The St Ives Bay surf competition was on the 7th of April and the weather wasn’t very nice and the surf wasn’t very good either! Check in was from 8:00 – 8:30 and then we had the safety brief. I was entered in the Junior Long and Short and the Open Long and Short. A couple of people didn’t turn up because of a car breaking down so the first heat was cancelled and we started with the 2nd heat. I was in the 4th heat which was the Junior Short final combined with a heat of the Open Short. I had a couple of good waves in it and then I had a set back about ¾ of the way through the heat and I didn’t have any waves after that. I hadn’t thought that I had done very well so I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at the heat results and found that I had won it! So I was through to the quarter finals. I had a couple of heats before my next one which was the Junior Long Final combined with a heat of the Open Long so I grabbed a bite to eat and helped judge a heat.
When the competition first started the tide was fairly well in but by the time my second heat came on the tide had gone out fairly far and the surf was not looking very pleasant! I hadn’t been out in my long boat since the last comp. so I wasn’t sure how this heat would go for me. But I felt that it wasn’t going too badly when I got out there and I had a few good scoring waves and came second. This meant that I was through to the semi finals which was great as that was the first time I had got through to them. My next heat was a long way off and was a Long semi final so I helped out with the judging and got pretty cold! The weather was windy and not very pleasant to be out in.
My next heat came around and the tide was far out and the surf was fairly small. Again I had a couple of good waves and I won it! so I was through to the final of the Open Long for the first time. I was shortly going to be in the quarter final of the Open Short and the tide was even further out now and the surf wasn’t very good at all but I had a couple of good rides and came second. So I was through to the semi final of the Open Short. I was feeling very cheerful at this point as I had done the best I have ever done in a comp. before. I had never managed to get to the semi finals of either the Open Long or the Open Short before and so far I was in the final of the Open Long and a semi final of the Open Short!
My next heat was the Open Long final and I had some nice rides but I had no idea of how well I had done compared to the others. Next I was in a semi final for the Open Short and I had some rides that I didn’t think were too bad but then I got a pain in my upper right arm and I came in before the heat had ended. Thinking that I hadn’t done well enough to get into the final I started moving both my boats up to the cliff path. Then someone came down and said that I had come second and was in the final if I felt that I was feeling up to it. I decided that I was OK as the pain in my arm had passed so I grabbed some food and a hot drink before my next heat.
The Open Short final was the last heat of the day, I went down to the beach and asked someone from the heat before to give me a push off the sand so I didn’t hurt my arm. I took it easy all through the heat as I was starting to get cramp in my legs as well. After the heat I got both my boats up and got changed and warmed up just in time for the prize giving.
I came 1st in the Junior Long, 1st in the Junior Short, 1st in the Open Long and 3rd in the Open Short!
A very satisfactory competition! I now have a new boat to get used to before the next competition, which is in two weeks and is being held in Bude.
JTG
We’re now back home from our Winter in Uganda. We spent the last 3 months there paddling the White Nile river, now one of the most popular winter destinations particularly for us freestyle paddlers.
It turned out to be my favourite visit there and one of the most enjoyable trips of my life! I really loved it!
Every day we’d wake up pretty leisurely, most of the time it wasn’t the best levels in the morning so we’d read, relax, look at the animals; basically just enjoying life in tropical paradise. Then when the levels were perfect it was time to kit up and surf some of the best waves in the World.
If you want to read about the waves or the condition of the river check my last blog but aside from the paddling here there was one other aspect of living in Uganda that made this trip so special…
I set out at the beginning of our time there mostly thinking of what moves I was working on, but aside from our paddling what gave me the biggest joy was having the time to think and observing the wildlife that was thriving and living all around us.
I never noticed it as much in the past, but this time a whole new world opened itself to my eyes, every day was like a wildlife film. I noticed more and more of the life that was going on all around us and it was truly a pleasure to observe. I feel that it’s so much we can learn from the natural World.
My favourite of the animals we saw were the bright blue Malachite Kingfishers that sat in the trees by the eddy, a Hornbill family with two clumsy youngsters that liked to spend their evenings stomping around in the tree branches, a thriving Monitor Lizard population with one particularly brave Lizard that liked my kayak and paddling shoes ;-)The beautiful green and red Sunbirds that came every morning from their nests to drink the nectar from the flowers, the Turaco bird with its bright red underside and distinctive call…it’s actually too many to name that were my favourites 
For me it was a whole new side to Uganda that I hadn’t appreciated before. I think I spend so much of my time at home rushing around, paddling, driving, facebooking, watching youtube, emailing… that I often forget to stop and enjoy what’s around me in the real world. Going to Uganda this time really brought about an appreciation of the simple joys in my life and grew my love of nature immeasurably.
Paddling-wise we got a whole range of levels, from high Malalu to foamy low Nile Special with everything else in-between.
My goal for the trip was to get my wave paddling to the same level as my hole paddling, I learnt and understood so much on this trip, i’m not quite there yet but I left feeling satisfied with my progress and really fired up to keep on working on it.
It’s such an enjoyable & often frustrating process fine tuning moves, learning new ones and figuring out how to go bigger or do things better, but that process all together is what culminates to give the feelings that have kept me in love with Freestyle and have always provided the drive to seek perfection.
Here was no different you crash and crash trying to figure something out then the moment that you get it, it just clicks and all the frustration fades…you just feel so good. It’s why I love doing what I do.
It’s strange being back in the UK, for one Katya is in Russia so i’m on my own again now but mainly having constant power, fast internet, Tv and a food processor all at arms reach I was really looking forward too, but now I have it, the novelty has worn off after an hour. Its nice but i’m not sure I like it in the way that I used to 
Being next to a great river with fantastic waves to surf on with fresh delicious tropical fruit in plentiful supply surrounded by beautiful wildlife is an experience that I think is hard to rival.
The trip really gave me a lot of time to think and ponder and I realise my biggest loves are Kayaking, the Natural World & Wildlife & being with Katya. Its fortunate that they all combine very well.
Where I want to go with these loves I’m not sure yet, but I love the natural way of life and focusing on my dreams, life seems to get brighter and brighter as the years go by and I think that kayaking or any outdoor sport makes a big difference to peoples lives. That connection to enjoying yourself in the outdoors in its various forms that kayaking allows is quite remarkable.
When they told me at School “These are the best years of your life…” I knew they were talking bulls@$t
Anyhow go paddle and enjoy yourself! Now i’m looking forward to competition season and its time to get in shape in holes, so I’d better get to work sorting this video from the trip out so I can get to Nottingham bye for now.
Pringle
Back from Corsica – next stop Plattling. Perfect water level made my last five days there incredible and made me realize how much fun playboating is!
photo by Gerhard Stoebich
Beeing back in the cold snow-capped Alps after four and a half amazing weeks on the Isle of beauty I already miss the corsican lifestyle and charm. All those old little villages, beautiful hills and massive valleys make me going back there year after year. Though we found really low water levels this year we had fun times on the rivers and even got another last run down the middle Rizzanese.
A few times a year the UK boating community is blessed with a selection of truly world class waves in the Falls of Lora, one of the most unique rapids of it’s kind. Combining excitement with an initial intimidation factor, due to the power and whirlpools it creates, it only takes a couple of rides to crack the surface and get a feel for this gentle giant of a rapid. Nothing about it is a constant… with a multitude of personalities, it will show up on the biggest tides of the year, often presenting surging shoulders open to every wave move in the book and at other times presenting a taunting display of ripples that require the sleek lines of a sea kayak to attain. Suffice to say that in the words of Brian Fantana ‘Sixty percent of the time, it works every time’ and my birthday weekend was one of those days that leaves you feeling high as a kite.
Soul surfing in the Axiom provides an extra hours worth of play while the waves form as beautifully smooth ripples, well before and long after the exciting surging foam piles of playboat territory come into action. The ability to carve around these waves is an addiction that sees Dave Martin (my housemate) and I always loading a surf boat and the Axiom onto the car alongside our freestyle boats.
The main waves kicks off the action with a foam pile that forms between two large but quite different shoulders. The surfers right shoulder (in this pic) is actually the shallower and slower of the two, but it grants easy set up of most lefty moves and in a fast boat there’s no trouble bridging the surface to air gap.
The surfers left shoulder is a much steeper learning curve, which has a tendency to get you into more turbulent affairs with the eddy line behind it. The lure of the speed and bounce it offers though is always too much to resist, particularly as the waves continues to build and the shoulder is more open allowing much easier set up. The whirlpools that follow a flush rarely fail to provide entertainment, particularly for the those watching in the eddy, who tend to chant louder for down time and beat downs than they do for big air moves (this is Scotland).
Dave getting put on a cool cycle in the whirlies while making the most of his surf boat.
As the tide moves on, two other waves come into action. Second in line is the Ultimate Air wave which pretty much does what it says on the tin.
The last to come in is the Forever wave, which is such a glassy and forgiving ripple above the main wave, that it defines the term ‘soul surf’. As I mentioned at the start of this post; the Falls of Lora hold no consistency, even on such a great day with seemingly perfect conditions the Forever wave didn’t come in, but made up for it with the main wave holding out for an extra 40 mins than expected.
Many thanks to Peter Murray and Kacie Culshaw for being there taking photo’s!!!
See you at the Moriston River Race!
Ed
Last weekend held the Dutch Championships on the artificial white water course in Zoetermeer, NED. This event links together all white water disciplines (slalom, downriver, freestyle and boaterX) and people compete in all classes just for the fun of it. This makes a healthy mix of tight and epic racing and flat out hilarious stuff with people having no clue what to do and just having a laugh.
It’s a full on packed weekend if you compete in all disciplines with non stop action. The weekend went pretty sweet for me, winning the Women Freestyle, BoaterX, Downriver and becoming second in the Slalom.
Aside from the race, there was plenty of other action going on including SUP clinics, white water clinics, flow-boarding, rafting and other fun events.
Check out the event website for all the results and impression of the event.
With the first real rain we’ve had since January, Easter Monday proved to be an epic day out in South Wales. I Joined Hugh Graham, as well as Paula and Sam for their first trip down the classic Mellte, and Hugh and I went for a cheeky mission of our own. Here are a few video stills Hugh sent over from the day’s fun…
The Mellte put on; three paddle strokes, and a glorious boof!
BE WARNED: This centre line (above) seems to have something solid in its landing. I landed at approx 45 degrees, and glanced off something hard.
Sgwyd Gwladys (Lady Falls) on the Pryddin. Only a short hike up from the Nedd Fechan Confluence – be careful with this one, it’s not amazingly deep (you might notice a pattern emerging here…).
Sgwyd Gwladys from below – Hugh Graham making it look easy.
Spring is here now, and with the light evenings I’m hoping for some more rain, at least until the snow starts to melt elsewhere…
See you on the river!
Nick.
What are you doing in a canoe or kayak this week?
Its UK National Go Canoeing week and chance to show how much you love the sport – so get out there and take part.
National Go Canoeing Week marks the launch of Go Canoeing, a national campaign supported by Canoe England and companies including Palm to encourage and inspire more people to go canoeing more regularly.
So everyone of us that loves paddling should use this week to tell others. To give you some encouragement simply post a picture of you paddling on our Facebook wall and you’re in with a chance to win a bag of Palm goodies for sharing your experaince. In fact why not share it with others and spread the message!
To win, simply take a snap of you or your paddling friends and post on our wall. Tell us who, where and when it was (between 6th and 15th of April) and let everyone know why the paddling was so great! We’ll choose the one we feel best represents the spirit of Go Canoeing and announce a winner on Monday the 16th.
National Go Canoeing Week Poster
