the friends I made in the beautiful Tayvallich area of Scotland. The people weren’t bad either, & I enjoyed seeing old friends & meeting some new people at Karitek’s 2nd sea kayaking symposium for beginners & improvers. It’s a lovely location for sea kayaking with a beautiful indented coastline, a small friendly community, great pub & sheltered and not-so-sheltered waters.

Barry and I were up to help out and did a bit of guiding and coaching. The nearby Fairy Isles & Ulva isles are a popular choice as the shallow clear water allows you to spy on the sea life below – hundreds of spindly brittle stars, many types of seaweed, fat muscles & the occasional seal are spotted. I joined Dave Bleazard  on a trip to the Ulva islands to look under our hulls. Dave is a Marine biologist, as well as running Outside Edge, a well-stocked outdoor shop in Oban. He used his pink net to collect urchins, sea slugs & sponge fragments from the depths for us to look at. It was really fascinating!

You may also get lucky enough to glimpse ospreys in the area as a breeding pair make their nest near by. Thanks to Ruth for this photo of an osprey watching over her (or his) nest.

I recommend this symposium next year for anyone wanting to improve their skills – there are fun guided paddles as well as lessons on things like forward paddling, recovery strokes, edging and turning, linking strokes, trip planning, kayak sailing and rolling. There are also over 30 different sea kayaks to try out. Geoff & Ann Turner  from Karitek did a great job – although I recommend avoiding Geoff on Saturday night’s ceilidh unless you have strong arms! Thanks to Pat for organising a fun quiz on Sunday night, although Kate Duffus made an error of judgement when she joined our team thinking we were good — actually she got most of our correct answers & we still didn’t win!

We travelled up most of the way with Chris Reed from Chillcheater which was entertaining! Chris is a great guy as well as making quality paddling kit.

I was impressed to see a new product there called Keel Eazy. It has the tagline “protecting beautiful bottoms worldwide”! and it’s a tape that you stick onto your kayak as a keel strip. It’s half the weight of a standard keel strip, & much easier to apply. Chris Mitchell, the ‘inventor’ of this tape applied one to my Atlantic LV so I look forward to seeing how it holds up. You can watch a  video about Keel Eazy here. The product is distributed by Reed in the UK & Europe, & by Chris Mitchell in North & South America.

I paddled for 4 days in a row in Scotland – including a 5 hour paddle in wind on Friday – and my ribs are feeling better every day. Sometimes while paddling slowly I even forgot they were sore.. so process is good !