Fixing a hole where the sea came in

Last week Nico's Explorer got holed after a collision in the surf during a Peddelpraat club trip. I felt bad for him as he looked very depressed seeing the gaping shredded hole in his personal sea kayak.

I have been there before. By now I am quite confident to do glass-fibre repairs, but only very rarely take on (emergency) repairs for desparate friends. Not surprisingly one gets more and more friends by doing this. As long as I was not the one responsible for the damage in the first place. So I came up with a cunning plan; so cunning...

Today Nico and I organized a glass-fibre repair workshop. The idea was to show how to do a sea kayak repair so the local paddling group could deal with that themselves (or help others) when this comes up again.

After the successful repair of Nico's kayak, a leak-finding routine and a latex seal replacement talk, I am afraid I could well end-up being asked for more boat repair workshops, which is actually NOT what I want. A sure fate of all cunning plans...

So please do not invite me for repair workshops !

The captions of the pictures in above slide-show give some insight in the repair process and our considerations for this particular repair.

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

I'm filling the cracks that ran through the door
And kept my mind from wandering
Where it will go

(Fixing a Hole - The Beatles)

Making Waves

A nice afternoon paddle with long-time paddling friend Karien and Mathias from Texel. With the northeasterly wind, the spring-tide ebb did not produce significant standing waves at the Hors. Not until a yacht powered through it. Against the current; sure enough making waves.

Insight

Planning a trip from Huisduinen involves all the usual trip planning homework for a very varied piece of water; group, wind and tide dependent. Standing on top of the Dike, overlooking the area, gives a good overview of what is possible on a particular day.

Today Ria planned and led a nice Peddelpraat trip to Paal 9. The wind was never stronger than force 4. On the return we had a nice play at the Hors tide-race, a rescue and a tow. All in sight of the Huisduinen Lighthouse.

GPS Track

Biesbosch Paddling

The Biesbosch is a area of sloughs, remnant of a storm flood in the year 1421. Despite being more than 50 km away from the sea it is still a bit tidal with a range of about 20cm. Just enough to make some of the sloughs only accessible for kayaks at high water. Tides could increase more if they would ever decide to reopen the bigger Haringvliet estuary to the sea. Other variations in water level come from the seasonal river level/flow.

Beavers have been succesfully reintroduced and it is now a National Park. With it came a visitor centre, tour boats, boat rentals and the lot. In the summer it can be very busy. For kayaking, this is a great tranquill winter/spring/fall paddling destination. The latest 'update' to the Biesbosch is big tree trunks in the deeper/wider sloughs. I think it is artificial or the Beavers now use power tools. Apparently it is for better fish habitat.

And I quickly spotted a Kingfisher. That is driving on the road to the visitor centre I saw one on one of the big billboards that show the wildlife that inhabits the Biesbosch. Also osprey now nest here. This was a great 30K day with Jan.

GPS Track