•≈ One on One
Friday, 9 November 2007

Well. Go home, pay bills, chase the collie around a wee bit, fight a rubber chicken & then think. What am I doing here, I need the sea. It takes hours rather days for a fix need to start attacking my senses. Sometimes, often, those fixes lean selflessly towards others. When teaching it's two-step. I get to get wet & pass on knowledge. What is knowledge but stale bread unless you share it amongst a community. It's almost payment in itself, a complete contract by default that enhances the days of those who satellite through my life. Next week I will set off in the sea taxi -that's the Calmac ferry to you lot- back up through winding Harris roads & onto the streaking Northern Lewissian tip to teach a long standing pal, the art of the hand roll. GASP! Wee arty farty •≈Helen≈• is a classic novice...full of expectation, questions excitement & trepidation.

We will use a thin black knife to roll her & I will use the harbour at Port. It's a perfect place, high walled from a raging ocean 30ft away, it provides gentle rolling swell as well as stillness & security. She has never made a complete unassisted roll...ever, so these issues are important to address. Towards the back of the harbour, freed of fishing vessels & towing tractors over winter, a peat burn cascades out of long grass into the clear seas, turning the whole arena into dark brown bathwater.

She says: Oooh, I love waterfalls.

I say: I'm sorry...but I'm seeing a cows ass here.

Either way the resultant waters will do wonders for her spacial awarness. When you invert, you can taste the transition from fresh to saline water. You can feel the temperature barrier. It's one of those things you never mind doing, standing chest deep, building confidence in someone who generally, hides from maruading waves. I'm confident I will be able to get her to balance brace quickly...hand roll as well. Bendy females aye. She did well on her first session at the Stornoway pool - Tim & Murdies local haunt. The lads allowed her to focus on play, which is excellent. Play & familiarization with a strange enviroment is an underrated teaching device. One on one clinics are special, in that they allow you to direct so much more focus & input toward the novice. You can gesture to them directly, & indeed, some of them gesture back. It allows them to focus their frustration directly at you when they can't grapple a sequence directly into submission. Maybe that's a downside but minimalst workshops allow you to address brilliant questions like:


What will happen to my nose when I roll?

With a greater presence & clarity. We'll move onto using a paddle maybe one day soon. In contrast, the things others find awesome, my ability to perform straight jacket rolls & solos out to far flung dangerous & pelagic rocks are almost day-to-day for me. I have my own celebrations in life which they find humorous, like buying a frying pan. I will happily stalk people in the village for 3 days until they fully understand that I have indeed, bought my own frying pan. We each have steps in life that make us feel as though we are progressing, & none of them are wrong. Well ok, maybe the stalking bit....So these rolling clinics with friends...what do I get out of it besides getting wet? Chicken dinners & floors by wood burners normally. Payment in full aye.

One silent arc, swept through one spineflow,
thread me, torn complete along a knife edge.
& I have displaced the priest within.
My body is born of stone mountains, my blood is run over with sea.
An avalanche of a million green boulders,
Tumbling in my ears, the suspension of state,
Rotating over existance surfacing into silence.
Now I am become death & Shiva, destroyer of worlds, my anthem immigrant,
a soul harbourered just offshore - & I can no longer speak, carrying a mouthful of stars.
Follow...or walk away.

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posted by •≈ Sgian Dubh at 18:50:00 | 0 Retorts
•≈ The Washing Machine
Sunday, 2 September 2007
One of the best, if not serious & wild Hebridean sea kayak playgrounds was totally on form for my new camera test today. The area we call The Washing Machine consists of several arch through journeys, often accompanied by giant Atlantic swell. These break down into drums or areas. The most notoriously heathen of these archway areas, are The Eye on the NW tip, & Drum II directly NNE & below the lighthouse, you being a precarious & thin needle threading paths, trying not to get bent. A great & ancient mythology also flows within this arena, back & forth through the sinew & dreams of lost Norse kings.
The photo freefalls 80ft into the rear exit from The Eye, showing the treacherous surf zone combined with thin right hand channel shelving. When these combine with furious currents & swell at the immediate exit, jettisoning the kayaker at a point almost directly under where the blurred foreground ledge can be seen, the game is already in full swing. If it goes wrong, an escape swim can be a horrendous prospect, & should you need to climb out, taking it that you having survived getting shelved, there is of course, an obligatory E8 & an E7 above in the arch. There are 30 words in the Inuit language to describe snow. There only a few recognizable descriptions of currents, that assist in describing this resident maelstrom & its behavioural problems. The main constant is the sub surface gniessian geology & it's effect on each tidal run...through immersion into its ever changing moods, you learn to feel its intention, & its intention is usually malice. Yet malice seems an absurd word to use, when the dreams & kingdoms we lean against our sanitary lifetimes, flicker out like airborne sparks in the fire of planetary evolution. Storm surges, rips & swells of this nature, rolling silently toward shore from distant pelagic cyclones will & do, kill in an instant, if you don't have it in hand...Don't go in over your depth. There is challenging your ability aye, but you have to make honest assessments of that ability. You have to assess how much it will be drained in the fight, how well you perform in prolonged surf rolling situations where orientation often goes out the window, how the reverse overfalls are running, the winds versus the shelves & whether you fully understand your chosen location, also sub sea level to some degree, inside out, & your escapes. Just be realistic - or you may not be around. Tell a responsible adult where you are going, wear clean underpants, use the green cross code....that sorta thing.

Canon Ixus 75 still test - Toul a' Roigh. Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle & Faeroes - West or Northwest, gale 8 to 9, occasionally storm 10, becoming psychotic.

The nerve to decline an invite of drumming the circuit is respected as much as the nerve to commit to that invite. Both the North & South machair camps have established vehicle access. More importantly, the North machair base is the most realistic if not only viable drag out escape in the event being overcome by storm surge, before Port at Drum IV. Barely marked on the map as a beach, I've seen this white sand inlet becalmed in an overhead force 9 many times. Being the only one as far as I'm aware to have banged all the drums & make a complete run in weather & seas of that severity, it is invaluable when on the verge of exhaustion. A lifeline offering some recovery of composure can quickly become a safety blanket of warmth, nurturing reluctancy & draining will. The strong temptation to land & call it a day, has never won...yet. Remember though, these drums & wild outcrops can be navigated & enjoyed with equal fulfilment when the equatorial belt of calm drifts North with an autumn sun. As old Domhnaill says - Is fheàrr teicheadh math na droch fhuireach. Uhuh Domhnaill, agus tha fàilte air a h-uile duine aig a bheil ùidh ann an seinn, air chùlaibh a churtair?...

So if I ever ask if you fancy visiting the launderette, you'll have a good idea of what is about to occur aye. Just beyond the thunder point, is the Dry Cleaners...seriously. And the new Canon Ixus 75 intermediate verdict? Excellent so far. It'll be interesting to see how it copes, filming in a waterproof housing when I take the black knife through here towards winter, when rage turns to fury, further upping the ante ...I hope i don't fold.

Geo reference

The golden rule to risky solos like this? - When there is doubt, there is no doubt.

Canon Ixus 75 macro test - even managed to bring out clear dust definition to a thumb print on the carbon blade of my Kinetic split. Good for a wee thing.



I'll try to get all these trips & personal maps into pdf format for download in the left blog column soon. It's an ongoing process that comes 2nd to being out there aye.

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posted by •≈ Sgian Dubh at 19:45:00 | 0 Retorts
•≈ Sgian Dubh II - the Black Pearl - agus, siud an t-eilean ŕs an t-sealladh
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Well the brand new replacement •≈Anas Acuta≈• is on the way. The only major decision with this boat, is wether to get it made up into three travel friendly bulkheads, or to leave it as a standard 17ft one piece. I've given myself a week to decide, or at least to justify the practicality of finding an extra £600 to gain the additional practicality of a split kayak. There's also a probable extra 2kg of weight to consider in the overal construction & reinforced bulkheads. Well 2kg is unnoticable in the water really, it won't effect the handling & it's not as if I'm going to walk around with the thing on my heid all day. Given that I'm shying further & further away from road travel & metal clad tarmac madness every passing year, preferring the wooded path - it makes sense, even if in monetary terms right now, it doesn't. If I ultimately live the rest of my days never driving, a 3 peice Acuta will become a highly versatile aquisition, easily accomodated on Greenlandic or Norwegian flights North, ferries going South & panel-vans just going wherever. A sea kayak is like a well loved shoe, a precision tool in a toolbox, that can see you through decades, & it should fit you perfectly, as much as it should cut with finesse. It should become moulded to your style, your physics, your approach. It should compliment your lifestyle, in & out of the water & as much as it aids you in conquering seas, it should inspire you travel across land, not once hindering or burdening that call toward vivid exploration. You don't buy size 11 shoes when you're size 9 - nor do you buy wellies for practising ballet, ergo, you cchoose your kayak to suit the size of your soul more often than your wallet, & eat cold beans with a smile, & say, tomorrow we will have a new tide, & it will be fine.
₪
I'd phoned Mike for another extensive blether to soundboard him on 3 peice composites since I have no experience of their stress patterns & reliability over time & constant distortion through rolling, edging, wave bridging etc:

So they're quiet robustly built then Mike eh?
Aye, like lego with clamps in a way, but don't worry about the kayak coming undone halfway to Kilda Si - it's not going to happen.
OK, so they don't just shove 3 bulkheads at you, a tube of wood glue, a G-clamp & say on yee go then?...
Hahaha, things have moved on a bit from those days bud - maybe not for NDK, but...
₪

Having had a good old blether with Freya, back home after her Iceland circumnavigation, she explained how her Rockpool male/female -lego system- coupling with outer-clips was absolutely bomb proof & how the NDK bolt together system was shoogly, allowing movement & section shift under load, leaks & awkward assembly, close to impossible alone. She has never tested Valley triple bulkheads, but felt NDK needed to radically change their system, telling me in her no-nonsense German lilt -which feels like an order rather than a concern- Don't do it! If Valley has use zis similar system to NDK, it's not good, things go wrong... This is what I needed, Freya's opinion - her collective experience based on nothing more than hurling abuse at both styles of triple bulkhead coupling in the ocean, where performance & reliability matter. So if Valley use the lego system, all is good. She then went on to say that when I fly to Greenland with the new 3 piece Acuta bagged up, don't tell them it's a kayak. It only confuses the customs control.
Just say it is a surf board & you get straight through easy. Don't say kayak OK?...
OK. Thanks fae that Frey, enjoy the NZ trip, I'll go away now.
Good, I am trying to cook dinner.

≈••≈

So, July & I'm looking forward to autumn on Skye this year. Not least becuase I can kick leaves through the woods everytime I return home from the shore or the mountains, but becuase autumn will call me into wooden shed clearance by the brisk lochside. It will call me to disturb tired spiders from deep beams & mice from unquiet sleep, sweep dust storms & motes & curls of shavings into the light of clattery weathered doors thrown wide open. This year, it will task me with mending that dirty cracked window with more than just tape & newspaper, so the snow does not whistle in & stick to my ear through winter - & I'll be careful not to disturb old Domhnaills pipe, layered in dust from the 40s, still tinged & tobacco scented. This autumn, as the Cuillin shadows creep further across the reeks, stiffened brush paint pots will shoogle to one side, & awakened movement will dilute these odours of oil blocks & creel tools & stains with sharp air, as work starts on the new skin on frame. The flask will steam on a log seated break, cut with salt air & the Black Pearl will slowly find form, based on Björns excellent design - This year autumn & I will create another black knife of natural elements, working side by side, into the snows & dark evenings.
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≈••≈

≈••≈

The Black Pearl is based on the East Greenland qajaqs from the late 20th century - narrower, lower, with more overhang & a straighter sheers, less deadrise & more flare than western types. The Greenlandic designs are overall faster, particularly against the wind, & better storm maneuvered than anything else on the water. With less initial stability they are demanding craft at first. In Eastern Greenland seal were hunted from the qajaq until a couple of decades ago & those traditions in todays design of qajaq that made them a design of ancestory, remain unbroken.
Björns take on this tradition with the Black Pearl, has resulted in a qajaq that is neither stable nor unstable, not directionally stable nor maneuverable, not fast nor slow - but a qajaq subtly following the padders intentions. Like a good collie, it doesn't presume to read ahead of your wishes, with it's own plan. There is no qajaq feel between the paddler & the sea, no built in safety margin that saves the erring paddler & little mass to compromise fast maneuvering - it's a very reliable responsive qajaq.

The Black Pearl is loooong, & following Greenlandic tradition, 3 times the height of the paddler. The waterline length is relatively short with sloping stems resulting in good maneuverablilty at low speed & good directional stability at higher speeds. The narrow waterline also means it's an excellent tippy qajaq, always a good sign to my mind, the total beam being hip width plus 4 fingers for a rolling qajaq or 8 fingers for at touring qajaq: approx 46-52 cm. Björns own Black Pearl is 555 cm x 48 cm & 22 cm highon the initial fore-deck. Björn is 185 cm tall, 80 kg & size 43 feet. Isn't that a Hobbit spec? Initial stability is therefore low & a novice or someone used to wide commercial kayaks will have a good few nervous & intimidating first trips, but stay with it & with an excellent secondary, it's easy to get used to the responsive movement. In wild surf or large swell a paddler who invests his confidence in the Pearl, will get a pleasant surprise, high seas often having less of an effect on initially tippy kayaks, than initially stable ones aye. When cross surfing, the Black Pearl settles in its own wave system quickly & becomes confidently stable & easy to handle. The almost flat bottom -5° deadrise-, the hard chines & the short waterline length means that the qajaq is a dream to turn, on a penny in fact, & reacts instantly to severe edging & weight shift. The low deck will take some getting used to for the un-intitiated, but after a while there are some excellent benefits. Most immediately obvious is the comfort of not needing to cram padding against the knees, hips & back etc. Working with the knees as a additional power source for strokes or fluid rolling momentum gives further enlightenment & testament to his blueprint.

The aft deck is very low & flat helping to fascilitate a wide range of layback rolls without interference. You will need to be a reasonably highly experienced paddler & interested in developing skills in rolling, qajaq acrobatics, day touring etc to get 100% out of this qajaq.

That said, a novice with ambition, patience & perseverence might be able to use the Black Pearl confidently enough under guidance, as an introductory crash course to advanced paddling. I will use the newly completed s.o.f qajaq as an integral tool for teaching traditional styles in 2008 & beyond. It's a form everyone should experience. Some convert & never look back. Soooo, when it rolls out of the shed in spring, we'll take a dawn stroll down through the test loch, sliding up on Ben Tianavaigs shadows, edging righthand into the rip & tracing down through the Narrows for a sharp u-turn inside a shroud of frozen early haar. At that point, it may well be the only skin on frame kayak with Greenland heritage in service on Skye. Maybe even the Hebrides. Hell I might just nip out Kyle way for breakfast & pirate some of those tourists with the gulls as back-up... Will that make me Cap'n Jack Sparrow? Yo ho ho...

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posted by •≈ Sgian Dubh at 11:31:00 | 0 Retorts