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We made it to France with a night paddle across the Channel!

I’ve had a great time accompanying Sarah Outen from Tower Bridge to Calais over the last 4 days. A distance of about 110 nautical miles  in 65 hours! We’ve beasted it amazingly quickly, especially when you hear that Sarah hasn’t been in a kayak since October & she was having trouble keeping her food down for the first few days. She’s an incredible woman with bundles of energy, positive attitude and motivation.

My role was to help Sarah get safely to France on the first leg of her journey to loop the globe (and to film the adventure). She wanted to do it quickly so we did it quickly, making the most of the tides which whipped us down the Thames and along the Kent coast. The sea was calm so we paddled with the tide in the early hours of the morning and made good distances. When we reached Kingsdown yesterday at 10am, the person driving our support boat for the Channel crossing wanted us to leave more or less straight away as bad weather was due by midday the following day. As we’d been up since 3am and already spent 6 hours paddling 23 nautical miles, we didn’t feel it would be sensible to cross the Channel without a rest, some sleep and some food!

In the end we decided to leave 12 hours later, which would give us some chance to recover but should still get us to France before our weather window closed. The Royal Temple Yacht Club in Ramsgate kindly provided us with showers and beds to get some rest. Still tired, but feeling a lot better, we launched at 10pm in the dark and began heading towards France. The sea was much rougher than forecast and a real contrast to earlier that day. The first two hours required full concentration as metre high waves battered us on the side and occasionally broke. I was pleased to see Sarah dealing admirably with the conditions. Later on the wind dropped and the waves decreased, then the main battle was with the sleep monsters & tiredness. We stopped every hour for food but our paddling pace slowed down as our tanks grew emptier. If I stopped paddling I was in danger of falling asleep and I saw some amazing things that weren’t there, including a huge marquee, an unlit buoy & a giant wall in front of Calais with a deep pit in front of it! Finally after 8 and a half hours we surfed tiny waves onto a beach at Calais. It was 6.30am, time for croissants! I was delighted we’d made it (and we didn’t have to paddle any more!).

After 6 hours sleep today, I still feel tired and I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I’ve had a great adventure with Sarah and am delighted to have paddled with her from London. That’s the end of the adventure for me but tomorrow Sarah starts cycling from Calais towards Russia on stage 2 of London2London. See her website for updates.

A photographer, David Tett, endured a cold, long night on the support boat to take a few photos of us. You can see some of them here.

Sarah Outen and I made it from Tower Bridge, London to Kingsdown, a few miles north of Dover in 45 hours.  it’s a little over 80 nautical miles so that’s pretty good going! we’re tired as a result of it as we paddled 6 hours on, 6 hours off, with the tides. It was mostly fun – strangely! Exciting to be kayaking at night in quite a few knots of tide on the Thames, snatching sleep when we can….

We were looking forward to a good nights sleep before crossing to France tomorrow (monday) but it was not to be. The wind is due to pick up tomorrow so we have to cross tonight. ETA at our support boat in 45minutes so I’ll not write more now. I am eating fish and chips, packing and collecting myself. There may be updates overnight on Sarah’s website, www.sarahouten.com

There has been lots  of photos, publicity, and video about the trip so far.Do a search on the internet if interested. Here are a couple of links.

You can watch a film of the launch day here.

I edited a quick and very rough film of us paddling from Tower Bridge to Gravesend on Friday which you can see here.

It’s Spring… where I live the flowers are out and the sun has enticed me to strip off a couple of layers of fleece!

It’s time to get back out in the kayaks more.

To celebrate the coming season and help inspire us to dust off the paddling gear, I’m offering my best ever offer on DVDs. Buy 4 DVDs and save a third. RRP is £80 or US$120 – now yours for £55 or $85.

And postage and packaging is free. Or there are great savings on buying any 2 DVDs – buy one and get the other one half price. So if you never got around to buying some of our award winning DVDs then now is the perfect time.

Enjoy and please tell your friends, as this offer is for April only!

Meanwhile, I’m in London and tomorrow I’ll kayak from Tower Bridge on my way across the Channel, with Sarah Outen, as she sets off on her round the world adventure.

On Monday I went down to London to meet Sarah Outen‘s team who are helping her organise her upcoming mammoth adventure to row, bike and kayak around the world. I head back down to London tomorrow, but this time I’m taking my kayak. Sarah’s three year adventure all kicks off at 1pm this Friday 1st April at Tower Bridge. I’ll be joining her to kayak from London, down the river Thames and around the coast to Ramsgate or Dover, and then across the Channel. From there, she’s on her own for the next  5 months as she bikes across Europe and Russia. I’ll be joining her again in September to kayak from Russia to Japan.

If you are in London and want to see us off, we leave at 1pm from under Tower Bridge. We’ll be at HMS President before that, getting organized and Sarah will be hosting a press conference and speeches. That part isn’t open to the public but you can watch from the bridge or from the other side of the river. We plan to do a kayak lap under the bridge and round to the other side of the river before leaving.

I have been editing some videos for Sarah of her preparations over the last few months, including her picking up her Rockpool kayak from Anglesey, and kayak training in Menorca. You can see them on Sarah’s youtube channel.

Thanks to George Outen for the pictures.