Sea Kayaking - Seals and Spits

Rhu by Helensburgh

Had a wee paddle, very sunny,managed to get an hr and a half before the rain. Some nice wakes to pop over and a seal followed me for a bit. Ater the spit at Rhu there was quite a wee race, 2-3knots pushing through.

New Toy - CAG Europe MIWOK

Took out my new toy today, a DAG Europe, single skinned 5.3m boat. Performed very well, straight line tracking, surfed well in 2-3ft swell/clapotis and only need to pad out the thigh braces and seal the hatches better. Compared to a PH Capella, it performed as well as or better in all aspects except the Capella has better leaning chines.


The launch Beach


Blackness Castle - Blackness West Lothian. Looking back at the launch beach.

Blackness Castle - cared for by SNH for the nation, Mel Gibson filmed Hamlet here in the 80s.


A small rockgarden that you can play in and use wee eddy lines at higher tides.

Returned at high tide, quite high spring one. Pretty disgusting water quality. And the stuff in the beach was untypeable.

The Dark Side.............

Well I have gone back, to the dark side, my young padwans. After many years without a kayak paddling urge I have decided to get one, a sea boat, which I'm collecting tomorrow down in 'Gods Own Country' (Doncaster). This is the model here.

Superlight and compact Gas Burner

Coleman Super light F1 - open up the slightly bigger than fag packet sized box and the contents are surprisingly small. Bought from http://www.go-outdoors.co.uk/ for£12. A small mesh pocket fits all the burner components.


The main burner unit srews onto the support arms and into the std cannisters. The bottom part is the folded up supprt arms.

The arms slide out and lock into the heat resistant plastic. A quick and easy fit.

In use it is a ferocious wee burner and boiled a pint of water very quickly. Reasuringly noisy.

As with all gasburners it needs a windshieled so I'm designing one just now with a snap on heatshield for a pan too, hopefully working like a heat exchanger.

Camping in Oban

Nice site, quiet, great outlook, until my neighbour fired up dance music. I used my '1 second' Quecha pop up tent. The original ones, 20 euros.

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Brogan enjoying the sunset.

250miles...3 lochs and 5 sea lochs...still no paddling

After driving from Grandtully, past loch Tay, Rannoch and Tummel I headed past Killin, then onward to Oban. Still too windy on Loch Awe, then gusty at Loch Etive and on.

The Connel bridge, the Falls of Lora, minor whirlpools as the tide had just started to ebb. Three times passed this and always higher tides, not seen the awsome falls since 1994 when doing my TI Course at Kilbowie.

Bridge over the Atlantic - bridging the mainland over to the isle of Seil.

Looking back north from the top of Bridge over the Atlantic. Loch Feochan at the end.

Continued past Oban down eventually to Easdale, passing two depsondant looking Sea Kayakers maybe looking for a swell free loch too. Oh well next weekend looms.

Easdale.

On of the smaller isles south of Easdale ??

The Crannog Loch Tay

After leaving the quiet and peacful SCA camp site at Grandtully, in search of a calm loch - no chance - I popped into the surreal Crannog Centre on loch Tay. Well worth another visit, unfortuantley I had missed the tour and couldn't wait another hr. I did however have a good browse at their books, fell for 'Seaweed and Eat it' an interesting and lively read all about food for free in scotland.