What's this Life Thing Anyway?

Where to start...

I'm sure they had such high hopes for us at the time of the school graduation! Some of those faces aren't looking so fresh any more...

 

I finished secondary school in 2011 in probably the same confused state of mind about what to do next as most other people. I had a natural ability in applied maths and physics, a passion for the outdoors, and was torn between studying some form of engineering or the likes of the 'outdoor' courses in GMIT or IT Tralee. Fast forward four years; I'm graduating from UL with an engineering degree, proficiency in a whole pile of new outdoor sports, and not a whole lot has changed. The question of  'is office work really for me' rose it's head again, but when you're in final year of university and flat out with assignments and project work you don't really have time for inconvenient issues like that. So I fired off a couple of job applications for jobs in places with rivers nearby, and before the snow had melted from the ground that winter I had signed a year long contract with Liebherr Container Cranes in Killarney, County Kerry.

 

"Work"? Hardly! Fresh out of secondary school and getting paid to drive a bus around, chat to people and get a tan... Little me had things figured out back in the day!

After repeatedly changing the start date of that contract to make space for the freestyle and surf kayak world championships, I finally started work in September and started a year of kayaking, surfing and climbing as much as possible while sitting in an office for eight hours every day. Despite having what may seem like the ideal work - life balance and getting out on the water virtually every evening and weekend, all was not quite perfect. After a summer of adapting to training and competing full-time, sitting for eight hours every day felt very unnatural; looking around at the same four walls became monotonous very quickly and as soon as the clocks went forward for the winter sitting in an office seemed like a very poor way to spend the limited number of daylight hours. Additionally, driving for an hour or so each evening to go and play in the sea didn't sit very well with the concience for environmental reasons. Having said all that, the work I was doing was interesting and the colleagues were relaxed and easy to get along with. I was learning loads about engineering and grown-up life; and having hours every evening free from assignments and project work was a novelty that I wasn't used to after years spent studying!

 

It was a great year of getting out on the water on whatever craft suited the conditions! 

So, turning down the offer of a permanant contract certainly wasn't the easiest decision I have ever made but now I'm looking forward to seeing what's going to happen next! The main goal for the future is to use the time I have until the savings run out to come up with some kind of long term plan, or else get so used to winging things that I realise I don't need a long term plan! Short term, I'm going back to last summer's schedule since I enjoyed that one so much. Training, competing and travelling is the plan for the next couple of months; starting with the surf kayak home internationals at the start of October, and then moving on to a surfing road trip to Portugal with a couple UL heads. I'll do my best to keep this blog updated along the way, it's going to be epic! A couple of short term jobs in between trips would be handy to keep the bank balance ticking over, and all the better if it's something outside. If anyone needs a body over the next couple of months and the work involves kayaking/ sailing/ surfing/ climbing/ freediving/ biking/ snowboarding/ skiing/ boat driving, or pretty much anything like that get in touch for a chat, the email is eoinkeyes at yahoo.com. Portfolios/ logbooks/ references/ whatever can be supplied if needed!

The culmination of two years of training and summers spent living in tents in order to spend as much time as possible on the water. And loving every minute of it!

Whatever happens over the next few months or years, it's going to be an exciting time! Free for the first time from the tyranny of classes, exams, timetables and work schedules; it's scary stuff! Worst case scenario I'll be running back to Liebherr a few months down the line looking for my old desk back but if so at least I'll know I tried. I'm sure there will be ups and downs, but that has to be more fun than cruising along at a happy medium. As a wise man once said; "I took the road less travelled, and that has made all the difference". If that quote is relevant or not will become clear as time moves on, but using it makes all the time spent in English classes feel slightly more productive!

Easy DIY Latex Wrist and Neck Seal Repair

Because what kayaking blog would be complete without a wrist/neck seal repair guide...

It's that time of year when it's time to start looking forward to the cooler, wetter months ahead, and realise that the trickle/ flood of water down the back of your neck every time you roll which has been increasing in volume all summer is going to get a whole lot harder to ignore over the next couple of weeks! So grab a beer, sit back and I'll take you step by step through what I did this evening. This is the cheapest, quickest and easiest way of replacing seals that I've come across, if you have any suggestions for making it easier let me know!

What you need:

A knackered cag/drysuit. Hopefully the source of all that water is torn/ gummy/ worn out seals and not the stitching or the material itself. A solid cag from the likes of PeakUK or Kokatat which is looked after reasonably well can be expected to outlast several sets of seals before wearing out and turning porous. Cheaper, less durable kit maybe not so much. The cag in these pictures is from the upper end of the Kokatat range and is on it's third neck seal and second set of wrist seals. It's been used regularly in salt water, only washed occasionally, never re-waterproofed and is over three years old. So pretty much not looked after at all, and I've done a whole lot of paddling in those three years. It's worth buying decent kit if you're going to be paddling a lot! (I use PeakUK and Kokatat as examples because they're the only manufacturers I have experience of, and I have been very impressed with the durability of the kit from both. I'm sure there are other brands on the market which are just as good, ask around to find out what has been working well for other people.) 

A spare set of seals. SeaSkin have them for super cheap compared to some alternative sources. I have bought plenty from them, they're decent quality. Otherwise, most paddling shops will have them.

Glue. I use Evostick contact adhesive. The advantage of this is that there's no fiddling with a slippery, gluey cag, seals, cardboard, clothespegs, footballs, bottles or traffic cones, trying to get everything clamped together with the seals lined up right. And then praying that nothing moves while you're asleep. The disadvantage is that you had better be damn sure you can get it lined up right first time cos the seal ain't coming off again once it's stuck! (...sort of. It'll kind of peel off if you really need it to but it's difficult and best avoided!) Close enough = good enough here, if it's not lined up perfectly or there's a minor wrinkle somewhere don't worry about it. If you're worried a wrinkle is big enough to leak water you can always seal it with Aquasure afterwards. The alternative to impact glue is a urethane adhesive such as Aquaseal/ Aquasure. Bernard Walsh put together an excellent video showing this method which you can find here. I like the instant results of the impact glue and the simplicity of not having to find something to use as a jig but if you have more patience than I do then the Walshy Way works very well.

Sandpaper. There's not a lot to say here, use whatever you have to hand. I used wet and dry, all you're doing is roughening the surface of the rubber a little.

On to the How-To:

Start by cutting the old seal off the cag. I cut the rubber a few millimeters away from the end of the cag material itself using a sissors.

Sand the surface of the remaining rubber until the shiny surface of the material has been taken off, and then repeat for the areas on the seals which are going to be glued. I find it easiest to do the whole job with the cag turned inside out.

 

Squeeze glue onto the surfaces to be glued, and then spread it out with your finger. If you're doing this regularly and don't want to get cancer you should probably wear a glove or use a scraper, but there's something really satisfying about peeling impact glue off your fingers afterwards! Leave the glue to sit until it's dry to the touch, making sure that the cag and seal don't fold up and make contact with themselves. If two glued surfaces even touch each other it's a bit of a nightmare, the stuff isn't called contact adhesive for no reason! 

 

Now for the trickiest bit. Stick the seal inside the sleeve of the cag, without touching either itself or the inside of the cag, line them up and stick them together. I find that by holding the seal as shown it's pretty easy, you can touch the two parts together in one place and work your way around the joint, making sure that there are no wrinkles in either of the bits as you go. Do a couple of dry-runs before you add the glue if you're not sure how it'll work. Give the seal and the cag a good push together all the way around the joint and that's it, you're done! If you have any wrinkles just force the two sides of the joint together, hold them flat for a second and the glue and the elasticity of the rubber should look after the rest.

Ta-Daa... Time to go kayaking! Total time taken; about 30 minutes. A neck seal takes a little bit longer but the process is the same. The seals will probably need to be trimmed afterwards to fit your wrists. Use a sharp sissors or stanley blade, and try not to leave any little nicks which will create a weak point in the seal. Cut off a little at a time until you're happy with the fit, and remember that the rubber will stretch a little after you take it on the water a few times. Happy paddling!

An Unexpected Day Out!

When the weather forecast predicts substantial amounts of rain over the summer, it's hard to react to it with any amount of enthusiasm. All too often the forecasted downpour doesn't show up, or else it falls on dry ground and is instantly soaked up by the soil and plants which have been crying out for moisture for weeks. So when the long range forecast started showing some pretty colours at the start of last week it was hard to say anything more committing than "we'll see"... Nonetheless, the diarys were kept empty, the fingers crossed, and deities of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds promised personal favours in return for one of those days that you dream of every time you're standing on the bank of a river with hypothermia in the depths of winter! Going to bed on Friday night, with a distinct lack of any hint of rain hitting the roof, I don't think anyone was too optimistic that there would be water around the next day.

I woke up the next morning in the spare room of a student house in Limerick after a couple of cans the night before, to the sound of lashing rain and one of the lads roaring that the Glens was up! Quickly the phone calls went out towards Cork and Galway, a plan was hatched, and we spent the next couple of hours running around, brushing cobwebs off the creekboats and constantly hitting refresh on the Clare Glens Riverspy page, watching it rise and rise with the same feeling that you get when watching the big wheel go round on winning streak, wondering is it ever going to stop! I think the thoughts that everyone was having that morning went something like: woohoo; summer Glens runs -- wow; medium level summer Glens runs -- what the hell; high level summer Glens runs -- Oh. This is going to be interesting...  

We arrived at the Glens to find levels higher than I've seen in a long long time, and a hungover, rusty and slightly apprehensive crew of paddlers dawdling in the carpark, not in any rush to get on the water and find out what effect the months of no creek boating had done to the paddling skills! We eventually got our act together, hopped on the river and had one of those days... Warm water, warm weather, sunshine, and epic water levels! And everyone's paddling was pretty much in one piece, with only minor moments of entertainment on the way down. Generally the lines were clean, and everyone agreed on the water that this was one of the days that you spend the rest of your time dreaming of. We caught the river at it's peak; between runs one and three it dropped between a foot and a half and two feet and was still at the high side of medium when we were getting off! Dave Glasswell put together a nice little video of runs two and three, check it out!

 

In other news, the blogging hiatus is very nearly over. I have neglected the blog for the last year since I decided constant updates about surfing, sailing and spearfishing would get way too repetitive to be worth sharing with the world but all is about to change. Notice has been handed in with the office job and plans for the winter are in the works. Watch this space!

Flesk Race Results

Because I don't like facebook for things like this, here are the results of the Flesk race. The weather has been way too good for writing blog posts, hence the awful long break since the last one, but I'm sure I'll get around to writing up some bits and pieces about the last few weeks eventually!

Name		Start	Finish	Elapsed
Barry Loughnane		00:00:00	00:00:00	0:09:56
Colin Wong		00:55:00	01:05:15	0:10:15
Kev Cahill		00:13:00	00:23:39	0:10:39
Dave Higgins		00:00:00	00:00:00	0:10:40
Eoin Keyes		00:22:00	00:32:41	0:10:41
Eoin Farrell		00:51:00	01:01:45	0:10:45
Mark Scanlon		00:12:00	00:22:47	0:10:47
David Doyle		00:50:00	01:00:48	0:10:48
Lucien Scrieber		00:53:00	01:03:54	0:10:54
Cathal Kelly		00:54:00	01:05:03	0:11:03
Mac Skelly		00:15:00	00:26:06	0:11:06
Jack Duffy		00:49:00	01:00:14	0:11:14
Aran Kilroy		00:48:00	0:59:20	0:11:20
Dave Pierce		00:17:00	00:28:22	0:11:22
Sean Cahill		00:52:00	01:03:28	0:11:28
Luke Whelan		00:57:00	01:08:30	0:11:30
Conor Bredin		00:58:00	01:09:42	0:11:42
Brian Cahill		00:14:00	00:25:45	0:11:45
Artur Staszek		00:20:00	00:31:53	0:11:53
Nathaniel Laplaud		00:18:00	00:29:56	0:11:56
Simon Cadek		00:59:00	01:11:00	0:12:00
Cian Twohig		00:56:00	01:08:07	0:12:07
Aoife Hanrahan		00:23:00	00:35:22	0:12:22
Dave Glasswell		01:00:00	01:13:07	0:13:07
Des Ronan		00:16:00	00:45:00	0:29:00
Gildas Laplaud		00:19:00	00:48:00	0:29:00
Mick Murphy		00:21:00	00:50	0:29:00

How Far Do You Have to Travel to Explore?

So I'm starting to run out of superlatives to describe the weekends I've been having recently! For years now I've been wanting to do some exploring and discover some of the runs that aren't paddled very often for myself. Now that I've got my own transport and no college work to do at weekends, this goal has started to come together. After two weekends of stepping things up I'm sitting here with a damaged ankle and there's a disfigured boat sitting out in the garden but oh well, I've got a week or two now to catch up on the blog, send some emails, and plan what rivers I want to paddle next! 

The most important piece of paddling kit; having the right crew around you! Around for the Cascades were Aoife Hanragan, Barry Loughnane, Cliodhna O'Donoghue, Lucien Scrieber, Mark Scanlon and Eoin Farrell. Huge thanks to Tom O'Donoghue for showing us around!

The first weekend of exploring kicked off on the Friday evening with a last-minute call by Dave Glasswell to run a race on the Owengar the next morning. For a last-minute event in a pretty remote corner of the country a great crew of paddlers showed up so fair play to everyone who made the journey down! We got there to find water levels low but runnable; just! That's the risk of running events in Ireland, you never know if the rain is going to show up or not and making the call to run an event is always a gamble. In the end we had a great day despite the water levels. We started off with a group run of the river so that everyone could get to know the lines, and then we did the race runs. The race was infuriating, but went well. The low levels meant there were unavoidable rocks everywhere, which meant lots of exhausting accellerating from standstill on the way down the river. In the end I avoided the rocks better than most people but still came home in second place, one second behind David Doyle. I guess more work will have to be put in before the next race! 

Nailing the boof on the second drop felt great! Photo by Barry Loughnane.

 After the race everyone paddled to the bottom of the river, I snagged a spin in Barry Loughnane's Zen (It goes well, it's not quite in it's element when there's no water in the river but it's super quick and grips nicely on eddylines!), and then word went around that the Flesk was running. So we went into full kayaker convoy mode and headed that direction, only getting slightly more lost than on the way towards the Owengar! We squeezed in two laps on the Flesk before it got dark, with a huge group of solid boaters. The levels weren't all-time, but it was a great crew to have on the water and a lot of fun was had!

The lead-in rapid before the big drop we did. This one is a lot of fun! Photo by Barry Loughnane.

After a pretty spectacular party on Saturday night we regrouped the next morning to have a meeting and come up with a plan for the day. A huge amount of rain had fallen overnight so the debate was to make the most of a guaranteed epic day on the Flesk, or go the opposite direction, go exploring and risk not paddling at all. In the end we had a democratic agreement to head for the O'Sullivans Cascades, we had all paddled the Flesk many times before and it was time to go looking for somewhere new! Although none of us had paddled the Cascades before, Tom O'Donoghue had been out for a look which was a great help when it came to finding the falls, which involves paddling across a lake and a hike up a hill through a forest. I could keep going but I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking! There's a beautiful set of waterfalls up there, and we didn't even run the best of them! A trip back is definitely on the cards, when there's more water around and I've logged a bit more time building up skills on waterfalls! 

 

The cleanest of the big drops on the O'Sullivans Cascades. There's also an awesome triple-step drop that I really want to paddle sometime! Photo by Barry Loughnane.

By the Wednesday following that epic weekend, I had fully caught up on sleep and was starting to get tired of looking at the four walls of my office. By Thursday I had booked Friday off work and was wetting myself looking at the forecast that was coming together for the upcoming weekend! I made it to Limerick on Thursday in time to head to the UL pool session and after that was given no choice about heading to Costellos for the night! On Friday, the rain showed up, word went around and we headed to the Clare Glens for a couple of laps. It was my first time out on the river in a long time and a couple of the lads from Galway came down for the day. The standard of paddling on the water was the best I've seen in a long time, and it was great to watch everyone styling, boofing and freewheeling all around them! The highlight of the day was definitely seeing Mark Scanlon freewheeling Big Eas. I'm pretty sure no-one has tried that move before, and with good reason, the ledges on the way down are pretty scary! I've never done it before, and I'm not sure I will be trying it, but Scanlon nailed it no problem! After the Glens we headed up to Galway to drink some beer, make a plan for the next day once that was sorted we headed to the Roisin Dubh for the night. Which is pretty much the Costellos of Galway, it's brilliant! 

I'm still having trouble with embedding non-Youtube videos here, check this out instead! Big Eas Freewheel!

Despite the late night on Friday night, the potential for paddling some new rivers got us all out of bed bright and early the next morning and we headed towards county Mayo not sure exactly where we would end up boating. We started by checking out a potential first descent of a ditch out west but when we got there we decided there wasn't quite enough water to go for it. So we kept going towards the Seannafearruchain, which I wasn't disappointed about at all! Although it's not run very often, I have been hearing about this run for years, generally referred to as Little Norway, and it's been right at the top of the list of rivers I want to run since I ticked the Owengar off that list last year. On the hike up to the top of the river, which takes about an hour, it became obvious that this river wasn't going to disappoint! It's super steep, super continuous, super tight, and best of all there was a bit of water on it! It's the kind of river that would get cleaner with more water, but then it would get harder to get out of the water between rapids and eventually become unrunnable, long before the moves themselves become unmakable. As it was, the lack of eddies meant that we had to post people at the bottom of each rapid to catch people as they paddled past and help them out of the water! 

 

Barry Loughnane put together this video from the weekend, it really shows just how tight the Seannafarruchain is!

All was going well until we came across a drop-to-slide arrangement maybe a third of the way down the river. Although most of the group had the intellegence to walk around it, myself and Mark Scanlon took a look and decided to go for it. After looking at it individually, we both came up with totally different approaches to the drop. I decided it would be best to land on the slide nose-first, to eliminate the possibility of damaging my back by landing flat on the slab, while Mark decided the best idea was to land flat but leaning forward. In the end I was caught out by a horizontal ledge in the rock I was landing on, which brought my boat to a dead stop when I hit it. Check out the video below, it's pretty funny! Mark's line only went slightly better, when he landed his face hit the cockpit of his boat, bursting his lip and damaging his nose. The blood looked pretty impressive at the time, and his lip was pretty swollen afterwards, but not enough to stop him getting the shift that night so it's all good! The force of the impact when I landed bent the nose of my boat, smashed my footblock and sprained my ankle. Not a lot of fun, since it meant I had to walk down this hillside that had taken so much work to climb up in the first place, while watching the lads running epic rapids all the way down! I got lucky in fairness, to be able to walk out at all. It was the kind of crash that could have had much worst results! A week or two off to let the ankle recover and I'll be back to do the rest of that river, it looks like awesome craic! Since I had killed any chance of boating the next day, that evening we joined a gang of NUIG OFBs heading up to Leitrim to party with the rest of the club. Those guys certainly know how to party and they've got a great gang of people around at the moment, the night was great craic and I'm looking forward to getting out again over New Years!

Another link, I still cringe every time I see it! Ouch!

So that's about it at the moment! Plans for the next few weeks are contingent on how that ankle heals up, so I havn't made any yet. The next big-big event that's coming up is paddler's New Years, and I hope to be well back in action by then. Hopefully it won't take anywhere near that long, I reckon another week or so off and it should be all good. Fingers crossed! Once that sorts itself out the plan is to try to keep travelling to new rivers around the country, it's not so common for the time and the transport and the right people to all be available so I'm hoping to make the most of it! 

 

Last but not least! There really are some gorgeous drops in that forest! Photo by Barry Loughnane.