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Sarah leaving Yuzhno today in the snow! Cycling to the sea where we will start kayaking south tomorrow. We will kayak to Cape krillion, the SW tip of Sakhalin – taking 2 or 3 days to paddle about 40 nautical miles. We will probably have to come back to Korsakov, a town where we must sign out of the country for customs (by 4wheel drive ) then go by boat back to the Cape to kayak to Japan. Check Sarahs’ website for updates. www.sarahouten.com

After years of crawling under log jams and scouring every square inch of beaches in the Pacific NorthWest, I have finally found my very own ‘Japanese glass fishing float!’ Well, make that ‘floats’! Perhaps I shouldn’t be so excited since these particular balls bobbed their way only a few hundred miles up the Sea of Japan to land on the outstretched arm of Tyk sandspit, which projects from the west coast of Sakhalin at a jaunty angle – perfectly placed to collect these spherical wonders.  Sarah looked at me in surprise as I yelped for joy at discovering a small glass float within 5 metres of my tent. We had just completed a 26 nautical mile paddle from mainland Russia & she was no doubt wondering whether the 8 hours paddling had affected my brain. Why was I was so excited about a small glass ball!? Well, apart from the fact that they are pretty…. I suppose I think finding a glass float is like a ‘rite of passage’. If you seakayak enough in certain wild places then you are bound to find one, one day. It sounds a bit silly when I write it down, but I was very pleased none the less! I soon convinced Sarah that it was special to discover one of these traditional balls that kept many nets afloat before the invention of plastic. We both disappeared in opposite directions along the beach and didn’t have to go far before discovering another one, and another one, and oh my goodness, another one! At the risk of going on about this far too much, I was particularly pleased to find a couple with the original rope netting on them…

OK, I should mention that I’ve spent 4 days kayaking in Far East Russia with Sarah Outen. We had originally planned to dash across to Sakhalin from mainland Russia across the narrowest gap, a distance of about 4 miles. But Sarah’s bike Hercules had other ideas. Or perhaps her kayak Nelson had a word with Hercules and said ‘It’s my turn’. Either way, Hercules bearings disintegrated just as he rolled up to the sea at De Kastri, 100km short of his final destination at Lasarev. This small town was not able to provide new bearings on a Sunday and so a cunning plan was devised to let Nelson feel the ripples of the sea a day early. We poured over maps and decided that we would kayak north from De Kastri &; if the weather allowed we’d cross to Sakhalin a bit further south than originally planned, at a wider point, a distance of about 23 nautical miles.  In my opinion, Nelson & Hercules’ conspiracy turned out to be a stroke of luck for us as the coastline north of De Kastri was incredibly beautiful with red cliffs rising 250 metres from the sea, ribbon waterfalls spilling down onto sandy beaches, and a few eagle sightings (the rare Stellar Sea eagles perhaps?). We had been warned that there were few (or no) places to land but the contours on the map suggested otherwise and we found a few possible camping options. We settled for a wide beach 3 miles short of our crossing point.Sarah had just paddled about 40km after not kayaking for almost 6 months.

The forecast for the crossing was good – winds partly behind us and decreasing through the day but the gusts were a little stronger than predicted, meaning a tricky quartering sea, and breaking waves in the shallow Sea of Tartar. Sarah wanted to give it a go. A mile out & the waves were already breaking, but she wanted to press on and looked pretty comfortable (despite confessing to being really nervous inside). In fact the wind and waves did drop after a couple of hours and we made good progress towards Sakhalin. We couldn’t see the low lying Tyk peninsula until we were a mile or two away. Although we had a GPS, it was still a relief to see we were in more or less the right place! Sarah amazes me with her tenacity and guts, paddling on a 7 and a half hour crossing in rough seas on her 2nd day in a kayak since April.

We kayaked south on Sakhalin for 2 out of the next 3 days. The coast started off low and sandy and gradually grew in relief with low cliffs getting slowly higher. Further south than we paddled they turn into mountains! On day3 the tail end of a typhoon by Japan whipped up the sea more to more than we wanted to paddle in & we stayed in bed. The last day was flat calm and we made 23 miles to a village and a road where Sarah was reunited with a fixed Hercules. On the way we saw hundreds of seals craning the necks curiously to get a look at these strange creatures passing by, and 5 or 6 rusty shipwrecks, beached on shore or on a sandbar – one giant wreck smashed in half. We didn’t see any brown bears although we did spy some rather large footprints on the beach, and the reflection of 2 bright eyes just before going to bed one night.
Now Sarah is cycling south down Sakhalin, due in the capital Yuzno on Thursday. After that we kayak down to the SW tip of Sakhalin & cross to Japan.

I also filmed and edited a video of Sarah cycling on the sometimes dubious ‘roads’ of Far Eastern Russia to get to the start of the kayaking.

I’ve spent a week travelling north from Kabarovsk in Far East Russia supporting and filming Sarah Outen on her bike as he heads to Lasarev, the closest point to Sakhalin island. We had planned to kayak 7km across to Sakhalin across the Tartar Strait where the tides reach 5 knots on spring tides. BUT then Sarah’s bike Hercules ground to a halt today -100km from Lasarev. which is a day’s cycle on these rough stony roads. His bearings had disintegrated 3km from the nearest town and our first glimpse of the sea – Dekastry (which is probably not spelt anything like that). Sarah walked 3km into town and we decided to kayak from here tomorrow – heading north towards Lasarev, but probably not kayaking all the way up to Lasarev before crossing to Sakhalin. We are quite late in the season for paddling here as it gets stormier and colder so we need to kayak to Alexandrov on Sakhalin as quickly as we safely can.

It’s now 10.30pm and we are mostly packed for kayaking tomorrow. We have food for 6 days (actually probably more than that as Sarah keeps sneaking more food into the drybags…. just in case!). Karel from kayakweather.com will be sending us forecasts every day which is great – thanks Karel. The biggest remaining question is what the coast looks like from here to the north. It’s Sunday in a small town so we haven’t been able to buy a map yet to see what we will expect, but we know the coast is fairly cliffy and we aren’t certain how many places we will be able to land. We will have a better idea in the morning before we head off.

we are in a hotel tonight, after camping by the road almost every night on the way up here. Batteries are on charge and someone has lent us his computer so we can get on the internet. No photos as it’s not my computer. The scenery up here is very pretty – a dirt road snakes up and down and around through quite thick forest, every now and again joining the wide Amur river as it forges north. It’s wet off the road, with many streams and boggy areas. we’ve met some really friendly russian people and were invited to stay at one family’s house on our first night. they cooked us an amazing feast of salmon, fish eggs, a raw fish dish, salads, and soup, and all washed down by numerous shots of home-made vodka (they said it was whisky, but it looked and tasted like vodka so i’m not sure if they were joking?). they also lit the ‘banya’ or russian sauna for us which was fantastic.

Time for bed…. up early tomorrow to go paddling.

I excitedly picked up the very first 3-piece Etain kayak yesterday. After it was discovered that it would be extremely expensive to ship a single kayak out to Russia for my forthcoming paddle to Japan with Sarah Outen, I called Valley kayaks up at pretty short notice and asked if there was any chance that they could make a 3-piece kayak for me to use on the trip. Jason called back the next day to say they could make me a 17.5 Etain.

Valley dropped it off at Surflines yesterday, with a delivery of kayaks. Barry took our one piece Etain and we braved the torrential rain to have a play around with them in Llyn Padarn. As you can see from the photo above, it’s been raining quite a lot this last week, and water levels are high!

I was really pleased with the kayak. It’s very pretty, which of course is very important! I like the red colour, and the joins between the 3parts are very neat and barely noticeable. After playing around practicing various rolls for about an hour the hatches were all still bone dry which was a great relief. The kayak is obviously heavier than a regular Etain because it has 2 bulk heads & 4 bolts at each join, but it didn’t feel any heavier than other 3-piece kayaks I have used in the past.

The skeg control is in the stern piece of the kayak & I was worried that it would be hard to reach, but actually it was fine (on flat water anyway!).

By the time we got off the water it was 7.30pm and we were VERY happy to get changed and drive a few hundred yards for a ‘pizza and a pint’ with some friends. This included Marcus Demuth who has a similar skeg on his 3-piece Nordkapp and assured me it’s easy to use in rougher seas. He warned me that the biggest problem would be that when I get back and try to adjust the skeg on a different kayak by reaching behind me!

I’m also using new paddles from Mitchell blades (fantastic high quality paddles which are made locally to me in Chester). For the last 2 years I’ve been using the ‘Atlantis’ blades (comparable to Lendals’ Archipelago blades), but I recently got some ‘Bombora’ blades (comparable to Lendals’ Kinetic Touring blades). Both are a lovely shade of blue! I really like the new paddle so now I have to decide which one will be my spare paddle & which will power me to Japan!? I think I”ll start with the Bombora!