This is the first time that Sandy and I have met! I think we are going to get on just fine!
Via iridium

I have arrived in Sorong with Sandy! Its hot and sweaty!

“Kayaking the Aleutians” picked up it’s 5th award last weekend at the French Adventure film festival LES ÉCRANS DE L’AVENTURE.

It won the Jean-Marc Boivin Prize, which is the price for the authenticity of the adventure.

The organisers sent me an email saying

“Congratulations!!! We are very happy for you. Your adventure has been very appreciated and also the film !”

“Kayaking the Aleutians” winning a prize in France

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the festival this time as I had a wonderful time there 2 years ago with my ‘Tierra del Fuego” film. Instead I was at the Irish Sea kayaking Symposium, which was another great event.

I am giving a few more presentations of the Aleutians film in the next few weeks so you might get a chance to see the film or hear me talk about it if you are nearby.

Sunday 25th October:  St Helier Yacht Club, Jersey, Channel Islands.  £5 on the door.

Wednesday 28th October: World Extreme Medicine Expo, London. I’m presenting the Aleutians film to the delegates.

(Other speakers include Sir Ranulph Fiennes , Jon Snow and various medical experts)

Sunday 1st November:  The Doodle Bar, Battersea, London. I’m presenting the Aleutians film and taking questions.

Sunday 2/3rd Nov: I’ll be joining Sarah Outen to paddle back to Tower Bridge, London to end her ‘Round the world human-powered loop’. Paddlers are invited to join Sarah on the Thames. See her website for details.

7th/ 8th November: “Kayaking the Aleutians” is a finalist at Banff Mountain Film Festival, Canada

(Unfortunately I won’t be there)

14th/ 15th November: “Kayaking the Aleutians” is a finalist at Graz Mountain Film Festival, Austria

(Unfortunately I won’t be there)

21-22nd November: I’m waiting to hear if “Kayaking the Aleutians” is playing at Kendal Mountain Festival.

If it’s playing, I’ll be there.

Alternatively, you can stream the film on Reelhouse or download it or buy the DVD.
Click here for PAL DVDs – UK/ Europe/ Australisia
Click here for NTSC DVDs – North and South America / Japanwww

There are two versions of the film for sale – The 55 minute Festival Cut and the 72 minutes Directors Cut. You can stream or download either (or both) of these – or buy the DVD which contains both versions and 4 extra bonus films.

It seems like years ago that Cheri, Turner and I thought it would be a good idea to make ‘a rolling DVD’. That’s probably because it was half a decade ago! I think we all imagined it would be a fairly simple affair. I’d film them doing the roll from a few different angles, we’d come up with a few words and wham bam – there it would be a few months later.

How naive we were! It turns out that there’s a lot more to each roll that I’d realised and it’s not always easy to capture the key movements on camera. I wanted to take advantage of the medium of film to ‘show’ key points which meant that Cheri & Turner had to get used to ‘presenting’ to the camera which caused some laughs, and a few frustrations all round at times! While reviewing the footage, Cheri & Turner realised that they don’t always do what they think they are doing 🙂 and they didn’t always agree on the key points of how to succeed at a roll. Then of course, I always had an opinion, whether I could do the roll – or not! And we are all perfectionists with different visions of perfection… But our hours of debating and reshooting and rewriting the scripts are behind us, and I hope and think that the end result – both “This is the Roll” and now “This is the Roll 2” are better products because we took so much time to try to get it right.

That’s not to say that it’s perfect. Greg Stamer kindly reviewed all the footage as the DVD was being created and he pointed out a few things that we might have changed if we’d had time – for example, on some of the rolls we didn’t stress that in the Greenland competition, you should come back to the starting position to get full marks. The way we have said to do the ‘Cross Arm Storm Roll’ isn’t the way that the current competition rules say to do it, although we asked other prominent Greenland-rollers and they also do it the way we have shown. We also used the word ‘boat’ instead of ‘kayak’ a few times, which Greenlanders may take offence to. No offence was intended, so sorry about that.

Despite these points, we are really pleased with the result and feel confident that “This is the Roll 2” offers incredible value for money. Cheri & Turner have been teaching rolling for many years and are recognised world-wide for their abilities. There’s over 3 hours of high quality instruction on 22 different rolls. The rolls are split up into four families – for example ‘the Standard Greenland Roll family’ and ‘storm roll family’. Each family has an introductory chapter which demonstrates the common body motion. There’s a land drill you can do to practice the motion and develop the flexibility needed. We could have easily spread the rolls over 2 DVDs but we decided to put it all in one DVD, partly for environmental reasons.

Because there is so much material, the download price is not much different from the DVD. However, with the download you will have the option to buy just the rolls you are working on, or you can buy a whole family of rolls.

The DVDs are being made right now. Both DVDs and downloads will be released on 25th September. You can pre-order the DVD and the download. Or please ask your local shop to stock the DVD and we’d be delighted to sell to them.

The official publicity information and ordering information are here.