Freedom and Adventure for All

Returning home and weeding through the mail my eyes fall on the kayaking magazine "Paddling" of the Svenska Kanotförbundet. A picture that I took at the Southwest Sea Kayak Symposium made it into their publication and it is always nice to see how the picture was used (thank you Richard Öhman for the article). I can hardly understand any of the articles. But it has an article on sea kayaking's 'all-time' great adventurers with many familiar (and some unfamiliar to me) names. From Oscar Speck's 50.000 km (!) voyage from Germany to Australia from 1932-1939 to Rotem Ron's solo circumnavigation of Iceland in 2006. Frihet och Äventyr för Alla.

Pirates of the Vliehors

Today, Karien and I crossed the Eierlandse Gat to the Island of Vlieland. The southern tip sand flats is called Vliehors and during the week this area is the scen of 'zero altitude' fighter pilot target practice. On this (for visitors) 'car-less' island we encounter three 4-wheel drive vehicles that scavenge the shoreline. The former 'Reddingshuisje" (rescue hut) is no longer serving it's original function; it is locked-up. Instead it has become a pirate's camp. When a motorbike cruises over the sand flats I am no longer sure whether we are in a scene of Mad Max or Pirates of the Caribbean. Today we are the Pirates of the Vliehors.

Exploring

The "Eierlandse Gat" between Texel and Vlieland is a notorious and treacherous place. More than a few Dutch sea kayakers can tell chilling stories of near epic trips trying to navigate across the bar from the sea in rough conditions. The shallow bar between the two islands makes for very confused seas on even moderate swells. I have so far only been here 'passing through' as part of trips, carefully avoiding all the rough stuff.

Today, Karien and I paddled out to check this area for play spots. The day before we scouted the area with binoculars and found potential tide-rips at certain times of the tide; tide-races to play in? With the current neaps we found only a tiny race running, but further out a more interesting feature developed. Wind and waves over tide over a flooded sand spit created very confused seas. Waves from different directions running into each other, kicked-up even more by the opposing flood current.

If based 'on-island' this is an excellent 'park-and-play' spot.

Having a ball at the races

By chance I ran into Barry in the morning and he asked me if I wanted to go paddling with him and Justine. I just finished a week of coaching and wanted to see my friends off and did not anticipate paddling. But as addictions go, there I was at Porth Dafarch beach by 10:30.

After three days of gales, crystal blue skies with hardly any wind returned to Anglesey. First stop is Penrhyn Mawr. I shot footage of a raging spring tide Penrhyn Mawr in Friday evenings gale, one hour into the flood. In one word: deadly!

Today, I thought it would still be too rough to handle. But surprisingly the swell had dropped quite a bit. We found PM raging, the inner races 'survivable', but not really playable. I was too scared to go anywhere near the front waves of the outer race. In fact we all were. When the tide died down a bit, we ventured more and more into the front and I had exhilarating rides surfing successive waves. I almost ran down Justine and had to do an emergency capsize and roll to prevent a collision. In one instance I had a fantastic ride down a wave and after that I noticed that my tow belt had gone. It could have been lost a bit earlier and I was surprised that it actually had gone loose just now, drifting only boat length away. Barry was so kind to pick up my cherished tow belt.

Barry fancied going to South Stack. Exhausted from playing we paddled to South Stack and even all the way to Parliaments' House cave. Finally a break, long overdue. We shared our sparse food. Justine shared her sandwiches and some Twix bars. Barry could offer lemonade and a Snickers bar. I could share the last of my hot coffee and my ever present tea biscuits. Snoozing on the warm rocks, in the sun, out of the wind.

North Stack was still running so why not go for a play there, adding to our exhaustion, but satisfying our addiction. To make it more challenging Justine threw in a bit of excitement. Not only did we had to catch the waves, we also had to catch a ball. No, these photo's are not 'Photoshopped'. Running out of energy it was time to take the conveyer belt to South Stack. Surfing South Stack race with the last of our energy. Than the long haul back to PM and Porth Dafarch.

Fortunately PM was not running (again) yet, and by 17:30 we made it back to Porth Dafarch. What a day! For me this was the most strenuous day in Anglesey for a long time. Now it is back to office work for the next two days and than back to the Netherlands, finally. Desperately wanting to make it back to another island; 'Home-sick', severely, for the first time ever...

Anglesey Sea Kayak Symposium

I am writing this on a 'rest day' in-between preparing for tomorrow's BCU coaching course. Last week was a good Anglesey week with gorgeous weather ending with an excellent morning run of Penrhyn Mawr. The Anglesey Sea Kayak Symposium over the weekend was fully booked with 150+ attendants from all over the world (Belgium Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Israel, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, USA and UK). With five independent groups from the Netherlands, the Dutch are well represented this year.

The BCU course week started out with lots of interesting 'events' dodging the frequent gale force warnings. So much to write about and a lot of sunny pictures to weed through. More Anglesey days to come. Check out Derrick's blog for more symposium impressions.

Texel Nature Tramps

Karien is a volunteer for the "Natuurstruners" (Texel 'dialect' for "Nature Tramps") youth group on the island of Texel. Saturday, Ecomare ran their "Migratory Bird" youth activity for the "Natuurstruners". When I learned that Leo (a Texel sea kayaker) was narrating the activity I expressed my interest to join the hike. Leo had just one condition: that I act as a kid. Out of the Ecomare van came a globe and various stuffed wading birds and Leo asking questions and explaining about why the birds visit Texel. Texel is a huge "restaurant" with a wide variety of delicacies on the birds' menu; opening hours in 6hr25min intervals around local low water...

After spotting and observing the various dining birds and the children making notes, we head out to the tidal flats to have a closer look at what is on the birds' menu. The most peculiar thing I wondered about were the 'snotty' egg cases of a "gestippelde dieseltrein worm" (Latin: Anaitides maculata). Word for word translated into English it would be a "Spotted diesel train worm". But it becomes even more fascinating when (back home) I learned it's English name: "Paddle worm". We did not see the worm on our digs, so it must have gone paddling.

La Bufadora

Thank you Jen for taking us to the La Bufadora area in Baja California Mexico. It was a great Aqua Adventure! This is my first effort at creating a movie file by combining digital pictures with digital camera movie clips. I used Microsoft MovieMaker. Probably already encountering the limits of this software by the frequent software crashes I had to endure. I could not resist uploading the 'movie' to YouTube.

And while I am at it, I also uploaded the pictures for slide shows at Picasa for 2 april and 3 april.

Southwest Kayak Symposium 2007

With my name on the symposium schedule and flights booked there was no way to 'bail out' of my second attendance at the Aqua Adventures Southwest Kayak Symposium.

Although I would have a BIG excuse to change all plans for this season. Jen Kleck sure kept me busy to have my mind off things... Arriving Wednesday night she had me and Fiona running a BCU 4* on the Thursday. Then an Incident Management class on Friday. Although a little less surf mayhem than the year before, we still had the occasional capsize and a mysteriously disconnecting tow-line. A rock landing on the Mission Bay breakwater proved to be more difficult than anticipated (and interesting to watch for Fiona and me). The incident management day even made it into a California Kayak Friends e-mail exchange; about the best way to tow a sea kayak through surf. Thank you Henk Aling for sending the e-mails regarding this. Anyway, I very much enjoyed the symposium.

Saturday evening camp fire was magical with Steve Wilson, Nigel Foster and Russell Farrow playing guitar and singing and Brent Reitz playing the harmonica (a whole range of them in fact). Fireworks along the way (courtesy of the nearby Sea World). And according to the jamming all along (the watchtower), a new kayak symposium song is in the making.

A big thank you to Lynn and Thom for their hospitality in serving an excellent Sunday evening course meal for the symposium staff at their house, with special imported coffees and single malt Scottish whiskey. 5 stars on the culinary scale!

Dutch premiere This is the Sea 3

Yesterday evening Zeekajak.NL hosted the Dutch premiere of Justine Curgenven's new DVD "This is the Sea 3". Forty-five people saw the first hour of the two-hour DVD. More people showed-up than signed-up, so the available room was packed. According to the enthusiastic applause, they liked it very much Justine! Seeing Falls of Lora on a big screen is even more intimidating and referring to Justine's words... It indeed is "as bad as it looks". Before the Premiere the adjacent swimming pool was available for free for all who wanted to try-out (rolling) with Nigel Dennis Kayaks and be informed about NDK, Kokatat, Lendal and Kari-Tek products and Zeekajak.NL activities. Or just socialize. It was a very successful day and Nico Middelkoop and I hope to find another excuse next year to organize an event like this.

A special thanks to Hans Heupink, Jan Akkerman and André Sanders for their help with instruction and/or logistics.

The other side

Last weekend I spent on the Island of Texel in the north of the Netherlands. The Texel sea kayak club organized two swimming pool sessions. The island paddlers that attended Freya’s Greenland rolling clinic last January were eager to practice more. But not all kayaks are created equal. Although
Dubside (in his excellent "Greenland rolling with Dubside" DVD) says "do not blame your kayak", some kayaks are easier to learn the balance brace with than others. Custom outfitting of the cockpit is another thing to consider. The low pool lighting was excellent for producing some mind boggling shots...

The first pool session being Friday evening, left the Saturday for exploring the Island. Karien took me to the Slufter. This is a part where the dunes are broken-through by a past storm and where high tide enters a vast valley through a maze of channels; a prime bird sanctuary. Jumping channels provided some adrenaline rush. When was the last time that we sprinted and timed a jump across a water channel? Now older (and wiser?) don’t we all tend to consider potential risks more carefully? Sometimes preventing those rewarding jumps into the great unknown? All sea kayaking trips around the Island of Texel pass this spot, but only once before I had a break here (on a memorable trip in 2002), but I had not taken the tide into the valley. Karien knows about nature and she has a good eye for spotting interesting items on the beach between the millions of shells and other debris, like Mermaid Purses (egg cases) of a Thornback Ray (Raja Clavata) (see photo) and the Lesser Spotted Dogfish (Scyliorhinus Caniculus). Thank you Karien for giving me the Latin names that enabled me to find the proper English species names. It is a gorgeous sunny day with a low angle bright March sunlight brilliantly lighting up the surf and deepening the blue of the dune ponds. Saturday evening another pool session; lots of play time. Sunday another beautiful dune and beach walk with Jannie and Karien. Time on Texel appears to run more slowly than on ‘the other side’, a term that the islanders use for the Mainland. Now I am typing this on the train journey home on Monday morning. It appears that 'the other side' skipped a day. Good time on Texel with friends. Thank you Karien, Bart and Jannie for a warm welcome and hospitality on the beautiful island on the (for me) 'other side'.

Solar Power

In the December 2003 issue of Sea Kayaker Magazine a D-I-Y article was published by Robert Walker about an "Expedition-Capacity Waterproof Solar Battery Charger". I quickly assembled one for my 2004 Faeroe trip.

The idea being that during the day, from the back deck of my kayak, I could charge a 10-pack of 1.2V 1800 mAh AA NiMh batteries (making 12V). During the evening and night I would take the battery pack into my tent to re-charge (for instance) my hand-held VHF radio. And I always would have charged AA batteries to power my then new digital camera, head torch, GPS, etc. Unfortunately the system did not work as planned and I did not have the technical knowledge to figure a way out of this at the time. After the first night of recharging my VHF from the battery pack, it appeared that the batteries would not charge again. At home I found out that when the battery pack is drained below 10.7V, the charge controller would not charge the batteries. Worse, the whole system would not give any voltage, despite the solar panel delivering 20V; Bummer! There are charge controllers that have a 'Voltage Load Disconnect' (VLD) circuit, but these charge controllers tend to be much bulkier. To date I have not found a small size charge controller with VLD. Anyway, I could not figure out to make this system bullet-proof on trips where I do not have access to a normal AA battery charger to 'reset' the system to a 12V battery pack. At about the same time Fiona Whitehead enthusiastically talked about charging her mobile phone directly off a solar panel. To my astonishment she used the same solar panel as I did. Thus directly feeding a car battery adapter from the solar panel. But being focussed on charging AA batteries, I did not continue to use the solar battery charger. Today I took my solar charger out of storage and with a small adaptation put it back into service. Instead of only allowing to recharge from the battery pack, I made an extra connection directly from the solar panel leads. The solar panel can give up to 20V and the charge controller converts this to about 12V. Reading the small print on my mobile phone car charger revealed '12-24V'. The only draw-back is that the waterproof box I use now is too small to hold any equipment other than the battery pack. And other boxes might be too big to carry on the back deck. We'll see how this works for a start.

Mentioning 'Solar Power', the term 'Girl Power' comes to mind... Or is my associative memory playing tricks on me? ;-) Lots of ENERGY there !

Gearing Up

I have gathered a lot of outdoor and sea kayaking equipment over the years. On numerous occasions last year I told myself 'must repair this and this and this...' Never made the time for it last year, though. There always comes a time when pieces of gear wears beyond repair. Last three days I spent checking all my gear and making necessary repairs. And some inevitable difficult decision of throwing favourite pieces away, and making a 'to buy new list'. My heavily patched-up classic FosterROWE PFD went out. It was spending it's days unused in storage. It would not be 'good practice' showing up as a kayak instructor with a UV degraded, ripped-up PFD spilling some of it's foam core... The ground sheet of my old tent (fly sheet lost to UV deterioration and bad zippers) made it into a nice gear bag; to be used while shuffling gear from/to my kayak to/from camp. While busy at the sowing machine, more bags got produced, to the point of making a small stuff sack to hold the gear bag that will hold more gear bags... Do I like recursion?

I am ready for new seasons of paddling...

Spring Clean-Up

One of my 'favourite' things to do this time of year is filling in my income tax form. This year gets more complicated because I started business in 2006. Despite the fact it was my local tax-unit that decided back in 2006 that I was definitively running a business, the national agency still sent me a personal tax-form. I ran into major bureaucracy to make sure that I do receive the right tax-form... Anyway, while I am waiting on a new 'invitation to process tax', I went to my storage-space to weed through old stuff that can be thrown away. I use(d) to be very, very organized. Everything in labelled folders in labelled boxes. Then some years ago our cellar flooded (global warming downpour). Out went my moulded childhood memorabilia. My 'law of collecting' states that one saves stuff as long as one has room for it (waiting for flood, fire or moving house). Out of mind, into a box... Today it was mostly 'post-flooding' old-jobs related documents. And I found two long-lost copies of drawings that intrigued me during my IT college days.
The one with the skeleton is from those Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 (subtype eludes me now) college computer room days. The Unix machine ran on 256 Kb internal memory. It ran C and Pascal (my favourite English language dialect ;-)), time-sharing 16 terminals. It's 8-inch (yep, massive) floppy disks held 250 Kb of data; my two-years worth of projects... I save you those COBOL punch card stories.
The other picture made it into my final-year project "User interface aspects when integrating computer information systems". At home I had my Apple //e, 128 Kb with a Z80 card, running Digital Research CP/M (that would become MS-DOS) and Pascal MT+. Found the receipt of it today; I save you the price I paid for it... Apple had introduced it's Lisa computer. The GUI idea not yet stolen by Microsoft (Windows). Today, looking at the widespread "common user interface mistakes" all over the web, nothing really has changed. Now we have fancy Windows Vista Aero. The picture of the skeleton is still relevant to the ever faster computers bogging down in 'design software' that overshadows any functionality. The skeleton is understating that the responsiveness of the computer system is not too bad... Folders thrown away, memories lost? Not quite. Some of it made it onto my blog...

Rumours

With the 'lightning speed' of the internet, by e-mail, or just the old-fashioned way by talking on the phone or just chatting at a meeting one learns about things... Tonight I learned that shortly there will be parcels shipped all over the world. Furthermore, from another very reliable source, I heard that on the Saturday night of the biggest kajak/canoe show in the world, somewhere in the Midwest of the United States, there will be a NOT TO BE MISSED event. I just in-time replaced a two-word phrase with 'event' in order not to spill the beans. What a pity, I cannot be there to see it, but I know for sure that we will know all about it the day after... Spreading rumours? Me?

rumour UK, US rumor
an unofficial interesting story or piece of news that might be true or invented, which quickly spreads from person to person.

Kick Start

All over Europe sports coaching is going through major changes towards a more unified approach across sports and countries. The changes induced by the International Olympic Committee filter through to each country's National Olympic Committee and finds it's way into recreational coaching all the way to the Dutch Canoe Union (NKB) kayaking disciplines and eventually to sea kayaking. If you are into the British Canoe Union (BCU) coaching scheme: same kind of changes! Over the last two years aspirant (sea) kayak coaches spent time suspended in the froth of the crashing waves of change. Many were swimming, some went missing for a while. Now the future is more clear, it is time for a renewed start. Re-enter and Roll! Thus Nico Middelkoop and I found ourselves confronted with very confused participants of our weekend: "How to start to become a kayak coach". Lots needed to be clarified. After each day I had a strange feeling that the participants left with renewed motivation while transferring their confusion to me. Removing the scaffolding of the whole new Dutch kayak coaching structure shows the inevitable signs of "still some work to be done". Hopefully the new coaching 'building' is strong enough to support all those enthusiastic aspirants. I have a feeling that I will be spending more time with more of them than I anticipated. All for a good cause. Thank you Nico for giving it a kick.

Above photo was made by Hans Heupink during a coach training workshop in December 2006; read about it on his blog.

Feeding

Today I experimented with adding sitefeed to my web log. This proved to be a very frustrating activity because Blogger (in my case?) does NOT generate the correct code in the headers to make it work and information on the web about rss and atom is highly technical. Even almost too technical for me ;-) The help page on sitefeed on Blogger is 'not-found' ! The last issue to solve is that my sitefeed does not show a 'plus-sign' on Google custom search page to see the text of a post. Hopefully this post will activate that. Yesterday I experimented with AdSense. That's the advertising on my blog. Don't be affraid, I am only experimenting with what this is all about and how 'intelligent' Google is with matching AdSense advertising to my blog. I have no intention whatsoever to try to make any money with AdSense.

Feeling Lost

What to say? Following Derrick's vigil, his 'hour-by-hour' account of events on the other side of the world, news links and thoughts. Just Friday I received an e-mail from John Kirk-Anderson from New Zealand. I had met John in Anglesey many years ago and he was dropping a line while he had mutual friends visiting him. They must have been preparing a great welcome for Andrew McAuley. The dot on the map, Andrew's last known position, only 65 kilometers from land remains on my mind. My knowledge of the English language is failing to describe my feelings properly. Just cannot find the right words, would there ever be anyway?

Falls of Lora Memories

I finally updated my website with pictures from Falls of Lora and the 1st Storm Gathering symposium on Isle of Mull from October 2006. Today, Justine sent me below pictures that Alun Hughes took of me in Falls of Lora. After months of mental preparations I think I am now finally ready for the premiere of This is the Sea 3. In fact, today Justine put a preview on her website (www.cackletv.com), so I better be ready! At least Alun's photo's show that am 'right-side-up' at some point in Falls of Lora, and in control of my craft. In control? I can already hear Justine laughing... I cannot complain too much about the preview... This is the Sea 3 has it's Dutch Grand Premiere on 17 March, look on Zeekajak.NL for details.

On the front wave (Photo by Alun Hughes)
Getting stuck-in (Photo by Alun Hughes)

For more pictures of the Falls of Lora and the 1st Storm Gathering symposium, look at my 2006 Logbook entries. Memories... NOT Memoires! Embrace the elements, again and again and again...

Rollin', rollin', rollin', Freya!

It has been a very very busy weekend. Freya Hoffmeister came over for a Greenland Style rolling weekend. Introducing Dutch sea kayakers of all levels and sea kayak instructors to Greenland style rolling was a great success. I could only assist on the Saturday, having the annual Peddelpraat Club Winter gathering on Sunday (I am organizer/promoter of the Peddelpraat sea kayaking trips). I now have a sore throat and a 'concrete' head; still trying to get rid of chlorine out of my system. I can only imagine how Freya, Nico and Hans must be feeling after more than 16 hours of swimming pool sessions and instruction.

Now we created a 'problem'... All those new Greenland style enthusiasts probably want more and will be spreading the news... Thank you Freya! Thanks also to Tom, Dick, Gerard, Sien and Govert for helping to make this weekend a big success! Greenland style rolling is here to stay!

First Aid Victim

Last Monday I attended one of the Dutch First Aid update evenings. On the way something fell on my head... Just after Yossi made this picture with his mobile phone he seriously cut his arm and we were both taken care of by a whole team of First Aid trainees. And NO, I did not get this injury twirling my paddle...

Double Trouble

Yesterday I could join John from Plas Menai Watersports Centre in a Triton double sea kayak. My first experience in a double. Did we get into trouble? Read all about it in Justine's Journal.

Inspired Aspirant

I am just back (again) in Anglesey. Last weekend I was at Glenmore Lodge, up in Scotland attending the bi-annual BCU Coach Level 5 Confererence. Lots of Level 5 coaches and some aspirants, like me, made their way into the Scottish mountains. Some news on the BCU UKCC (United Kingdom Coaching Certificate), that will supersede the BCU Coaching certificates; I won't be bothering you with that! A lecture on 'Feedback' had me sitting at the tip of my chair. I was at the bounderies of my knowledge of the English language. I understood the words, the sentences and even the speaker's Mancunian accent. But there was an underlying layer of satire and comedy that recquired close attention; very funy indeed. Other lectures and workshops that I attended included 'Interference Effects' and 'Skills Acquisition'. Monday would be sea kayaking, but with forecasts of force elevens that was changed to a morning session on forward paddling. Being coached by the British National Team sprint racing coach is not an everyday opportunity!

I had a very long drive back via Oban, to pick-up Nico, my business partner. Maybe we can do some paddling over the weekend.

Bonfire

Today I went on a Skerries trip with Justine and her friend Clare Jones. It is Clare's first trip to the Skerries, a fact that somewhat surprises me. Clare is co-author of the book "Unforgettable things to do before you die". For sea kayakers a trip to the Skerries would surely belong in such a book. Leaving from Cemlyn we first play a bit in the Furlough tide race. It is the end of the ebb and we have a 'gentle' ferry glide towards the Skerries, more on transits than on compass. The sea is much rougher then to be expected from the force 3 winds. There is a good swell running. I feel quite special to be on Anglesey waters this time of year. Over Victoria Bank and near Coal Rock the sea steepens a bit, but on this state of the tide, the sea feels quite 'lazy'. Upon approaching the Skerries we choose to go clockwise. For me, because I never went this way around the island before. The small bay, were we can land, is filled with 20-plus seals. Justine hands out various types of delicious cream pie, a pre-birthday gift to her from Clare. Returning to Cemlyn Bay takes us past West Mouse, surfing the following sea. A setting sun lights up the sky in blues, greens, yellows and reds. In Britain, the fifth of November is associated with Guy Faulkes, or bonfire night. This year, conveniently held on the Saturday evening of the 4th. We watched the fireworks display in Felinheli, but that was definitively not as enlightening as our Skerries paddle with the bon fire in the sky.

Afternoon Paddle

After three days in the 'office' checking e-mail, doing VAT bookkeeping and selecting pictures to go on my website it was nice to be on the water again. I am staying at the Sea Kayaking UK centre on Anglesey, in-between my travels in the UK. For those who are curious if I am always on 'holiday', I should tell that I am currently working towards further BCU coaching 'development' and that means doing some stuff and courses in alternative disciplines; still learning... Reports on that will follow later. Barry and Chris invited Phil and me to go on an afternoon paddle, joined also by Tara. We started from Soldiers' Point to play in North Stack tide-race. There was hardly any wind but still some swell remaining.

North Stack was great fun. Next could be South Stack tide-race, but we were very careful not to make any overhasty decisions. We paddled the tail end of North Stack tide-race towards South Stack in big clapotis like waves. Tide-race waves from different direction ran into each other, sometimes creating a 'zipper' effect. I am aiming for them and get hit by the biggest of them, partly surfing backwards. Paddling close-in to South Stack we could see that it was not too rough and we played at the edge of the race. No pictures of this, because one of the closure-clips of my waterproof camera housing has broken and the camera would not survive a swim. Anyway, South Stack has a tricky race. When it is safe enough, it gives long and very fast rides! Today it is very good. My last run was the best. Not that I not wanted another go, but crashing down a wave into the 'big hole' in front of me (for a split-second I thought of looping), I went over and had to roll-up again. My cap dangling on it's leash and one half of my spare paddle hanging loose from it's holdings. Time to stop. We had lunch in a rather dodgy swell ridden spot. Tara had the most spectacular landing when a big set came in. We shared our food and drink as no one had really prepared for a full lunch stop. Leaving was potentially even more tricky because now the water level had fallen, exposing even more rocks. But by timing our take-off we made it out more easily than I expected. A great paddling afternoon. In fact the first trip for my new Explorer in Anglesey. Tweety is enjoying quite a big tour around the country, and so am I.

Falls of Lora

Yesterday we played at the Grey Dogs tidal race off Scarba. It was the first day on the water for my new Explorer sea kayak. It left the factory the same day as Justine's new Tiger-skin Romany sea kayak. So I might name my 'dull' yellow-on-white Explorer Tweety...
Today all the photo and video camera's are out, except mine :-(( for the Falls of Lora near Oban. It is the biggest spring tide of the year. It soon becomes clear who are the experts on this 'river-like' tidal phenomenon. Nick Cunliffe, Aled Williams and Mike ? are not intimidated by the extreme strong currents, eddies and whirlpools and impress with long surfs on the front wave and excellent active boat control; river paddling in sea kayaks. Nick manages an almost complete pop-out. My adrenaline runs high. Shaking knees after my first runs. I swam three times, rolled some more. But I managed some seconds surfing the front wave. And turned 360 degrees at a 45 degree angle stern-down in a whirlpool; an introduction to vertical bracing...

Surfing at Trearddur Bay

All wanted to have another go at Penrhyn Mawr, but the conditions were far too rough! Upon observing the race from shore and making risk assessments it was decided: "no go!". Returning to Trearddur Bay we found a good four-foot surf running on the beach. Geoff Allen and Simon Osborne decided to go vertical again. This time using the sand... My two digital camera's are giving me problems, so I am lucky to have some shots worth showing.

All out at Penrhyn Mawr

Today was a cracking day at Penrhyn Mawr. Spring tide with a good swell running. Geoff Allen and Johann Wagner climbed on the rocks for spectacular picture sequences of sea kayaks making vertical manoeuvres. Pictures courtesey of Johan Wagner of Escape Kayak Center.

Greenland in the Netherlands

On the weekend of the annual Veluwe Rally, Tom Steenbergen and Dick van Zanten organized the second Greenland kayak gathering in the Netherlands. Freya Hoffmeister arrived with two skin-on-frames and her carbon fiber Qaanaaq rolling kayak. I got to do lots of Greenland rolling practice and managed the spine roll for the first time. I got dizzy from all the rolling. On Saturday Freya gave rolling instruction sessions and did a rolling demo together with Peter Renkema. Peter, new to Greenland rolling, managed to perform in sync, many of the rolls that Freya did.

Terschelling in a day

At 21:00 we land on the beach at the Stortemelk campground on Vlieland. It has been a long day, this Tuesday 12 September 2006... The Island of Terschelling is the biggest of the Dutch Wadden Isles. 30 km long and 4,5 km at it's widest. Part of the Dutch advanced sea proficiency training at the NKB (Dutch Canoe Union) sea kayak instruction week on the island of Vlieland is an overnight trip to one of the adjacent Wadden isles. The weather and tides are good for a two-day trip around the island of Terschelling. Because of it's length and exposure this trip is not common. For day-one of this trip, Marieke has been put in charge for trip planning and leadership. She starts her leadership role by asking us (Karien, Louis, Patrick, Paul, and myself) if we mind getting up an hour earlier than previously announced. She asks this the night before, just before we want to go to our tents to go to sleep! We all agree. At 07:30 sunrise we push off from beach at Stortemelk campground. Marieke puts Louis in front to set the pace. It turns out that Louis is very good at keeping a very steady pace. Unfortunately for the most of us, especially at this early hour, his paddling speed is rather high. The tide has turned a little earlier than expected and Marieke is pacing to get us out of the incoming flood and into the favourable current along the island. After two hours of frantic paddling we turn east to paddle along the Island, way out at sea. When we are in sight of the TS cardinal marker, 4,5 kilometres off-shore, we start heading towards the north-eastern tip of Terschelling, where we land at 12:30. After only an half-hour break we head out again to paddle to the 'wantij'. The 'wantij' is the area behind the island where the currents meet. Being at the 'wantij' at high water means a favourable flood current towards the 'wantij' and a starting ebb current beyond it. The original plan was to camp at Oosterend, near the 'wantij'. But paddling conditions are unbelievable perfect. Flat calm sea and negligible wind. Very warm, but the sunshine is dimmed by a haze, obscuring everything more than a kilometre away. Despite the pace-making in this heat, we all are still in good shape. We all find access to our food, drinks and snacks. This is too good of an opportunity not to continue and try to make West-Terschelling.
We now have a full ebb tide to reach it, so why not? Paddling speed drops a bit by the tiredness that slowly overtakes the euphory of knowing that we will make it to West-Terschelling. At 17:30 we land at West-Terschelling. After two cups of soup at the Walvis restaurant Karien is expressing her opinion to continue and return to Vlieland today, pushing for a one-day circumnavigation of Terschelling. Silently, I think, the rest of us had already hoped that we would continue. We are now at the end of the ebb. Our paddling speed is faltering, despite the fact that Louis is still setting the steady pace. We have to walk our kayaks through a shallow gully where a stranded flat-bottom ship is waiting for the flood. The sun is setting when we cross the Vliestroom. In twilight we have to wait for the ferry to pass. Near darkness we reach the eastern tip of Vlieland and notice the tide is flooding again with force around the headland and over a submerged breakwater. I am aware of all the looming signs of it all falling apart with increasing risks. We need to be back real fast now. At 21:00 we land on the beach that we left at 07:30 today. In 13,5 hours we completed a 87 km single-day circumnavigation of Terschelling. This one-day circumnavigation has probably been done before, but if so, not very often. It should not set (new) standards for the Dutch advanced sea proficiency. But I am very pleased indeed with the fact that this group had the guts and stamina to make this possible. With a little luck with the weather, tides and our physical shape. We are awaited by Michel, a chef cook. He has saved lots of a delicious pasta meal for us of which we all take at least three servings.

Recovered Puffins

My digital camera was giving me trouble on the last day of my Mull trip. The camera started with the 'format memory card' menu. But I just was not prepared to do that after the many, many bright sunshine 10x optical zoomed very close-up shots of Lunga Puffins of a few days earlier. Never trust technology, especially when one has become used to relying on it... Never trust computers...

Back home I searched the internet for tools that might recover the Puffins that fell to this acute 'digital bird flu'. Maybe too many puffins packed together on the memory card, I suppose... Anyway, I want to share with you how my Puffins recovered.

The freeware program 'PC Inspector Smart Recovery' allows you to read any (corrupted) media that can be attached to a computer. Even deleted images, as so far they are not overwritten already, can be restored. A small drawback is that the images are named and numbered in the physical order at which they are stored on the memory card. The internal JPG EXIF data still contains all the original date and time information, but individually renaming the files is a lot of work. But here another program came to help.

The program 'Sophisticated Rename' can rename files from the information stored in the JPG EXIF data. This is also a very handy tool to restore file date/time for all those people that use XP's 'easy' option of 'importing images to folder'. Unfortunately, this option renames all images and updates date/time and that does this on the physical order of the images on the memory card.

An advice from me: do NOT use the XP 'import' option! Instead, open the memory card with Explorer and copy and paste the images to a relevant named folder on your computer. In this way file date/time are not updated. And off course never edit, or even rotate, your original images, work on a copy instead. Otherwise image quality might be lost forever.

After I recovered my Puffins, I received three CD's full of pictures of another Mull trip member. Finding my way through the huge number of pictures it felt as if someone had dropped four boxes of unmarked slides. Try to re-order those! But now I had the tool to make life easier...

The future? Digital camera's with build-in GPS and electronic compass pinpointing every image, linking that to Google Earth... Never trust computers...