In light of the recent earthquake that devastated Nepal, Jon Hynes and Brian Keogh have started a fundraising initiative to contribute to the relief effort. The idea is that people organise local paddles and everyone who attends contributes a couple of euro to the collection. Loads of events have been organised around the country, from private trips with just a couple of people to major events open to the general public such as the 'Sunset Kayak for Nepal' on Lough Derg on Friday, organised by Mike Jones of the University of Limerick Activity Centre.
Big Eas, at a decent level with a long exposure. By Will Heffernan of WillHeffernanPhotography
Conveniently, it bucketed rain all day Friday and although that was bad news for anyone hoping for a pretty sunset on Lough Derg, it meant that by the afternoon the Glens was running at a crazy high level. Between them, Andrew Regan and Mark Scanlon came up with the idea of using an evening run on the river as a charity event, and use the evening to raise a few euro towards the Nepal fund. With a surf kayak training event planned for that weekend, and an exam on Monday, I was pretty adamant that I wasn't going to paddle on Friday and was going to get loads of study done instead. Even after Mark rang me and started giving me abuse down the phone I was still sure that I wasn't going to go paddling. But about 10 minutes later I had the car packed and was on the road to the Glens. I never had the best self control in the world...
I got to the Glens to find Bowsie and Bosco geared up and ready to go, with Mark, Simon and Andrew expected to show up from UL shortly after. We ended up having a great evening on the river, with water levels starting at about 150cm and dropping fast over the next couple of hours. We fitted in three quick runs on the river before it got dark, with no drama and lots of stylish lines hit! It was great to get back on a river after a bit of a lull coming up to exams, and having a solid crew who know how things work really cuts down on the amount of faffing involved compared to typical club trips! Afterwards we all chucked a couple of euro into a pot to be added to the fund for Nepal. If anyone would be interested in either contributing to the fund or organising an event get in contact with Brian from totalexperience.ie and I'm sure he'll let you know what the story is!
Happy out after a great evening on the water! By WillHeffernanPhotography.
Procrastinating from studying this year has been pretty varied, including buying a smart phone, learning how to use Snapchat (eoinkeyes, if anyone is interested!), going windsurfing, paddling, surfing, spending way too much time watching videos online and writing totally unnecessary blog posts... Pretty nice of the surf kayakers then to organise a training event for this weekend so that I could be productive while not studying! The plan was to do two solid days on the water and camp on Saturday night in between, with ex-world champ and general paddling legend Len Kelleher around for the weekend to give us advice on how to improve our surfing. Unfortunately the weather didn't really play ball and there wasn't a wave to be found on the Clare coast on Saturday morning. We spent a few hours playing frisbee on a beach before getting bored enough to decide that it would be a good idea to check out Crab island, off the coast of Doolin!
The official Paddlesurf Ireland team training camp. Only the best locations will do!
Now Crab island is a world renowned reef break for a reason, and although it was only breaking around 4ft it was still heavy, shallow and breaking in front of a rock shelf! We brought the whole team out to the island and we caught some sweet waves, with people progressing from just nipping in and out on the shoulder of the wave to moving deeper and deeper and getting longer and longer rides. It was great to see everyone, especially the juniors, pushing themselves and catching more and more critical waves however there was a price to be paid! First it was Bernard Walsh who took off too deep on a wave, leaving him stuck in front of the foam as the wave traveled over the reef, clipping a rock and damaging a fin box on the way through. Next, myself and Aisling Griffin got caught in the wrong position as a set came through. Since you can't duck dive a surf kayak, being caught out of position like that is a really bad situation to be in! I got off easy, taking the wave on the head and getting rag-dolled for a second before the wave let me go and I popped up on the back-side of the wave. Aisling wasn't so lucky and got hit by the full force of the wave, ripping her out of the boat along with the thigh-braces which were meant to be holding her in! By the time she popped up the next wave was coming through, which brought her down for another washing-machine spin cycle. Thankfully that was the end of the set and the lads were able to get in and tow her out of the impact zone. The boat wasn't so lucky and got dragged in and bashed around on the reef for a while before Mike Barry was able to get to it and pull it out. Incredibly, the only damage on the boat afterwards was a bit of lifted seam-tape on the tip of the nose, as well as the damaged thigh-braces from the initial impact. Really impressive for a composite boat, I was sure it was going to be totaled after seeing what was happening to it on the inside! Whatever Ride-Kayaks are building their boats from it's good stuff!
After Aisling had been reunited with her boat, we decided that the team would probably benefit more from surfing a mellower wave which everyone was confident on. We headed back over to Doolin point, where everyone was able to catch lots of waves and get some great feedback from Len after each one. Len also showed that he hasn't forgotten a thing , throwing helixes in the 9ft long IC boat as if he was back in his Pyranha Jed! We finished off the evening with pier-jumping and pizza and then called it a night. The next morning, as soon as we had taken our tents down it started to rain, which quickly turned into a continuous, unrelenting downpour! After a morning coffee at the Rock Shop in Liscannor, we headed for Lahinch hoping that the strong onshore wind that had blown up during the night hadn't totally wrecked the surf. When we got there the tide was in and there was going to be an hour or two of waiting around before any surfing was done. I had originally planned to get an early surf in before heading home to do some study for Monday's exam, so instead of waiting for surf I decided to call it quits and head back to college. Which explains why I'm here writing this now,,, Although it was a bit messy, there was a decent swell in Lahinch when I left which probably cleaned up a bit after the tide came off the rocks. I'm looking forward to hearing how everyone got on out there. We've got a great team atmosphere going at the moment with everyone encouraging each other, giving advice and helping each other improve their surfing. The effect of this is easy to see too, with everyone's paddling coming on in leaps and bounds between team meet-ups. It's great to see and I'm really looking forward to seeing what level everyone is at when we get to the worlds in less than two months time!
