Did YOU paddle today ?

[ian johnston]

A bit slow in getting to these images, but a recent couple of very relaxed days paddling in Wester Ross....

[ChrisJK]

Some times it’s definitely worth getting out.
I mistakenly thought I might get a bit of tidal assistance above the weir from Chester.
Whatever it was bright late summer day with wind and flow against me on the way to the blue bridge and assisting my return.
A tricky moment when I reached the bridge at the same time as the river cruiser ‘Lady Diana’ which promptly started to pirouette as soon as it had passed under it I thought ‘this guy must know I’m here’. I tucked myself past a large post and took the shot.
Having the skeg down with following wind and flow was great for a drink and a snack.

Fuzzy image as phone in waterproof pack

[Sean_soup]

I have a few pics to contribute from a recent trip over to Ynysoedd y Moelrhoniaid. (aka The Skerries - but the Welsh name means 'Islands of the Seals' and that's quite appropriate for this post.)



With a bit of a dreamy quality from a bit of water on the lens - the lighthouse is in the process of having its light replaced. It looks expensive. Bit of a shame in a way as I guess the big rotating lens will be gone when they've finished, it's much more efficient these days to do away with the rotating 'beam' and have an omni-directional LED lamp flashing on and off with no moving parts instead.

After a couple of rather stormy days, it was a beautiful calm sunny day. I wonder if the weather affects the seals' mood the same way it does ours, because the seals in the lagoon there were clearly extremely chilled out. (They're pretty relaxed most of the time anyway, the seals in this part of N Wales seem less bothered by kayaks than elsewhere, perhaps just because there are so many paddlers about and they've got used to us.)

The seals hauled out on the rocks were enjoying a good sing-song and barely gave us a glance as we paddled gently in to the lagoon. But there were a few already in the water and one female in particular, Charlotte (she just looked like a Charlotte apparently, dunno) was extremely bold, curious and playful, and came over to say hello. What a rare privilege to be so close to a big powerful wild animal, just casually checking us out like a friendly dog in a pub. She was absolutely adorable.

Ah.. I think I'll need to post again to add some more photos. Stand by..

[Sean_soup]

More pics..

[ChrisJK]

Amazing Sean
That would freak me out.
The Skerries on a calm day are on an aspirational bucket list but it’s a fairly long paddle?

[ForeverYoung]

More pics..

I believe we frequent the same climbing forum too! 🙂

We got a pod of porpoises quite close today, but I didn't manage to get a picture of them. Hunners of seals too, but none climbing on our boats!

I was trying out a Greenland paddle today, but I'm not quite sure that I have the technique sorted yet, it felt very hard going and very slow. More work to do I think if I want to use it for bigger trips.

[ChrisJK]

Hi Forever young
It'll be worth it, it is all about the angle of kant . I recently paddled round Arran in a wooden kayak with a wooden paddle and I wasn't left miles behind. My paddle is hand made so it possibly has a wider blade than many commercial sticks I have seen. They are Anthro-metric so it suits me.
However this post is slightly off piste but my post above was a 9.5 mile paddle.

[Sean_soup]

I believe we frequent the same climbing forum too! 🙂

We do - I've noticed this before. And, perhaps unsurprisingly given how many sea kayakers occasionally come out of the woodwork over there, we're not the only ones. :)

Porpoises are fiendishly difficult to get a photo of, they don't hang about do they? Unless you have superhuman reflexes (and your camera already in hand), if they're close I think your only chance really would be a still from a go-pro or something. (And if they're not close, photos are invariably disappointing.)

The seals around Anglesey do seem to be quite a bit less wary of kayaks than they are elsewhere, maybe just because there are so many paddlers there. You still need to be careful not to disturb them of course but even hauled out they'll often barely glance your way as you pass them by. Even so it's pretty unusual to have one come and try to climb up on your deck, and I've never heard of one grabbing your boat from underneath with both paws and giving you a big toothy grin before. What a privilege. :)

It's handy that the lagoon by the lighthouse at the Skerries has a beach that floods completely at anything other than a neap high tide, so no pups in that area. Also no terns nesting on that bit in the spring, so it's almost always possible to land there even when the rest of the islands are completely off limits during the nesting season.

Best of luck with the GP. (They're a complete mystery to me, so you'll get no wise words here!)

That would freak me out.
The Skerries on a calm day are on an aspirational bucket list but it’s a fairly long paddle?

It would freak me out if there was any hint of aggression there from such a big powerful animal, but the vibe was very different to that. It's probably a good thing nobody's told them what kayaks were originally built for though!

It's quite a committing paddle over there and needs a bit of planning (and a tidal vector), but it's not a huge open crossing. It's about 8km ish to paddle from either Cemlyn Bay or Church Bay/Porth Swtan, but you're never more than 3km offshore. There are various overfalls along the way, and on a completely flat calm day you cross eddy lines and strange boily upwellings caused by the flow hitting various lumps and bumps on the sea floor, all a bit odd but not at all challenging to paddle across. (On a calm day.)

A neap tide, with low water Holyhead around lunchtime, and a calm forecast would be ideal. That would see you heading over from Cemlyn Bay during the last couple of hours of the ebb, and then returning on the first couple of hours of the flood. You'd get the most significant tide race bit done early, passing through Harry Furlongs during the ebb - which is a pretty mellow experience on a calm neap tide day, about akin to running a rapid on a big wide easy going grade 2 stretch of river.

[LRB125]

Amazing experience Sean and thanks for sharing. We were over at the Skerries the other month (albeit on a ski). It really is stunning and an abundance of seals & wildlife. There were 5 people lunching on the island in kayaks, when they set off heading Wylfa direction they were on the tiderace and couldn't believe the amazing speed they were making. Some of those strange boily upwellings you mention are indeed spooky and eerie

That's a trip I would love to aspire to one day in the kayak, but guessing it would have to be meticulously, military style planned. Land doesn't look too far away but so much can change in that short passage

[Owen]

That's a trip I would love to aspire to one day in the kayak, but guessing it would have to be meticulously, military style planned. Land doesn't look too far away but so much can change in that short passage

I've not paddled down there for twenty years as I now live in Scotland, but I don't remember it being that difficult. It just requires timing. Pick a nice day and go for it.

[Sean_soup]

As open crossings go it really isn't v difficult, but you obviously need to know you can stay in your boat and keep paddling steadily for at least a couple of hours. And you need to know that a few lumpy bits of water and the odd eddy line wont trip you up - even when it's calm there's a good chance of there being something happening in one of the many overfalls/tide races.

It does need planning, but there's no point trying to be too meticulous and time everything to the second (or the minute) - there just isn't enough information available about what exactly the water will be doing to come up with a completely accurate detailed plan, so whatever you do there will always need to be a little 'seat of the pants' course correction at some point towards the end of the crossing.

In particular, you need to recognise if/when you find yourself directly upstream of the islands and it's time to abandon your 'course to steer' and head straight for them. (As will probably happen if you work out a tidal vector based on the tidal diamond in the middle of the sound on the chart.)

It's most accessible during the ebb at neaps - besides just being a smaller tide, the S Westerly ebb stream through the sound is quite a bit weaker than the N Easterly going flood on any given day. Also coming in along the North Coast gives you more to navigate by, the cardinal buoys and the South Stack/North Stack transit etc. And conveniently low water slack is in the middle of the day at neaps, so you can head out from Cemlyn or Cemaes in the morning and go back on the flood in the afternoon.

There's not really much need to plan for the return journey at all, you're not going to miss the 'mainland'. And as you're facing back towards Anglesey, it's really easy to take a transit lining up a feature on the coast with the hills behind and get a feel for which way you're going and how fast. As a general rule if you set off and point your boat back directly towards Carmel Head during the first couple of hours of the flood, you'll probably end up crossing over to West Mouse. And from there it's more or less downstream on the flood back to Harry Furlongs. (Where there's nothing significant likely to be happening - the tide race there only properly gets going on the ebb.)

[andycon]

Some times it’s definitely worth getting out.
I mistakenly thought I might get a bit of tidal assistance above the weir from Chester.
Whatever it was bright late summer day with wind and flow against me on the way to the blue bridge and assisting my return.
A tricky moment when I reached the bridge at the same time as the river cruiser ‘Lady Diana’ which promptly started to pirouette as soon as it had passed under it I thought ‘this guy must know I’m here’. I tucked myself past a large post and took the shot.
Having the skeg down with following wind and flow was great for a drink and a snack.

Fuzzy image as phone in waterproof pack

I had a similar experience the other week except I was on a paddle board at the time.

Sent from my moto g62 5G using Tapatalk

[LRB125]

That's a trip I would love to aspire to one day in the kayak, but guessing it would have to be meticulously, military style planned. Land doesn't look too far away but so much can change in that short passage

I've not paddled down there for twenty years as I now live in Scotland, but I don't remember it being that difficult. It just requires timing. Pick a nice day and go for it.

I paddle by myself so wouldn’t have the confidence to go that far (Trearddur based) so just stick to Rhoscolyn as limit. I was out on ski the other Sunday and there were some guys (around 10no) playing in the tide race at Penrhyn Mawr. It was quite onerous out there with good swell. Couple guys fell out so hung around for a little while to make sure they were ok. Guessing some senior members of the team were highly experienced as things were well under control

Think it will be a while before I reach that stage 😆 but nonetheless it spectacular to watch these guy, gals

[leighv]

Last weekend I organised a club trip for my local, very landlocked club to finally go sea kayaking, heading out to Pembrokeshire. Most of the group had never paddled on the sea before! We had an amazing time and I shot lots of little bits of video across the whole weekend that I’ve now cut into a funky little reel of our time out there :)

I’m still learning editing so I know it could be better but I thought some of you might enjoy watching our adventure!

[simon64]

Sorry but the video is annoying to watch, yes you have made it “dynamic” which would be great for a music video maybe but this is sea kayaking, slow it down, you have squeezed what should be a 10 minute video into just over a minute, let us enjoy the scenery, you have some great shots in there but you don’t give us time to see them properly.
Glad you had a good trip though, Pembrokeshire is amazing.

[leighv]

Sorry but the video is annoying to watch, yes you have made it “dynamic” which would be great for a music video maybe but this is sea kayaking, slow it down, you have squeezed what should be a 10 minute video into just over a minute, let us enjoy the scenery, you have some great shots in there but you don’t give us time to see them properly.
Glad you had a good trip though, Pembrokeshire is amazing.

Most people don’t have ten minute attention spans. We’re using the video to advertise sea kayaking to the rest of our club, and that means keeping it short and using a snappy, modern style. Even at a length of 1:20 mins it’s actually much longer than the ideal 30 seconds. I’m sorry it annoyed you.

[ChrisJK]

Glad you had a good weekend Leigh but I agree with Simon, This isn't sea kayaking but I concentrated on it when I was preparing to do the trip with my club.


All 11 minutes of it.

[leighv]

Fun video, Chris! I can easily sit and watch 11 minutes of canoeing too :) But I do feel it's worth reiterating my earlier point about attention spans; we live in the TikTok age where people click through things after a few seconds. I took my inspiration from white water kayak ads, which are high energy, cut to very modern music and, crucially, usually short. Folks like you and I may enjoy sitting through longer videos (I follow lots of outdoors Youtube channels and will happily sit through long videos) but the majority of viewers sadly don't.

I have read that, on average, most people's attention spans these days are somewhere between 45-50 seconds, which is why so much content aims to be 30 seconds or less for full engagement. Additional research suggests that for many that span limit may be as short as 15 seconds or less. We've had a lot of new, younger members join our club this year and that means catering content to a demographic that's accustomed to this kind of content.

I do enjoy making longer videos of some of my trips but this wasn't the point for this one. Anyway, I won't defend it again; I'm sorry it hasn't hit the mark with folks here, totally understand the style isn't to everyone's taste, but that's okay :) Let's get back to sharing photos! So here's a couple from the trip.

This first one was pretty funny; we were going through the tunnel that goes through the tip of Dinas Head to avoid crossing on the outside as it was a rather annoying F6 wind, but as I paddled over a rock in the middle of it, a bigger set came through and I had to grab the wall of the tunnel to steady myself as the swell came through. I could barely see anything as I was wearing sunglasses!

[PeteW]

Well I enjoyed it, good to spot a few old haunts and get the feel of something new round every corner - Thanks

[seawolf856]

Making great use of your new drone as well Leigh. I'm old and grey but our club tries to appeal to all ages and although the sea kayaking demographic remains stubbornly old, video's like your latest one will certainly help to grab the (incredibly short) attention of Gen Z paddlers. I applaud your efforts to drag our sport into the modern psyche.

[ChrisJK]

Ok Leigh
The video is too frenetic for me but I hope it propels more younger folks into sea kayaking/touring. I reckon if they put it as an Olympic sport it would up the game.
I’ll ask some of the folks on our club’s beginner course if the slalom competitions prompted them to give kayaking a go.
Sea kayaking is definitely therapeutic.

[Grian]

Autumn colours, stags roaring, full moon walks, first-class second breakfasts. Thank you September!

[ForeverYoung]

Autumn colours, stags roaring, full moon walks, first-class second breakfasts. Thank you September!

Looks stunning! Where were you?

[ForeverYoung]

A local coach very kindly did a session for us on bracing, rolling and rescuing. Very useful and not too cold yet.

[mrcharly]

Finally, yes.

After Covid, then RSV + Lymes, I'm finally well enough to paddle. Just 5km in the evening, but a lovely sunset and a little pack of 4 friendly seals made it a lovely evening.

[ChrisJK]

Circumstances fell that we were up in the lakes this weekend so ...... a paddle was possible.
Coniston is a beautiful lake.

[seawolf856]

A lucky weather window Chris, and the Shrike is looking mighty fine.

[ChrisJK]

Sorry it’s me again but I had another enjoyable inland paddle on the Thurne from Thurne to Womack and back with a coffee at Womack a feeble 4 miles possibly but forgive me it was the maiden voyage of a Vember more info on the Shrike builders thread (shortly)

[ChrisJK]

I sometimes feel a bit of an impostor on this thread when there are many illustrious and challenging trips up here.
I’ve just made a couple of short trips on the Teme at Ludlow and the Seven on the loop round Shrewsbury.
Both were moderately scenic and the water flowing fairly briskly. Getting to know my Vember which is shorter and more manageable than my Shrike.
Useful lessons in edging and dealing with swirly water particularly under the railway bridge and the English and Welsh bridges in Shrewsbury. The railway bridge has a slight kink in where the posts are and it was not a place to stop and rest.
Shrewsbury is a lovely city well worth a visit.
Parking and access via the slipway at Frankwell.

[Chris Bolton]

Actually yesterday, but didn't have time to post. Paddled the Tay from Ballinluig to Perth (52km), as the last day in a canoe journey from Rannoch Moor. An excellent day's paddling.