Kayak Building Bulletin Board

User Profile

Andy Waddington

I started kayaking in 1977, on flat water at University in a borrowed fibreglass slalom kayak, which is pretty good training for getting a boat to go in a straight line. However, I never progressed to moving water until I had the chance to paddle an easy river in Austria in another borrowed fibreglass boat, thirteen years later. For the next Austria trip (only another six years this time), I had my own (plastic) boat, a Perception Pirouette - which I had a lot of fun with, but still didn't really paddle more than a couple of times a year,
and mostly on flat water.

Suddenly (!) in 1999, I realised that I had, for about six years, been a member of a club which had an active Canoeing Section. So I joined an "easy" river trip, which turned out to be in flood, and I swam twelve times. This was somewhat embarassing, so I waited until some pool sessions became available and once my technique had improved somewhat (and I could roll - at least in the pool), I joined another river trip. Which was also in high water. I swam thirteen times :-( Now I reckon by now you are thinking "Flat learning curve. No hope. Try a different sport !" But I was really enjoying (most of) these trips, so I perservered. We took an open canoe down a section of the Spey in 2001, during which I found that my kayaking experience enabled me to read the river very successfully... hmmmm.

However, in 2001, the Foot and Mouth epidemic closed most rivers to canoeists in the UK, so I started sea kayaking, in a borrowed fibreglass boat (does this sound familiar?). A day trip on the North Sea coast of Yorkshire went well, and a three day trip to the Sound of Jura was absolutely brilliant, so I bought a boat. This was delivered the day after a trip out to Coquet Island, during which I managed to get the borrowed 17' boat backlooped in the entrance to Amble Harbour (they had assured me that sea kayaking definitely didn't involve swimming !).

Winter 2001/2 was the time to actually get into whitewater properly, starting with some rather less challenging rivers. Two sections of the Tees and the Wear from Durham went with rather more time spent inside the boat, although I managed to put a hole in my Pirouette (now getting rather old and brittle) on a drop on the Tees. The Crake in January was my last trip in this boat and, as it happened, my first river without swimming.

An Acrobat 275 proved to be a much more forgiving boat and another four rivers that winter went with very few incidents. I was now happy to take on most of the rivers in the club's programme.

Meanwhile, my family had started to show some enthusiasm for sea kayaking, and it looked like the sort of wilderness activity that would not involve my kids carrying big rucksacks, whilst still getting to some wild places. But my pursuit of a kids' sized sea kayak produced very few results, apart from a bunch of web pages by all these wierd folk who built their own sea kayaks out of tiny bits of wood. My favourite sea kayak emporium had a copy of Nick's book, which I had soon read cover to cover three times. Inevitably, Geyrfugl, a 4.3m, 5/6 scale Great Auk, soon appeared. And amazingly enough, I could just fit inside her myself, although she is horribly wobbly - I'm twice the weight of the biggest paddler she was intended for - but _very_ fast.

That summer saw a lot more sea paddling, including a trip round Ardnamurchan head, and a Plas Menai course paddle round most of Anglesey in constantly windy conditions - very educational.

Winter 2002/3 saw fifteen rivers paddled, and some degree of competance starting to be displayed. Getting contact lenses that didn't wash out, so I could paddle without opaque glasses certainly helped my river reading ability !

Of course, readers of the Kayak Building BBS will know you can't build just one boat, especially if that was for someone else, so a 95% scaled hybrid Cormorant followed for me. The spring saw me in this, taking on a couple of rather ambitious trips, circumnavigating Bute (capsized in wind-against tide, middle of the Firth of Clyde) and paddling west of Mull in very windy conditions (capsized surfing, rolled up, but went over again before getting a breath). There were also quite a few rather less fraught trips.

Winter 2003/4 started with an odd trip, solo paddling 20 miles of the Dordogne in September in my fibreglass sea kayak on the way home from a caving expedition in Spain. Back in the UK, 24 rivers saw me paddling up to grade 4 and pretty much no longer swimming on grade 3 water. During this time, I managed to hole my Acrobat on the Orchy, paddling it rather like a submarine on the Spean gorge next day, and moved on to an H2zone, twitchier to drive, but probably harder to capsize on drops.

Sea paddling in 2004 lacked the ambitious trips of the previous year, but we did get a double, and managed some worthwhile trips with the kids, including a three-day trip on Loch Shiel, an I've been landed with a trip to Greece in October, so I really *MUST* start to build another boat, and it had better be a Tom Yost folder !! d trips out to the Summer Isles.

Winter paddling was curtailed by a six-week trip to New Zealand, during which we paddled 90 miles of the Whanganui River in two Canadian canoes with the kids, and managed a day's sea paddling in doubles on Kenepuru Sound. I had a day out on the Buller River (very different from technical rocky British rivers - and warm !) and we had a very brief paddle in plastic boats on Doubtful Sound. So only a dozen or so rivers in the UK with a few short weeks until the end of the river season.

Summer 2005 saw us paddling in Lofoten, north of the Arctic Circle, which I had hoped would offer some challenging conditions (but not too challenging...). As it happened, it was flat calm with 24 hour sunshine for a week. Fabulous scenery, though. We did several days of easy rivers in France that summer with the kids, mostly in their own boats. The kids got a go at near-arctic sea paddling with a two-day trip in doubles in Iceland in 2006.

Michael (9) has his BCU one-star, Sarah (12) has her two-star and Mary (my wife) has her four-star and is going on to level 2 coach training so she can take scouts out on the water. Meanwhile, I'm section leader for SOC's Canoeing section, paddling a couple of dozen rivers each winter and as much sea kayaking as I can fit in, but still have none of this paper-qualification bull**** at all :-) And I still haven't got round to building my third boat, though I have a long list of designs I really need.

Andy

http://www.pennine.demon.co.uk/kayak/index.htm

Kayak Building Bulletin Board is maintained by Nick Schade - Guillemot Kayaks with WebBBS 5.12.