Freya Underground: September 2007

New Zealand - yes, I am going.

Where?

Around New Zealand's South Island

When?

October 2007 -???

With whom?

Solo.

Kayak: NDK Explorer

Paddles: Epic wing blades

Paddling clothes: Kokatat & Reed

Spray Deck: Snapdragon

Bits and pieces: North Water

Neoprene-Boots: Chota

Helmet: Sweet

Map case: Axel Schoevers

Spare paddle bag: Nigel Foster

Weather support: Karel Vissel

Blog updates: Greg Stamer

Thanks for the help of the "Veterans of the South Island":

Paul Caffyn, Chris Duff and Bevan Walker with Nora Flight

Contacts in NZ and ideas:

Sandy Ferguson, John Kirk Anderson, Pete Notman

Mental support: My family

Kanumesse Nürnberg 2007

It was a great place to meet and to talk to plenty of kayaking buisiness people from all over the world!

It was a real international event, I had interesting talks to people from Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Czech, South Africa, USA and for sure from Germany, too. Who knows where I'll be going next year...

Who ever in the kayaking industry missed this event - it is growing every year! 2008 will be even topped again with number of exhibitors and probably visitors, too. It is one of the best kayaking market places in Europe.

Chris Reed, www.chillcheater.com, and his "model", in Reed buisiness-outfit :-)

Thanks, Reed!

Oscar Chalupski, epic kayaks co-owner, gives me a big hug and good luck for for my future adventures, for sure paddling again with a brand new epic wing blade.

Thanks, epic!

110 kg submarine rolling

Last weekend in Finland...

...my tiny littel kayak, not used to be a submarine...

...took 110 kg! You could tell it rolled on it's own...

...but Henrik, you did a great job! Flexible and elegant, I wish I had a video...

...anyway: head down! :-))

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Later *I*was paddling my little submarine...

...capsize came so sudden...

...that I need to excuse for the lack of style...

...way much too much hard work...

...but we had fun!

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A bit more stylish roll

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Harri Haapala, with a strong will and body...

...on the best way to learn the forward finishing roll!

Did you see any disabled guy? I just see a guy who is able to learn the roll!

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Le grandseigneur and host in Finland, Clas Hagelstam,

79 years - and effortless rolling!

Qaanaaq, Aquila, GP, Euroblade, loaded, unloaded... !

I enjoyed my time in Finland!

Travelling through the Bushes with style...

All sea kayakers know and value the IKEA-bag as a high-volume carrying device for all dry bags, bits and pieces on a trip, but a s a low volume folding-down bag to store on top of the hatch in the loaded boat (no, I didn't bother with getting sponsored by those guys... :-))) )

I used the blue bag for years - every now and then affording to BUY a new one for an Euro (some guys who do carry *yellow* Ikea bags around haven't *bought* them!!! :-)) )

Unfortunately they proved not to be stable enough carrying loads and tons of gear on our Iceland trip up and down long beaches, day by day...the sewing of the handles broke several times, and the fabric didn't really look better after each day. Well we fixed the handles, but...

After our Iceland trip an old kayaking friend, Matthias Panknin, gave me those *red* bags on a stop-by visit from a different German company - Möbel Kraft - but although I prefer *red* much more to the common *blue* (who cares??) the problem seems to be the same on the long run...

So I decided to start sewing my own bags - *black* for sure - with solidly sewn on handles which will last for years in salt, sun and sand.

I used Texamid 5.5 outdoor fabric, available at Globetrotter Germany, and normal belt fabric for the handles. I sewed everything with a normal household sewing machine first, but then gave it to an upholstery to re-sew the seems with a solid, durable thread. Any "normal" thread wouldn't last long on our kind of trips.

And, oh well, to made this piece of gear "unique" I embroided my name in silver :-))) (with my household machine!)

Actually, I use to carry three of those bags on a trip. They take all my dry bags and stuff I carry in my boat.

You want one, too? Get the pattern from a blue bag and get going on your own! :-))

The Mutation of the white Rockpool Underground Prototype

From a plain white fibreglass shell to a lovely shiny kayak!

Paintig session with two-components paint in my living room...

The finished shiny, black new family member, nicely labelled with a fat "PROTOTYPE" sticker besides all company names...

There is only one problem with my lovely new Rockpool Underground prototype kayak -

due to the split of the owners of the original Rockpool Kayaks company neither Aled Williams, now Tide Race , nor Mike Webb, still Rockpool Kayaks, are right now into following the project...

My new kayak or a similar one are not going to be produced in the near future...at least they donatetd me their muatual baby!

But they can trust it is in best hands, it is a great member of my rolling kayak family...

(My folding rolling kayak is missing in this line-up...)

Rainbow Helicopter

... Anglesey Sea Kayak symposium 2007...a helicopter was in the air to demonstrate sea rescue...a rainbow colored helicopter was playing on the water, too...

pictures by Nico Middelkoop

Teaching at Sipoon Kanoottiklubi Finland

Clas Hagelstam from Sipoon Kanoottiklub/ Finland/ near Helsinki invited me to teach a weekend at their club.

They provided a nicely heated little pool at a service house, which just took two kayaks afloat. A perfect teaching site!

My room was just in the same building, actually the office of the club. Clas did a lovely job to host me, filling the fridge, putting up fresh flowers and fruit on the table, preparing meals, donating me a *black* (and white striped...) bathrobe, and taking me around Helsinki for sightseeing on Sunday morning. Thanks, Clas! All old school gentlemen's style... :-)

About 15-18 students each day, three days in a row, and my skin looked almost like the baby's who are normally using the pool, too :-)) - but I still had energy for an outside rolling demo in front of their clubhouse Saturday night before the crayfish-dinner-party.

Friday night after a good salmon dinner I held my 2nd "Lost in Iceland" slideshow, which I started to enjoy more and more to do...I guessed talking a slideshow is not my job - but it is actually fun! People asked a lot of questions, thanks for listening!

Amongst my studets was Harry Haapala, a strong disabled guy, who was very keen on learning how to roll. He was paralyzed from the hip, and we figured it was best for him to learn the forward finishing roll, which he almost got! One more session, and he'll be doing it! Good job!

People on the Sipoon Kanoottiklubi encourage disabled people to go kayaking, and take good care about them, encouraging them to be fairly independent.

They built an easy wheelchair-accessible ramp and boat slide, but the main innovation was a (probably the world's first) remote controlled kayak trolley!

The boat slide, ramp and rack, where the disabled person can swing himself from the wheelchair into the self-launched kayak.

Tom enjyed to demonstrate the remote controlled kayak cart.

Not far away from a kiddy's remote controlled car, but this one has a very useful background!

The loaded kayak can drive down to the slide then to launch!

Henrik smiles at the crayfish party

Thanks for inviting me to teach and lecture!

Stockentreffen Sweden 2007

The Stockentreffen this year proved to be again the "TO BE" event in Sweden!
Plenty of participants came to Stocken to share experience and "kayak talk".

I had the pleasure to pick up Wendy Killoran and René Seindal from Kopenhagen, who are going to paddle around Sicily and Sardinia this winter. Good luck to both!

The event started with a rolling demo, after I was already busy teaching 7 students Friday afternoon! 15 more students Saturday and Sunday followed...busy times.

Sigurd Henrichsen smiles on his one-on-one rolling class

I invited Dubside , my "Black Brother", to join the rolling demo

People following the rolling demo from the rocks

I held my first slide show about my circumnavigation of Iceland with Greg Stamer in June/July 2007

My sweatshirt was matching my slide show's title...the whole slide show will be up on my website next week!

Nigel Foster, Kristin Nelson, Freya, Dubside and the young Norwegian guy who enjoyed standing up paddling in his kayak as easy as you walk across the road :-)

Thanks to Sigurd Henrichsen, René Seindal and Ulf Johannson for the pictures!

Stairways to heaven:

Rockpool Underground prototype, Waterfield Kayaks Qaanaaq 512, my SOFreya, Waterfield Kayaks Qaanaaq SS

Unloading my roof rack back home, my fleet grew about one more rolling kayak:

A lovely Qaanaaq 512, which Thomas Ahlberg from Orust Kayaks, the European importer from Waterfield Kayaks, Japan, gave me as a demo boat. Thanks, Thomas!

So whoever is interested in trying the Qaanaaq 512 as a lovely day trip kayak, rolling kayak, kiddy kayak, or lightweight people's kayak, is welcome to get in contact with me! I'll bring it with me anyway to any event I'll be *driving* to in 2008.

The Qaanaaq 512 is the less-extreme version of my Qaanaaq SS, which is the best rolling and teaching tool and was tried out by plenty of people joining my rolling classes, but which is not tooooo suiatable for the average person to *paddle*. The slightly bigger "512" version is much better for general purpose! Give it a try!

It is available at Orust Kayaks at 21.500 SEK (2305,38 €)

Double Fun at the Isle of Man

This year's Isle of Man adventure week, organized by Keirron Tastagh, proved to be an adventure with the weather - it blew nicely all weekend, and even Monday after the main weekend, which was scheduled to be the day of the first attempt of breaking my circumnavigation record was blown into the seas...only Peter Oakley foud it well worth to start, but stopped at the North tip with force 5 headwinds, and being 2 hrs behind schedule already. So my record in the Explorer is still up to be broken...

Instead of racing around the Island Nico Middelkoop and I decided to share a NDK Triton (thanks for Keirron to borrow it to us!) and to jump into the tidal race of the Calf of man - watched by plenty of people enjoying the beautiful (windy) day out there.

We started at Peel with Nico in the back seat, had a lovely 3-hrs paddle with following winds down to the Calf. After 1/2 hrs of playing in the growing surf, we swapped seats, and kept on working and playing hard! The Triton proved to be more stable in the rough surf waves than I expected, but tended to dive the bow down easy, when it had full speed driven by two strong paddlers :-)

Waves started to develop...

I must say I do enjoy much more being in the front than in the back seat, having *no* person's back to watch all the time and *not* to coordinate that much with the strokes, as the back seater should pay more attention to that...

It's wet in the front!

I felt I had more freedom *pulling* someone behind me rather than pushing someone around :-)) - well, generally the back seat is considered the seat with the most "control", but I felt it different. Anyway, with both constellations we had fun playing!

Speeding up!

A single kayak would be still my first choice, but when I would be thinking about getting one to take less experienced people around areas and conditions they would not go in on their own - starting maybe with my 1-year old son again - this should be the NDK Triton!