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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 !

It’s that time of year again! And it finally felt like it today. The fleece that I have been living in inside and outside the house stayed on the back of my chair today and I spent far too long gazing out of the window at the still, sunny, summery day that beckoned me out to play.

This coming weekend is the first May bank holiday weekend, traditionally a time of sea kayaking symposiums in the UK. Barry and I are heading north tomorrow to Scotland to the 2nd Karitek Midwest symposium. The forecast is pretty good and I’m looking forward to a few days on the water with old and new friends in the pretty Tayvallich area.

On Anglesey is another symposium – anyone attending that who wants to buy any of my DVDs can get them from the Summit 2 Sea shop who are relocating to Anglesey outdoors for the event.

Later in May is the first Seapoint & South East Sea Kayak Symposium, which is being held on 19/20 May in Kent. Jeff Allen is instructing & talking and if you buy a raffle ticket, you might win my latest DVD, “This is the Roll”.

So whatever you are doing this weekend – I hope it involved a bit of fresh air, and a splash of water.

Sarah Outen is one tough cookie. She’s also a really nice person. She inspires me by what she’s doing and the way she’s going about it. She’s about to set off on a solo 4,000 mile row across the Pacific ocean from Japan in a bid to become the first woman to row non-stop across the Pacific. Sunday is launch day from Choshi marina, Japan.

This amazing row is just one stage of a human-powered loop of the world. She’s already kayaked and biked from London to Japan – mostly solo. I was lucky to be asked to accompany Sarah on the kayaking legs of her incredible journey from London to France and from Russia to Japan. My camera and I also joined her for 1000 km of her bike journey so I could film her pedalling from Kazakhstan to China. I’ve got to know Sarah really well over the last year, and really enjoyed spending time with her on her big adventure. She manages to achieve amazing things with humility & a great sense of humour. I was meant to be in Japan now helping her with her final preparations for her Pacific row and filming her launch into the big blue (but injury meant I couldn’t fly). So it’s with a mixture of excitement and sadness (that I’m not there) that I wave Sarah off from a little further away in Wales. Whooooop whoooooop Sarah. YOU GO GIRL!  And don’t eat that chocolate I sent you for at least a week!

Sarah will be blogging about her trip & even sending back audio recordings and the occasional photo and video. So keep an eye on her website if you want to join her and her trusty boat Gulliver on their big voyage. Or check out her YouTube channel for more videos. I’ll be keenly watching their progress, and I’m due to meet Sarah on the other side…. ETA September, October or November 2012, target – Vancouver! I’ll take another bar of chocolate & a few of her favourite Mars bars – I think she’ll be even more glad of them by then!

There will be footage of Sarah & I on the kayaking legs of her journey in “This is the Sea 5”. Due out March 2013.

Unfortunately postage prices are about to go up hugely in the UK. To post 1 small DVD from here to Europe today costs £1.49. On 30th April, it will cost £2.70. To Australia the prices increase from £2.07 to £3.30.

Cackle TV has offered free postage for our PAL DVDs to Europe & Australia since we first made “This is the Sea”. But this next price hike means we will start charging for postage to the Europe & Australia from 30th April.

So if you have been debating whether to buy our new DVD, “This is the Roll” which has had lots of great reviews, or been thinking about treating yourself of a friend to our “This is the Sea” box set, or you have your eye on any of our other DVDs… now is the time to buy them while we still post them for free.

In the US & Canada, I recently started charging for shipping DVDs, but I’ll remove the charges until 30th April…. so wherever you are in the world, you have a couple of days to take advantage of free shipping!! Go on, treat yourself!

UK/ Europe/ Australasia store.

USA/ Canada/ South America Japan store