Justine’s Blog

It was Christmas here yesterday and a batch of ‘Eastern Horizons‘ DVDs arrived at my door, ready to go to eager viewers in the UK, Europe and Australasia. It’s now for sale in the CackleTV shop!

I also took delivery or another batch of “This is the Sea” DVDs as the classic DVD is still popular and I’ve nearly run out. At the time when I first made ‘This is the Sea’ it cost about £25 per colour for the artwork on the DVD. Money was tight and I chose a very simple design with just 2 colours. Or so I thought….. I actually got charged for 4 colours anyway, as the blue and yellow that I chose weren’t the blue and yellow that they had in their palette so they had to mix different colours to make them! So much for money saving!

THE NEW ‘THIS IS THE SEA’ DISC BESIDES THE OLD ONE!

In May it will be 5 years since ‘This is the Sea’ first came out so when it came time to get some more made a month ago, Derrick from Kayak Quixotica suggested making a special anniversary cover! Well, we left the cover that Jim Westcott designed as it was, but Derrick designed some new disc art using a photo of Hadas Feldman and I from Kamchatka. I’m really pleased with it and think it looks great! So if you order “This is the Sea” from the UK, Europe & Australasia store from now on, then you might get the new look DVD! Some of the DVDs are headed to a shop in Sweden today aswell!

SARDINIA

This weekend, Barry Shaw and I are packing up the van and driving south in search of the Sardinian sun!
Barry kayaked around the next door island of Corsica a few years ago and enjoyed himself so much that he wanted to return to paddle around the bigger neighbor. At around 900km of coastline, we expect it to take us around 4-6weeks. We expect the surf to be less than in New Zealand! but it is a very windy place so that will be our biggest challenge. You can read more about the trip here.

Whenever we have a phone signal we will be recording the route we paddle on our blackberry, using free SMap software from Sanoodi. You can follow along by ‘following’ CackleTV on Twitter, or by checking the twitter feed on this blog, at the top of the page. You’ll see a message saying, ‘CackleTV’ is kayaking in Sardinia with a link. click on the link to go to the map of where we are. If the twitter feed doesn’t work, then you can also go to the Sanoodi website and search for routes in Sardinia.

Not long now, I’m busy preparing for the trip… lots to sort out!

BARRY IN CORSICA. PHOTO BY JOHN-BOY

Axel and I went to Bardsey on Sunday, in a brisk breeze. Axel hasn’t been there since about 2002 so we took the scenic tour, including using the eddy close to the mainland, and then going around the island. I also thought Axel would appreciate a slightly longer and more challenging route so we chose to go to the island with the strong tidal streams giving us more hindrance than help. ( If we’d left from “Whistling Sands’ on the West coast of the Llyn, we’d have been able to drop onto the island using the ebb, and make the most of the afternoon flood to take us back later).

You can see the resulting ‘tracks’ that we made on our journey, as recorded by our Blackberry and the free Sanoodi software. The tide is strongest nearest to land and you can see that we were swept downstream as we approached our destinations on the way there, and back. On the way back we were aiming about ENE, even though the tide tide took us much further West than this!

Once on Bardsey, the Porter family were very busy in the middle of the lambing season. After a cup of tea, Axel and I were happy to help move some young lambs from the stable where they were being looked after to the field outside. Steve took the mum while we got to carry the cute cuddly lambs. Later we went on ‘patrol’ with Steve and Jo looking for any new-born lambs, or any mothers who needed some help with a difficult birth. We saw 3 new lambs come into the world – 1 set of twins and 1 single lamb. Despite the goo, there is something magical about new life!


The technology I used to track our progress to and from Bardsey will be used on my next trip. In theory, an update from ‘twitter’ should alert people to the start of a new paddle, and you can follow along live, or check the progress once we’re reached our destination. For some reason, the twitter update part didn’t work on the paddle to Bardsey – perhaps because the phone signal was very week? I’m trying to find out if that can be fixed.

Click HERE to see the outward route to Bardsey and HERE to see the return route on the Sanoodi website, from where you can navigate around and look at other things.

You can read Axel’s account of the trip here.

You may have noticed that a strange box has appeared on the top of the blog, which says ‘Twitter’ in it. A week ago, I didn’t know what “Twitter” was and I didn’t really care ( I’m getting old already!)! But then I got told that ‘twitter’ could automatically let people know if I was about to go on a kayaking trip, and provide a link to a ‘live map’ of the kayaking route. I signed up and have spent the last week or so working with “Sanoodi” and Derrick to work out the nitty gritty of it.

Today is a beautiful warm sunny day in Wales and when I got a phone call from a friend, I didn’t need much persuading to get out on the water – just to test the system out, of course!

The upshot is that as I’m kayaking somewhere, my position is uploaded live onto a website, superimposed on a map or an aerial photograph. Check out the map of the test paddle today – it’s amazingly detailed. You can even see where Jeff and I stopped for a play in the moving water. For those people who have better things to do than check up on my progress (!), you can look at the map at the end of the day and see where we kayaked, the total distance covered and the average speed. And, by the way, we were against the tide today – in both directions!!

How this works is quite simple – thanks to some very clever software – and the good news is that if you want to do the same thing, you can download the software you need for free from Sanoodi. You need a phone with a GPS in it – either a blackberry, an I-phone, a Nokia S-60, or a windows mobile phone. Then you can download a free copy of the SMap software from the Sanoodi website and upload your own tracks live to their website. Or go to wap.sanoodi.com from your phone. We have a blackberry because it has the best battery life.

Barry and I are planning a trip in the next few weeks which I’ll write more about soon – and we’ll be using the blackberry to give live updates of our position. To follow along, you don’t have to join twitter. Just check the blog and whenever we set off, you’ll see a link to the map of our route. If you want to join twitter, or you are already a member, then ‘follow’ CackleTV and you’ll automatically get the update everytime I go on a trip.