Author: Justine

For one month only, you can fill the gaps in your DVD collection for a whooping 25% off with free postage. Buy any DVD from Cackle TV in July and get 50% off your second DVD, with free packing and postage. That’s £30 or US $45 for any 2 DVDs.

This applies to you where-ever you live in the world. Payment is by paypal and you can easily pay using your Euros, Canadian dollars or any other currency. So if you haven’t quite got round to buying any of the DVDs or if you have a friend who you’d really like to show the DVDs to, then now is your chance.

If you live in the US, Canada, North or South America or Japan, please click HERE to go to the store.

If you live in the UK, Europe, Australasia or Asia then please click HERE to go to the shop.

You need to scroll down a little bit to find the special offer.

Here’s a very cute video of manatees in Florida to get you in the mood for padding! I filmed it a couple of years ago while on tour with “This is the Sea 4”. Russell from Sweetwater Kayaks took us to the Weeki Wachee river for the day. I’d been there before while filming for “This is the Sea” but this time we were much luckier with manatee sightings and saw 5 different manatees. they are amazing creatures.

Barry and I recently returned from the first Port Austin seakayak symposium, organised by Riverside Kayak Connection, a large kayaking shop near Detroit.

It was a great fun, friendly event which was big enough to provide good coaching and a sociable atmosphere, but small enough to feel really personal so we could all get to know each other a bit. Having been at the Great Lakes Seakayak symposium on Lake Superior 2 years ago and at WMCA on Lake Michigan about 6 years ago, it was great to catch up with friends and see familiar faces again.

Port Austin is at the top of the ‘thumb’ on Lake Huron’ so I got to paddle in another Great Lake.  In fact, I paddled on Lake Ontario during the MEC Paddlefest a few years ago, so that only leaves Lake Erie that I haven’t dipped my paddle into. Unless there are more Great Lakes that I am unaware of?

I am always impressed by the Great Lakes – they are such large bodies of water that it really feels like the sea and I kept forgetting that I was in fresh water. It was lovely not to have to worry about the tide coming up and not to have to rinse the salt off my kit and body at the end of the day.

People who went on paddles could see the pretty Turnip Rock, or the Port Austin lighthouse. Classes on offer included many technique based ones and of course, when Kelly Blades is around, there is always a class that involves getting very wet – all in the spirit of getting more comfortable in your kayak and in the water, while hopefully smiling a lot. The class was a good test of my brand new Kokatat drysuit and I’m please to say my thermals were totally dry when I finished jumping around in the water (and falling in!). The symposium is going to become an annual event – contact RKC if you want to go next year.

After the symposium and a great paddle in Georgian Bay, we called in on the Riverside Kayak Connection Shop to have a look around their impressive collection of boats and gear. They have a good DVD collection aswell :-) I left a few signed copies of mine with them.

Thanks to Tiffany & Pat from RKC for getting us over for the symposium. Thanks to Sarah & Damon Smith who we stayed with before and after the symposium. They looked after us really well and Sarah cooked us lots of amazingly delicious food. Even Sarah’s dog eats better than most people! Perhaps that partly explains why Sarah and Damon are so fit and gorgeous looking. Thanks a lot to Jerry & Kevin for some of the photos.

I’m sitting in Damon & Sarah’s car full of fish and chips from the ‘all you can eat’ Shipwreck Bar in Tobermory, feeling pleasantly tired after an overnight trip in Georgian Bay, Canada.

We launched from Dunks Bay on Monday morning, armed with our permits and 2 pretty inadequate schematic maps. Under glorious sunshine the lake looked a beautiful turquoisey-green and we glanced down at the white and grey limestone rocks under the surface.

We had hoped to camp at Flowerpot island but a hungry bear had recently showed up there so there was no overnight camping. We paddled across to the island and around it instead, stopping to take pictures of the 2 rocky ‘flowerpots’ around the coast. After lunch on a slabby rocky beach we headed over to Bears Rump island which – if you used your imagination – sort of looked like a big bears bottom sticking out of the lake.

After paddling round the island, a 5 mile crossing took us back to the north coast of the Bruce Peninsula. Loons, goosanders with chicks and other birds kept us company and a quartering sea made it a bit more interesting.

We continued east along the coast, weaving in and out of rocks and finding the odd small cave. After another hour or so we made camp at High Drop (which we think might have been named after the long drop which was very very long?). It was a gorgeous evening, with loons providing the soundtrack and Sarah cooking up a lovely meal. The cooler hadn’t really kept the beer very cold but it was welcome all the same!

This morning we woke up to rain – the beautiful sunny weather of the last week had finally come to an end. We stayed in our tents for an extra hour hoping in vain for the rain to stop but eventually had to brave it.

After eggs & bagels for brekkie, we headed back along the coast to Dunks Bay. What alovely place to paddle and a great taster of what the area has to offer.

On my recent trip to the Channel islands I got the chance to try out some new drybags from Ortlieb & Exped. I particularly liked this waterproof rucksack from Exped gear –the Exped Drypack Pro 25. It’s very lightweight & packs down very small in your kayak It’s a very convenient way of carrying your lunch and spare clothes once you arrive at your destination and can also be used as for waterproof storage in the boat.

I also got some of the lightestweight range of Ortlieb drybags which i’ve been really impressed with so far. They pack really easily and so far seem to stand up to the rigours of being crammed in and out of hatches just aswell as the heavier drybags.

Another cool product is a dry bag which is also a compression stuff sack for your sleeping bag. I love things like that which ultimately save space.