What a week it was! Planning a sea kayak touring week in July for the TKBN sea kayak club, expecting warm and sunny weather with calm seas. That's what Summer is about I thought. How different from expected. I am writing this at the house of Len van Halm who kindly invited me to stay over for Sunday. Every day of last week had strong wind warnings for the Channel Islands and frequent gale warnings for the adjacent Portland, Wight and Plymouth sea areas. But we managed to paddle every day nevertheless! I found a convenient way of preserving the VHF weather forecasts recording them on my digital camera as a sound recording. Transcribing the message on paper is less stressful when I know I always can repeat the forecast at will. We had it all: wind, waves, rock hopping, gel-coat chipping, surf and tide races. In the end, the only stretch of the Jersey coast we did not paddle was the west coast and the northwest and southwest tip; not the place to be with 6 Beaufort southwest to west winds. On Saturday, the last day for the group, the weather turned beautiful with weak variable winds and we had a magnificent trip to the Les Ecrehous rock islets, 4 nautical miles off the north-eastern tip of Jersey. We as a group of fourteen, managed to make a massive 1700+ pictures and some movie and sound clips, taking up about 4.2 Gb. Something to weed through there on my ferry to Poole on the UK 'mainland' tomorrow morning.
End of May 2008, the
Jersey Canoe Club again organizes their bi-annual sea kayak symposium. Registration has already started. Be sure to sign-up early. In 2006 the symposium was fully booked by February.
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