Author: Justine

Phew! Give me a cup of tea, or should that be a whisky!? The PAL DVDs of ‘This is the Sea 2’ finally arrived on my doorstep in Wales at 3.30pm yesterday …. it’s a long story that I won’t bore you with, but that gave me less than 2 hours to repackage an awful lot of DVDs and rush them down to the post office. Fortunately we’d pre-prepared pacakging for all the individual orders so they were all posted yesterday. Most of the dealers orders were posted yesterday aswell, and the last few have gone out this morning. So get down to your local store early next week and they should have them in stock by then. A list of some of the shops that stock the DVD can be found at

www.cackletv.com/shops.html

If there is a kayaking or outdoor store near to you that DOESN’T sell it, then tell them to contact me and start selling it!!

So, now I can relax for a while and wait for feedback to start coming in. Please let me know what you think of the DVD – good or bad!! I’m off to put the kettle on!

Jim at “Riptides and Rapids” will have his frantic day tomorrow when the NTSC DVDs are due to arrive on his doorstep in California. He’s also pre-prepared packaging so all US and Canada orders will hopefully be shipped tomorrow.

Actually, it’s been lovely sunny weather in North Wales for 3 days now, but I haven’t quite got round to writing about what seemed like years of wind rain, wind rain, wind and rain (but was acutally about 2 weeks)! The rain drummed against the windows, the road became a river and even the bathroom flooded, nearly killing the cockroaches! We went surfing, and when it was too windy for that, we went walking by the sea, wondering at her power & trying to imagine what it would feel like to be thrown around in my kayak in a wild stormy tidal race. The best local surf beach is near to Bardsey Sound, a fearsome stretch of water separating the end of the Llyn Peninsula from a small island called Bardsey. The Welsh name is Ynys Enlli, which literally means ‘island in the currents’. It’s a really special place, just 4km away from the mainland but in a storm it might aswell be 400km away.

The tidal streams in Bardsey Sound easily reach 8 knots, and when the wind opposes it, it can be really wild. Just one farming family lives there all year, and a father and son fish for lobsters there for most of the Summer. You can take a boat there or kayak there when the weather is good, but in the recent stormy weather, we’ve been limited to walking on the cliffs and staring in awe at the waves. It was Bardsey Sound that gave Fiona Whitehead and I the most troublesome day on our circumnavigation of Wales – my first ‘proper’ seakaykaing trip. We tried to get around the tidal race at Braich-y-Pwll when the tide was still against us, and we couldn’t keep our balance well enough in the confused race to power our way around the point against the tide. 2 horus and 2 attempts later, we made it!! Ever since then I’ve had a special respect and awe for Bardsey Sound. I hope you enjoy these few pictures (taken by Alun).

AT LAST! “This is the Sea2” is playing out of my computer onto a master tape as I write this. On Monday it will be winging it’s way to the company who will author the DVD and make the PAL copies ( for use in the UK, Europe & Australasia). If everything runs smoothly, these should be avaliable in the shops and from my website by 14th November. The NTSC copies ( for use in America, Canada & Japan) will take a little longer but should be avaliable by 21st November. I’ll do my best to keep to those deadlines, or even improve them and I’ll keep you updated via this blog.

If you haven’t already spotted it, then you can see a preview of the next video on,

http://www.cackletv.com/video/T2live-preview.mov

You can read about what’s in it at

http://www.cackletv.com/this-is-the-sea2.html

The preview is only quicktime for now because Derrick Mayoleth has had the cheek to go paddling for 2 weeks instead of very patiently helping me to update my website ( which basically means he does it for me everytime it goes beyond changing simple text!) When he gets back at the end of October he’ll make a .wmv file avaliable aswell. For anyone without quicktime, you can still see the preview of the ‘Tasmania expedition’ which is a major part of ‘This is the Sea2’.

From later today, ‘This is the Sea2’ will be avaliable to buy from my website, and I will post every pre-order the day that the DVDs arrive in my hands.

I am very excited to be releasing this DVD and looking forward to hearing people’s reactions. AND I’m definately going paddling this weekend!!

I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel…. ‘This is the Sea 2’ is taking shape and getting ready to leap out of your DVD players at you. My main problem now is that I have too MUCH great material. Something will have to be left on the cutting room floor – but what!? I have to chose from my circuumnavigation of Tamsania with Gemma and Trys – stunning scenery in Norway’s wild Lofoten islands – more excellent action from my local tidal race Penrhyn Mawr – whales, icebergs and millions of birds in Newfoundland – paddling with aligators in Florida – some of Britains best kayakers in an event dubbed ‘Black Belt Seakayaking’ at ‘the Bitches’ – Doug Van Doren showing that greenland paddles kick butt in all conditions – a feature on the ocean racer Ben Lawry surfing swells in Georgia – paddling under the Golden Gate Bridge – Trys Morris up close and personal with seals at Puffin Island – the extremely talented Sean Morley who makes surfing a racing kayak with a rudder within inches of a cliff look easy – a trip to the Manitou islands in Lake Michigan – a 6 month circumnavigation of Japan by Hadas Feldman and Jeff Allen – some great footage from Bryan Smith at the tidal wave at ‘Skooks’……. and more.

So what do you reckon?? I’d love to get some feedback about what people most want to see. In truth, I expect that anything I leave out of ‘the sea2’ will be put into a future video but I’d still like feedback. You have a few days to let me know as I hope to finish the editing by next week. I should be working away at it now but there’s a powercut here so I’m taking the chance to do some stuff on my laptop ( thank goodness for batteries! ).

As for the title….. I had lots of good suggestions from people, but none that reached out and grabbed me. Most people suggested things very similar to ‘This is the Sea’, like ‘Back 2 the Sea’, ‘Return 2 the Sea’, ‘In2 the sea’. A few clever folks came up with things that made me laugh, like ‘This is the SEAquel’, and ‘This is the Sea Too’. It might end up being ‘This is the Sea Too’…. although the predictable, but recognisable “This is the Sea 2” is more likely!

I started making seakayaking videos so I could be more in control of my life and spend time doing the things that I enjoy – like seakayaking! In the last few months I seem to have been so busy working, editing and organising that I’ve hardly been
on the water. um, something a bit wrong there, but if you struggle to get hold of me once the DVD is .

A postscript…. I’m thinking about leaving the Tasmania cicumnavigation out of ‘This is the Sea 2’ because there is a lot of good dramatic stuff there and I am struggling to cut it down to about 15 minutes. I have plenty of other great features to make a good hour of viewing on ‘This is the Sea 2’. Would people be interested in buying a separate longer, approx 30 mins DVD of the Tasmania circumnavigation trip, or would you rather have a taste of it within a video like ‘This is the Sea’? Please let me know your thoughts, on this blog, or email me.