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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.

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.