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KAYAK PLAY SESSION WITH KELLY BLADES

The Toronto MEC PaddleFest was a lot of fun with a few hundred people out on the water in canoes, kayaks, outriggers, dragon boats and everything inbetween. There was a really good atmosphere with loads of instructors teaching beginners through to more advanced strokes. My favourite session was kThe weather held out well until the last afternoon when a thunder storm and torrential rain had everyone off the water and running for cover. It didn’t dampen spirits and the final class of the day was back on the water briefly! Dubside was there impressing everyone with his rope gymnastics, slack lining and rolling, and I had the pleasure to meet some very talented canoeists including Karen Knight and Bob Foote doing an amazing freestyle routine which was like dancing on the water.

KAREN KNIGHT AND BOB FOOTE
Thanks a lot to MEC for inviting me to the event and to Dave, James and Erik at the Harbourfront Canoe & Kayak centre in Toronto for helping me out with various things including a pontoon boat and driver ( Erik!) for filming.
THUNDER STORM OVER TORONTO

I’m in Ottawa, Canada filming Ken Whiting and Brendan Mark seakayaking down the mightly Ottawa River. These former world champions ( Ken in playboating and Brendan in Squirt boating) know the river like the back of their hand and make 10foot drops into a wall of whitewater look like a piece of cake.

One the first day we paddled down the Middle Channel which opened my eyes pretty wide. I’ve paddled in quite a few tidal rapids but have spent less than 20 days kayaking on rivers in my life so it was exciting, to say the least. I managed to slide sideways into ‘Phils hole’ but emerged the right way up, and had one roll on my weaker side at another rapid. The boys were very cool and even ran the impressive Garvin’s shute in their TRAK kayaks.

Today we paddled down the main channel, which is 3 times the volume of water of the middle channel. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous!! Today I managed 4 rolls, 2 of them in the last rapid which was a HUGE wave train! The 3rd wave broke on me from what felt like a great height and I knew I was in trouble. The next second my kayak was vertical and soon after I was upside down. It took a while to be able to get into position to roll as the water was very turblent, and almost as soon as I was up, I got knocked over again. A quicker roll this time and I paddled to the eddy. It was quite a buzz to survive that! Ken and Brendan made it look pretty easy and I’ve got some great footage of them on waves which make the seakayaks look very small! The footage will be in ‘This is the Sea 4’, which will be released before Christmas this year – more details to follow soon!

Tomorrow I fly to Toronto for the MEC PaddleFest at the weekend.

KJELL & JOAKIM WITH NIGEL AND KRISTEN FOSTER
THE BOAT HOUSE WHERE THE SYMPOSIUM WAS HELD
Barry and I had a fantastic time in Norway in glorious sunshine. The symposium was a lot of fun, in a great location right next to the sea. Everyone camped perched amongst boulders on grassy patches, and we ate in an old boathouse right on the water, you could have fallen over backwards into the sea ( but fortunately no-one did!). The setting for the event is a pretty chain of islands and islets dotted on the west coast, from a few square metres in size to a few kilometres squared. Where you launch from is really sheltered and protected from any swell, but the further west you go through the islands, the more exposed it becomes and usually you can find challenging conditions for rockhopping. At the moment the calm weather provided at most a 0.5metre swell and we had 2 great days exploring the outer islands, paddling past colourful old boathouses, and squeezing through narrow gaps between islands. The Norwegian people we met were really friendly, fun and relaxed… we’d love to go back some time to explore the area more and hang out with them. Our group even got serranaded by a boat full of musicians on the way back from our trip, which was very cool! We gave a talk about New Zealand on the Saturday night and Nigel and Kristen Foster made a surprise appearance that evening, on their way to a symposium in Iceland – it was nice to catch up with them.

Thanks to Ronny at God Tur for putting us up ( and depite the weekends festivities, getting up at 5.30am to take us to the airport this morning!). Thanks to Njord for inviting us to the sympoisum. Thanks to Kjell for the photos.

BARRY ON THE BULKEN WAVE

NAEROYFJORD
JOAKIM JUST STANDING AROUND!

Barry and I are in Norway for the Njord sea kayak symposium near Bergen. We came a few days early to go paddling with some locals in some of their favourite spots. Thanks to Ronny from the shop ‘God Tur’ ( the distributor of my DVDs in Norway) for organising a great couple of days and to the other great guys for coming along. Yesterday we drove up to Naeroyfjorden, one of the most spectacular fjords in Norway and paddled to a great campspot for a lovely evening around a campfire. The mountains rise over 1,200 metres from the fjord and we were constantly gazing up at different amazing waterfalls and overhanging grey cliffs. Amongst the paddlers was a 15 year old boy Joakim who had incredible balance and paddled standing up in his cockpit for 8km on the first day (!) and who could not only stand up on the back deck of his kayak, but jump from there to the front deck of the kayak! And back!

SEAKAYAKING THE BULKEN WAVE

Today we paddled back down the fjord and then headed to Bulken, which is a famous standing wave on the Vosso river which is popular with whitewater kayaks and surf boards but as far as the locals know has never been paddled in a seakayak before. Barry had the honour of being the first seakayaker to surf on the wave, which was really playful and fun. Camilla, Hallvard & Kjell also got stuck in. It was great fun but the water is VERY cold though!!

Tomorrow we are running an incident management course, then on the weekend is the symposium!