Sunday, 31 October 2010

Enforced Canoeing

IMGP0188Little car

At the moment we are trying very hard to do everything needed to complete our UKCC Level 2 coaching.  There are two things we really need to work on, improving our canoe skills to 3* standard and logging 10 hours of canoe coaching.  Today we decided we should get some hours on the stick.  However we aren’t really canoe fans….IMGP0189Bonnie Kirkwall Bay

We don’t like canoeing for the following reasons:

1) It’s always windy!

2) It’s always windy!

3) It’s always windy!

So we tend to struggle finding somewhere to go with the one (broken) canoe to which we have access.  Today we headed for the marina, to which we had kindly been granted access.marina The Kirkwall Marina

Today we headed into the marina for a couple of hours of practice.IMGP0196Mackayak does some solo practicePA310413 (Medium)Northern Kayaker comes back from Cromwell RoadPA310418 (Medium)Pootling round in the Halloween sunshine

We paddled in tandem for a while before taking turns doing some solo practice.  I tried hard to work on paddling on my left side and getting a nice rhythm with my j strokes.  To finish off, we went tandem again and took a tour of the whole marina, even peeking our nose out of the shelter of the harbour.IMGP0203Mackayak looks north towards the open seaIMGP0206Passing some of the local fishing fleet

Today we had a bit of an opportunity to try and get comfortable again in an open boat, however, all too soon it was time to go home, the clocks changed today and sunset was at 1623.  Winter is certainly on the way.

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