Andrew Regan: 'Challenging EDICT'

Andrew Regan just put together a great piece on instructing techniques for kayaking skills. It would be great to open up some discussion on the topic. Check out his document here: Challenging Edict and add your own opinion!

The Put In Ezine; Issue 2 & Surf Kayak "Training"

The moon over Lough Leane at the weeknd. Unbelievably bright, with a brillant reflection off the mirror-still water! Photo by Gavin Sheehan.

One of my favourite things about kayaking is that you can head away for a weekend of living out of your (mother's!) car for the weekend like a bum/hippy and call it training! With the long weekend coinciding with a good surf forecast and various people planning to be in Kerry, that's what I did, aiming to maximise the ratio of time spent on the water versus time spent driving to water! Additionally, a while ago I decided that the Watertech Ona that I've been paddling since 2009 and broken and repaired more times than I can count wasn't really going to do the job for the worlds. A new boat was totally out of my price range so I scanned the second hand sites and found a Mega Phantom being sold at a great price. That arrived during the week so that was even more incentive to spend as much time as possible on the water over the weekend!

So on Friday I loaded all the camping and kayaking gear into the back of my Mam's Polo (Thanks for the lend of the car Mam!) and headed for Kerry. There was a stiff northerly breeze blowing so I decided to head for Inch, hoping that the land might shelter the wave a bit and sure enough, I found about 4ft of nicely shaped beach break; perfect for getting to know the new boat! After the session I headed for the middle of nowhere, cooked up a close approximation to Paella on a camping stove and set up camp for the night. The next morning the wind had dropped and the sun was threatening to break through the mist at any moment. Heading back to Inch, the waves had grown to about 4-6ft with virtually no wind, and unfortunatly half the country seemed to have decided to join me there. Typical for Irish beaches though, only about two people were actually catching waves and the rest were just sitting on their boards and enjoying the view! This meant that there were still more than enough waves to go around between everyone who was actually surfing them and I had a great session, flying down the line on some super-steep, fast walls with barely a cut-back done all day! 

 

Some sexy looking paddlers on their way around Lough Leane! Photo by Gavin Sheehan.

After getting out for a quick bite to eat, most of the boardies must have decided they had taken enough sets on the head and had given up for the day, leaving me with an awesome ~6ft peak all to myself for the afternoon! I pretty much surfed that until I couldn't paddle any more, working on figuring out the new boat and learning what it takes to get it into the air. Actually landing airs is still a bit of an enigma but I definatly got some of the biggest exit Pan-Ams I've ever done! Once my arms couldn't handle another paddle out though the shore break I headed for the beach and cooked up some Omlettes for lunch. Got to love having a kitchen in the back of your car! While I was busy surfing ULKC were off on an expedition of their own on the Killarney Lakes. So once I had washed up and put the kitchen away, I headed off and joined them for a night on Cow Island on Lough Leane; sleeping in a hammock strung between two trees, watching the brightest moon I've ever seen chase it's way in and out of the clouds. That was a pretty awesome way to spend the night, and it was probably the first time I've packed all the gear I need for a night into a creeker and paddled somewhere. I imagine that paddling a loaded creeker on any kind of whitewater is a pretty interesting experience, even on flatwater the handling of the boat was totally changed!

It's an explosion! Of kayaking gear, camping gear and easter eggs! Better make sure the place is spotless afterwards! Photo by Gavin Sheehan. 

Come Sunday, the swell changed and I headed for Rossbeigh, where I had arranged to meet Aisling Griffin, to find it almost totally flat; not that it deterred the dedicated paddlers who were enjoying the 1ft beach break when I got there. I decided that it wasn't really worth getting changed into wet gear for and when Darragh Walsh arrived with word that Inch also wasn't happening I decided to go exploring and try to find somewhere better. Since I havn't trusted myself with a phone with internet yet for fear that I'd just break it, finding surf once I've left home is a bit of a guessing game. I decided to head to Finian's bay, thinking that it was more exposed and would probably pick up more swell than Rossbeigh. Fortunately it was a beautiful day and driving around west Kerry looking for surf was pretty enjoyable in itself. Otherwise I would have been quite upset to find Finian's Bay windy, onshore and almost as flat as Rossbeigh! Waterville was similar and by then I was out of ideas, bar heading for home to get a days rest before heading to the last few weeks of studying for final exams. Fortunately, I decided to take a detour and head home via Castlegregory, where I found a high tide shore-break where I've had some epic sessions in the past breaking at about 2ft, which I had all to myself until the sun set. It was a great session to end the weekend on, the new boat was ripping it up and the sheer number of waves I was able to catch let me focus on a couple of techniques which really helped with pushing the boat skywards!

The next challenge is to come up with a plan for the summer that will let me maximise the time that I can spend on the water preparing for worlds. Going to have to get the thinking cap on there! In other news, the second issue of the Put In magazine is out this week, make sure you keep an eye out for it! The first issue had some great content in it; entertaining and informative; hopefully this issue's contents can live up to that! ;-)