Congratulations to Harry Whelan and Jeff Allen for completing their sea kayak circumnavigation of the Emerald Isle in record time. The pair, paddling Rockpool Taran sea kayaks, completed the 1000 mile trip around Ireland in only 25 days and according to their blog, Around Ireland 2011, it was “an amazing journey”.
As many of you know, Harry is the centre manager of CKC’s very own base of action – Cremorne Riverside Activity Centre, and Jeff has paddled with many of us over the years too. The monster expedition is something that many of our members would love to do one day – but perhaps at a more leisurely pace.
Well done guys – we’ll continue to look out for more news, you’re becoming quite famous!
This month’s issue of Canoe & Kayak UK magazine is dedicated to sea kayaking, something close to the heart of all Chelsea Kayak Club members – and is jam packed to overflowing with features, trip suggestions and tips – so much so, there’s a 24 page mini-mag pull out.
What to expect inside the cover of the June isssue:
A review of the new Greenland-style Anglesey Stick sea kayak paddle
As well as features about touring down the Suwannee river and sea paddling around Brittany
Whilst the dedicated supplement focuses on some smashing UK destinations including a two day circumnavigation of the Isle of White, heading out to Bardsey Island and sea kayaking to The Skerries. The team at Canoe & Kayak have also gone all out on the website too, posting a few informative videos for sea kayakers to get hints and tips from the pros, check these out:
Heads up – there’s also going to be a a free sea kayaking DVD attached to the July issue (#124), so keep your eyes peeled for the next issue too, or get yourself a subscription so you don’t have to fret about it! There are a couple of nice subscription deals going on at the moment, including a free Coleman Stove & Lantern worth £45 for subscriptions before 6/7/11 quoting CKUK-JUNE11, as well as discounts for BCU and CKC members (check club emails for details).
Always keen to help fuel interest in the great sport of kayaking – Chelsea Kayak Club is working with Lucozade to offer free taster sessions as part of its SPORT FREE60 campaign that launched this month.
People can try out any number of sports and activities for gratis, thanks to the isotonic drink company and some generous sports organisations/clubs. So if you fancy trying something new or you need an energy boost to paddle on the Thames or one of our trips around the country outside of London, pick up a promo bottle and get stuck in.
Now, the science bit… Keeping hydrated while paddling can often slip to the back of the mind – as we’re surrounded by water – but it shouldn’t! When out on even the shortest of paddles, and especially when on the sea, make sure you take fluids with you and that you regularly take a sip or three to replace lost liquids and salts.
Also, all members of the British Canoe Union (BCU) qualify for a 15% discount on all Lucozade Sport products purchased at the LSSA’s Online Shop – visit www.thelssa.com/shop and enter the BCU’s unique code (log into the Canoe England Member’s only area for details).
The day was a great success, lots of people rocked up to find out about padding and how they can get involved – in part due to some last minute fancy bunting and car-stickering at Cremorne and one particular mug standing outside of Imperial Wharf station for half a day in full wet gear!
That aside, the unpredicted nice weather also helped a great deal in raising the number of attendees, as well as the promise of some delicious cakes in our bake sale and the chance of bagging some pretty sweet prizes in our raffle.*
Clive Whitton from Canoe England also came along with some nifty new tech for us all to play with – a couple of kayaking ergo machines. These are the mutts nuts – and – are a lot harder than they look, which pretty much everyone who tried them would agree too (so long as you gave them enough time to catch the breath afterwards!).
Chelsea Kayak Club had its own stand and displayed a range of safety and paddling equipment to talk through, as well as details and images from some of the exciting trips we’ve managed to cram in since the Club was founded last year. Kayaking London did an amazing job of taking out three complete beginner’s taster sessions on the Thames and we’ve no doubt that we’ll be seeing some of those people again as members, once they have discovered their sea legs.
We also had an impressive display of deep water rescue skills from the young people who use the activity centre, many of whom stayed around to help out on the other stands and chat to all the interested people.
All together, the sunshine and enthusiasm of all the people involved help make this a really enjoyable and fun day – and one I’m sure we’ll repeat again in the future.
Thanks again to all of our supporters and friends who kindly donated prizes for the raffle, the winners drawn from the tub were:
Jacks of all trades – getting ready for a Royal Wedding Paddle
Groovy-baby! With the help of Katie W and Richard H, I was able to turn our two Atlantic’s into a couple of floating Union Jack’s that would make Austin Powers weep with envy. These boats have been made to resemble our national flag to show CKC’s support for the Royal wedding on Friday 29 April, and to lead a very special river trip down the Thames to watch the ceremony from the water.
To honour the occasion, the boats have also been renamed ‘Will’ and ‘Kate’ and – as I’m sure you’ll agree look fantastic together. It took a couple of hours in the sunshine on Saturday morning, along with about 100m of coloured tape to transform these simple looking boats into things of beauty that turned quite a few heads and prompted quite a few enquiries from the locals. At one point we even found ourselves with a potential new member, although he needs to celebrate another 15 or so birthdays first.
Any Club members wanting to get themselves on this special Royal Wedding Paddle and travel down to Westminster Bridge with our very own Will and Kate, make sure you show your interest on the trip sign-up page as soon as possible.
Always up for an interesting paddle and to push our kayaking skills, we arranged for the club to head out to sea for a few miles in search of a wind farm, off the Kent coast at Herne Bay. We found it, along with the upper limits of our endurance after five solid hours sat in a boat on a sunny Spring day, clocking up around 12 nautical miles there and back.
Nine of us took up the challenge including Rob Davis from SeaPoint who headed up the armada, when we left shore just before 11am on Sunday morning – having made the getaway from London relatively pain free and in good time. Our destination and visual bearing was the furthest wind turbine we could see to the right, which squatted on the horizon line – almost due North from our get-in point next to the harbour.
Holding tight formation, we paddled across an incoming (up estuary) tide and into the North-easterly that reached Force 4 at times. The swells and breaking waves picked up every now and then, but apart from a little discomfort from the side on pitching it all went well, if only seaming to take longer and longer to make headway. Geoff, always keen for some extra fun – kept paddling off, only to come surfing back to the group minutes later, before repeating his little side excursion over again.
Taking hourly rest-breaks for much needed hydration (although conscious of the lack of loo-stop-opps) and a bite to eat, we kept both motivation and energy levels high as we persevered to make those tiny pinwheels turn into the whopping 123m tall power machines that they are.
When we finally made it there, I found myself suffering from a kind of reverse-vertigo – legs trembling, caught breath – as I sat in my boat stared up at the dynamic force of the three blades gracefully moving around and around so far up into the sky. These truly are the new colossal centurions of the South East estuary.
Turning back for land, we were thankful for both our maps, compasses and (brought along) local knowledge as the distant coastline, although visible, was a long brown – almost indistinct – smudge across the horizon. So with our sights firmly set on Herne Bay’s water tower ‘wine glass’ sticking up above the smudge we started to paddle back.
The return journey was slower than the outbound despite the tailwind as energy levels within the group began to flag and distraction overtook desire for the toilet, as we all began to focus on getting back ‘as quickly as possible’.
Back on terra firma we all rushed to the ‘building with the turrets’ then changed, packed up kit and boats and went to sample some of the local delights and hospitality in the nearest pub – although, to be honest the consensus was that the car park was better! So we ditched the pub sharpish, grabbed some well earned fish’n’chips and propped ourselves up against the cars and watched the seagulls before heading back to the big smoke.
On the 26th March we set off for the inaugural Chelsea/Battersea joint surfing trip. Heading off to the Gower we were not expecting much action; Magic Seaweed was predicting almost no surf. But it just goes to show, you’ve got to give it a go. Our first day at Llangenith on the Gower gave us a gentle introduction and was perfect for those of us (like me) who were feeling a little rusty. Lovely little waves, just perfect for the sea kayak, soon got me surfing in nicely. Great for the edging skills and an unexpected bonus was the practice you get in turning the kayak around. With the waves coming in pretty quickly you want to get the turns in promptly or else face the next wave side on.
Day two took us to Rest Bay in Porthcawl. Much bigger surf and in the interest of my own safety and the crowds of other surfers and kayakers, the sea kayak stayed on the roof. We had a amazing few hours in a lively surf with plenty of spills and thrills. Paddy from Battersea was snapping away from the beach and he informs me that I am not the third person to be using one of his photographs as a Facebook profile.
We finally made it over to Pembrokeshire after what seemed like an impossible trip to organise. Nobody could agree on dates before Christmas and once a date in January had been agreed could you believe it we had to postpone it because the weather was too rough! Several people also pulled out due to injury or illness too. So it was with great trepidation that 9 of us from CKC headed westwards to Wales in the hope that the sea conditions would be suitable but the weather would not be too dire. It also happened to be the first CKC away trip for Fiona, Paul and Judes!
We had arranged a bespoke moderate to rough water handling course with Sea Kayak Guides (Martin Leonard and Nige Robinson). All of us had something slightly different to get out of the weekend – for me, I wanted to supplement the 4 Star Sea leader training I received last year because conditions at the time were relatively calm.
Arriving at various times on the Friday – Judes and I arrived to find a drunken contingent loosely playing Junior Scrabble in the bunkhouse kitchen. I say loosely because I didn’t recognise any of the rules they were playing to… For one Olwen seemed to be challenging John for using words in every day usage – apparently she had never heard of “toe-day” before…
Saturday morning arrived and the sun was shining – after a quick briefing we headed off to White Sands Bay in the knowledge that we may well be heading over to Ramsey Island to experience The Bitches. Despite suffering from an immense hangover Olwen was beside herself with excitement as The Bitches had been on her “To Do” list for as long as she could remember – she would never have guessed that her first experience would be in a sea kayak though!
Nige, Martin and Denise got us doing various manoeuvring exercises before taking us to an area of modest current to practice breaking in and ferry glides sea kayak style. We then headed off to Ramsey Island and pulled up into the harbour area for a lunch stop to wait for the tide to turn and the race to begin (not before a quick trip further along the island to see the seal colony). The spring tides combined with a little swell made for exciting conditions, big grins (and a few unplanned swims…they will remain nameless). After the session on the tide race we regrouped and headed as a tight group over Ramsey Sound to get back to White Sands Bay – very strange water to be paddling over and I found myself wondering how a shorter kayak would ever make it back without tripping over the funny eddy lines and swirls. We all surfed into White Sands Bay in a relatively controlled manner – unfortunately I did not have my camera ready to capture an amazing roll Olwen had to resort to in the surf! It was also Stu’s first time at surfing.
Back at the bunkhouse we quickly showered and John and I came up with an outline plan to head to the north coast for Sunday to discuss with Martin in the pub and we headed over to The Ship Inn for good food and to generally chill out before turning in early (for us anyway).
Sunday arrived and was as forecast – overcast and generally gloomy – the outline plan discussed the night before was still on and we all headed to Abercastle. We headed out through the harbour and turned west along the coast with the eventual aim of ending up in Abereiddy.
John and I were given opportunities to lead various sections as the group headed along the coast rockhopping and practiced surfing and group leadership techniques (such as around headlands). I even got the opportunity to practice a rocky landing. The weather certainly kicked up during the trip and at times we were on the upper bounds of a Force 4.
All in all an amazing weekend and everyone got a lot out of it – and a great first away trip for Fiona, Paul and Judes! For John, Olwen and Dave T the weekend was a mere warm up for the Severn Bore they rushed off to do when they got off the water (see their trip report on the Battersea website).
Last night the Club held it’s first AGM at the Horse and Groom Pub in Belgravia (watch out for the minutes) – a reasonable turnout for a cold Tuesday night and attendees reflected on the story of the Club so far – it really is hard to believe that Chelsea has entered a new membership year already!
Plenty has been achieved over the past 12 months and it is going to be exciting to see how the Club develops over the next year!
Gale-force winds had been registered on the south coast the night before we were due to paddle, so general expectations were of a tough and bumpy ride, which might have to be cut short. We were down to just six paddlers and approached the village of Bosham on Saturday morning with caution, but the skies soon cleared and the westerly winds seemed to be on our side.
Miranda had meticulously planned out a route and a strict timetable, and thankfully we didn’t have to cut it short. After an extended kitting-up process, in which shiny new equipment (deck compasses!) was displayed and fussed over, we made our way along Bosham Channel and out into Chichester Channel.
We took a break for a few minutes to scope out the state of the sea, at which point the sun came out and the sky was so clear that the Isle of Wight was visible in the distance. After crossing the harbour mouth onto Hayling Island, we stopped for a quick lunch and gawped at the sight of a tiny one-main hydrofoil sailing boat zipping across the sea, but it was still too cold to linger for long.
We started to make our way along Hayling Island, indulging in a spot of birdwatching on the way (plovers and sandpipers, according to our resident twitcher Paul), with the aim of exploring a particular channel. The view was astonishing – the clouds parted slightly in the middle with the tempting promise of more sunshine but Phil and Manda rightly decided to hang back, because there was little to see upstream.
As we came out of the channel, the dark clouds that had been lingering on the edges of the horizon passed over us, the wind picked up and it started to rain. It felt like a gentle but insistent threat to get away from the island, and I expected the crossing back to the east side of the harbour, over a seemingly huge expanse of sea and a horizon that seemed to get further and further, to be difficult.
But the clouds soon passed by and instead we ended up running aground on the harbour’s wide sandbank, and were forced to get out and drag our boats (I’m still not convinced that counts as a swim, Phil). To a distant onlooker, it would have looked as if we were walking on water, like giggling neoprene-clad messiahs.
Back in our boats, we made our way back to Bosham Channel, where a brave Manda practiced rolling in a sheltered spot while Richard showed off his self-rescue skills. I was quite content to stay dry this time. The last stretch was hampered a little by the rain and wind, but at least we were paddling with the tide.
The 11Nm paddle was technically undemanding, but the three and a half hours on the water were pleasantly tiring and it was an unexpectedly beautiful and friendly trip on a cold February day. I couldn’t have asked for a better first paddle with Chelsea.
