Author: Justine

I’ve discovered that ‘networking’ is so much more exhausting than ‘paddling’. The West Coast Seakayaking symposium was full of interesting and influential people who I spent most of my time talking to or listening to. It was great to finally shake hands with people who I’d been emailing and talking to for ages, like Jon Turk who inspired me to go to Kamchatka and Rich and Mark from Snapdragon who have supported me with their bombproof spraydecks for a few years. I also got to catch up with friends like Bryan Smith, (who will be in ‘This is the Sea2’ surfing his seakayak at the famous Skooks tidal wave) and Ginni Callahan, who was organising the coaching. I met new faces like the dreadlocked “Dubside”, a Greenland kayaking expert who is very good at the rope gymnastics but also managed to roll all manner of sit-on-tops and wide kayaks. Like Madonna he doesn’t feel the need for more than 1 name! It was great to have my eyes opened once again to how many people are out there, pushing the sport of kayaking in their own particular direction.

There is always so much more to learn…. but how can talking be so tiring? OK perhaps my yawning was partly to do with the long long journey there and the jet lag, or even dancing to ‘the Walrus’ ‘til midnignt on Saturday night. I’m very grateful to Rob Cassey who emailed every paddler he knows in Seattle to try to get me a ride to the symposium, and to Kathrynn Scheele who kindly picked me up from Seattle airport and drove me to Port Townsend. We arrived at Fort Warden at midnight on the Friday, exhausted, smelly and without really knowing where my room was (that’s me, not Kathrynn!). My first ‘adventure’ came at 7 o’clock the next morning when I managed to lock myself out of my room after a shower. I’m glad no-one saw me climbing out of the bathroom window, clambering onto the roof and back into my room through its window!

I was honoured to be asked to be the Saturday night keynote speaker at this symposium, which claims to be the biggest in America. In the registration area were posters advertising my talk about the first all-female circumnavigation of Tasmania. I kept stopping in shock at seeing my name on posters, wondering what I’d done wrong and who was telling me off!

The presentation seemed to go down well. The organisers told me they had never seen so many people at a Sat night presentation and people said liked the mix of slides and video clips. Two previews of ‘This is the Sea 2’ had a few people excited aswell. Thanks very much to ‘Canoe Kayak’ magazine for sponsoring the lecture and to my very good friends Shawna Franklin and Leon Somme from ‘Body Boat Blade’ on Orcas island who paid for my flight to the States. They really are lovely people and incredibly enthusiastic and skilful coaches of kayaking. If you’re thinking of taking a course then I can’t think of anyone better to learn from.

CAPE FLATTERY

Although it was a flying visit, it would have been a crime not to get a little bit of paddling in. On the Monday after the symposium, Shawna, myself, Simon Osborne (the Friday night speaker who lives 30mins away from me in Wales!), Stenni (from Iceland) and Chris Duff had a wonderful paddle around Cape Flattery on the Olympic Peninsula. What a lovely area with fantastic wildlife. The 5ft swell was big enough to give a bit of excitement but small enough that we could get in close to the many sea stacks and explore some of the amazing cave networks. Chris showed us one small opening in the rocks which looked like it would peter out but if you turned a corner a shaft of light revealed a skinny channel which opened up into a wide dark chamber and finally came out the other side of a headland, 100 metres later.

Co-incidentally we banged into Alex Mathews and photographer Jock Bradley taking photos for Alex’s next book on “Advanced seakayaking”. Jock has a great set-up – his RIB has a rack for carrying kayaks from hot-spot to hot-spot. After paddling through a rock arch to a sandy beach for lunch, we paddled around Tatoosh island and saw one of the stella sealion colonies. One of the big poweful creatures lept right out of the water a few metres in front of us, snorting noisily. I wasn’t sure if it was a display of strength or just playful fun, but I didn’t fancy getting any nearer, just in case! We were also lucky enough to see pelicans, a sea otter and most exciting of all, a grey whale. The whale was travelling in the same direction as us at about the same speed so we saw him come up for air about 4 times just a few metres away. If that wasn’t enough, we came across a waterfall which poured over a small overhang, providing a fantastic freshwater shower. A great day with good friends who I don’t see as often as I’d like. Thanks a lot to Chris and his girlfriend Lisa for letting us stay on the Monday night. Now it’s back home – with 2 new Greenland style paddles for Alun –lovingly made by Kurt from Midwest Paddles.

I’d forgotten how wonderful Scotland is…. but after a month surrounded by her charms I am once more full of praise for the jagged mountains of the NW, the constant sqwaking of birds in Orkney, the rich greens of the moorland & the friendly “oc eye de noo” of the people! It’s all wonderful.. except for the midges! Alun and I had a great 2 and a bit weeks of paddling around Orkney despite weather that could at best be described as ‘average’. It was really windy and pretty rainy for the first week and we got into the habit of paddling into the wind for a day to reach a new island, then spending the next day exploring by foot. Most of the islands are fairly dominated by farms but they still retain quite a wild feel, partly because they are in such a remote, windy and tidal spot. Almost all the islands have some vertical sandstone cliffs with hundreds of perfect ledges for breeding birds, while other birds seem to thrive on the beaches, moorland and farmland. It was great to get close to guillemots, black guillemots, fulmars, shags, storm petrels, skuas, turnstones, ringed plovers, redshanks, curlews, lapwings & many more. (I’m showing off now because I learnt to identify lots more birds on this trip!) On North Ronaldsay, we even helped (well OK, watched) people ringing linnets (by twilight) and storm petrels (in the dark). We also saw basking sharks which was very exciting, and a first for me.

Orkney is covered in so many archeological sites that it’s described as a walk-in museum. I’m not that into visiting old settlements but I loved the way that we could just walk into ancient buildings and tombs and touch the stone homes that people built and sheltered under thousands of years ago. On Sanday, we crawled into one tomb on our hands and knees, borrowing a torch that was stored by the entrance in a wooden cupboard. I got a much better sense of what it might have been like for the neolithic people when we had the place to ourselves and had time and space to let our imaginations wander.

We met some fun people including a farmer from Shapinsay called Kenny who was amazed that we happened to land on the beach outside his farm because he is was “the only kayaker in northern Orkney”. We had a great evening with him and his wife Mary drinking whiskey and putting the world to rights. We also bumped into a sea kayaker from Maine called Lee who had mutual friends, and a couple who starred in the UK TV programme ‘Castaway’ and who now run a pub on Rousay.

The kayaking was always interesting with every island’s coastline having a different character. The tides are strong and run up to 14 knots in the Pentland Firth so we had to remain aware of what was happening. We nearly ran into trouble on the 14km crossing over the Pentland Firth to South Ronaldsay. Despite timing our crossing so that we reached Orkney only 1 hour after slack, a strong 3-4 knot current pushed us to the SE and away from land as we drew close. I was using my Garmin GPS and our nice straight-line track suddenly veered drastically and we were heading out to sea. The fast current was over shallow land and kicked up 2-3 foot rapids. We paddled like mad across the choppy water, trying to ferryglide across it before we were swept too far from land. The GPS track was still not encouraging but fortunately we spotted a distinct eddyline and were able to cross into the eddy into a flow of water that took us back towards the land. Phew!

Most other days we encountered strong currents and we tried to time our journeys so that the current was behind us pushing us along, but sometimes we ferry-glided across currents or fought against them for a short while. All part of the fun! It was one of the first trips where I used my GPS continuously and I enjoyed seeing how our speed changed in different conditions. I was using Garmins ‘bluechart’ software which gives you a map and tidal chart of the area on your GPS so we could see how different depths of water affected our speed and get a better understanding of what the currents were doing.

After our trip in Orkney we drove along the North coast of Scotland to Ullapool where we went climbing at Reif for 2 days. We happened to come across a small art studio where we were blown away by the vivid landscape paintings of James Hawkins. Check out his website below… unfortunately my favourite paintings were both £3,000, so we bought a small brochure instead!

http://www.rhueart.co.uk/

Our last week in Scotland was spent filming an international adventure race, the Wilderness Arc, which was a great way to see the region around Fort William, including the Ardnamurchan peninsula.

This blog is a bit more diverse than my ‘usual’ posts which tend to concentrate more on action! But I also really enjoy seakayaking as a means of exploring places, people and wildlife. Our Orkney trip was as much about discovering the world on-land as the world on the sea! You can see some photos on the galleries page.

hello from Orkney… a group of remote and pretty islands off the North coast of Scotland. Alun and I have been touring them by kayak for almost 2 weeks now. The tides are very strong here and we had fun crossing a race called ‘the Pentland Firth’ just to get to Orkney. Currents get up to 14 knots there… needless to say we tried to cross at slack water but as it’s 14km across and slack water lasts only a few minutes then we encountered a few strong tidal streams! It was pretty windy for the first week, giving some exciting conditions for paddling and we chose to stay on shore and explore some of the towns, villages, hills and hundreds of archeological sites here. It’s a great place to visit because it’s fun whether you are on land or on sea. My favourite island so far is NOrth Ronaldsay which has a 13 mile wall all the way around it to keep the sheep on the beach where they feed on seaweed. We saw people sheering with hand sheers, gazed up at the tallest landbased lit lighthouse in the British isles (do you notice how there are always about 4 precursors to … the best/ tallest/ biggest… etc!), saw lots and lots of birds which I’m learning to tell apart, and were fed very well (including on local mutton). I’ll write more when I get home…. there are free showers where we have landed here on Rousay island so I better go and get clean.

When you visit a tidal race with a name like “The Bitches” then you know you’re in for a good time! Last weekend we drove down to Pembrokeshire in South Wales to film what was dubbed a ‘black belt seakayaking event’. Andy Middleton from TYF outdoor centre invited many of Britains’ top seakayakers and white water paddlers to come and push the limits of the sport and see what can be done in fast currents and big waves with a lot of courage and skill…. and a 4 or 5 metre long boat! It was one of the biggest tides of the year in an area of Wales rennowned for it’s fast currents and gnarly races. The sea funnels through narrow channels between islands accelerating to up to 18 knots as it pours over rocks just under the surface. “The Bitches” itself is the name given to a line of small rocks that stick up out of the sea inbetween mainland Pembrokeshire and Ramsey Island. Many ships have come to grief here, including a lifeboat. There is such a pronounced and shallow rock shelf of rock in a line perpendicular to the tide that the sea visibly drops a few metres as it pours over it, then the water curls back over forming a steep front wave that is unusually retentive for a tidal race. There are many other smaller races in the area which are a less defined, aswell as narrow shutes and beautiful caves. On Saturday, we went on a coastal paddle to some small islands called “the Bishops”, looking for playspots along the way, before finally arriving at ‘the Bitches’ around 6pm when the race starts to work. Despite everyone being a bit tired by then (and more than a bit hungover in some cases!) we had a good play. I found it very hard just to get onto the front wave as you have to ferry glide across a weekly defined wave shoulder with 18 knots of current rushing under your kayak. Not that many people made it to that hallowed place but those that did had a great surf on a lovely glassy fast wave. The rest of us missed the front wave and battled with the more confused waves and boils behind and tried to avoid an area of nasty water known as “the dark side”. You could still surf on the second wave and in a few other places, although a bit more bracing was required at times.

There were 17 good paddlers including former world C1 freestyle champion Paul ‘Cheesy’ Robertson, former squirt boating world champion Bob Campbell, head of kayaking at the National Scottish centre Doug Cooper, author of a surfkayaking book Bill Mathos, local experts JP and Andy Middleton and Sean Morley, who circumnavigated Great Britain and all the outlying islands last year and was an international racing kayaker. The photos are were taken by Flora Moody who works for AE Production which is a new digital photography and film production company with a focus on outdoor pursuits, water-based activities and extreme sports. See www.aeproduction.co.uk

You can also see a short description and some portrait photos of some of the paddlers at
http://thamesweirproject.co.uk/bb1.htm
I’m sure I don’t usually look quite that bad!

The results of this adventure will be seen on the sequel to ‘This is the Sea’, which will be out before Christmas. The DVD will be called “This is the Sea 2” but I’m also looking for another more catchy name for it. If you can come up with that ellusive name then I’ll give you a free copy of the DVD… Email ideas to justine@cackletv.com