So yeah, the last few weeks... The reason it's been so long since I posted anything is that I really don't know where to begin! My main worry about starting a grown-up job with an office and sensible people in a new place was that it would spell the end of paddling and other fun activities during the week. Somehow however, I managed to score a real engineering job, with flexi-time, in a place that can only be described as a playground! Starting with just one or two contacts around Killarney let me get involved in the weekly routine of yoga on Mondays and rock climbing on Wednesdays. Having the car has meant that I'm within striking distance of a multitude of different beaches, which is where I've ended up on most Tuesdays and Thursday evenings after work so far, with either a surf kayak or surf board in tow. Compared with college last year and being stuck in a lab doing projects until all hours every night, the last couple of weeks has been like a holiday!
I've been enjoying taking some time away from paddling recently. Around here there's always something fun to do, no matter what the weather is like! Photo by ULWC.
For the first couple of weeks after arriving home from Canada and starting work, my focus was on getting used to the surf kayak again in preparation for the Irish Open in Easky two weeks ago. After a couple of sketchy rolls due to getting lazy during my time in the playboat, it was really exciting to feel how much my awareness of what the boat was doing around me had improved during the time in Canada. This was most noticeable while taking beatings in big surf but I'm guessing that it has to help while surfing a wave as well! While getting used to the boat again, I also played around with the fin set-up a bit and changed it to suit Irish style waves as opposed to the unpredictable, sectiony beach break that we were surfing in Spain. By the time I headed up to Easky the fin black magic was working well and my Phantom was paddling like there was a propellor on the back! Throughout all of this messing with fins the only thing I have learned is that I know nothing about fin set-ups and the boat kept reacting to changes in ways I didn't expect! Through a process of trial and error I'm coming close to the best set-up for that boat now though and it's feckin ripping!
One of the smaller waves to come through that day; still nice and rippable! Photo by Aisling Griffin.
Despite a mediocre surf forecast we arrived in Easky to find the reef doing a great job of hoovering up every scrap of swell in the north Atlantic and breaking at a beautiful 5-6 foot, with a better shape to the wave than Easky normally has due to a couple of the different banks linking up together on the better sets. Definitely a more welcoming sight on a Saturday morning than the 10-12ft surf we've had for previous opens, even though the photos aren't quite as awesome! There was a turn-out to match the waves, with almost 60 entries across long boat, short boat and waveski. There were lots of relatively new faces around as well, which is a great sign for the progression of the sport over the next few years. Some of the juniors especially; Matthew, Emil, Jamie and Conor; are already pushing the rest of us to up our game to try to stay ahead of them. In terms of competition, the day really couldn't have gone any better. It was one of those days where everything happened perfectly, all the sets arrived when I was in the right place, all of my waves walled up beautifully while other people were struggling for speed on fat shoulders and I won all bar one heat all day. It was one of those days where the waves I was getting were so fun that I pretty much forgot about the competition and just let loose, and I ended up doing the double with first places in both long boat and short boat! Delighted, winning the Open has been a goal of mine for a couple of years now and taking both classes in the same year is a pretty good way to do it!
First place prizes in both long boat and short boat, mens and open divisions. Pretty good haul for the weekend!
After the open I was able to head back to Kerry and forget about competition for a while. Since then I've been windsurfing a bit, board surfing quite a lot, and generally keeping as busy as possible from 4.30 onwards every day! Crana kayak fest was always on the horizon, but with eight hours of driving between there and home I was never seriously considering going. That is, until I saw the weather forecast for the weekend and realised there wasn't going to be any wind, surf or water in the southern end of the country! I still wasn't tempted to make the trip until the day before when I was held back in work late and thanks to flexi-time that meant I was able to take the Monday after the event off work, allowing me to break the journey home into two stints. So at the last possible minute I was left ringing around the contacts, figuring out who was heading up from Limerick that I could hop in with (Thanks Diarmuid and Shane! ULKC to the rescue again!) and what the actual plan was for the weekend. In the end I spent the two days of the event running freestyle coaching sessions and a competition on a small, shallow feature in Buncrana. Despite the feature not having a lot of potential for big moves, it was great craic helping people get the basics of surfing and spinning dialled in, and everyone on the water also seemed to really enjoy the sessions. After the coaching work was done, it was competition time!
For sheer fun it's hard to beat a small clean day on a longboard! Photo by ULWC.
The highlights of the Crana kayak weekend are the Palm/Wavesport Night-Time time trial on 'the Claw', and Sunday's expert boaterX! After all of the coaching sessions are over and the beginner and intermediate competitions in all the different disciplines are finished, the gloves come off and battle begins! The Claw is a tricky enough rapid to hit a clean line on at the best of times, and when running it at night or as part of a boaterX race the chances of some entertaining carnage increase exponentially! In the end, the crowds of people gathered around the rapid more than got their fill of carnage at both events, with plenty of people misjudging the 6-inch wide line and being sent down either the 'room of doom' on river right or pinballing off the rocks on river left. This year there was a change to the time trial course, with a 40m flatwater sprint and slalom pole between the bottom of the claw and the finish line. This was definitely beneficial to me, I made a slight mistake on the claw and got slowed down by a rock half way down the rapid. However the flatwater section gave me a chance to pull back some time and I ended up coming third overall, behind some seriously impressive lines from Barry Loughnane and Cian McNally. The boaterX the following afternoon was even more entertaining. After a round of 6-person heats, the first person in each went through to an "A" final and the second went into the "B" final. It's an unforgiving format considering the unpredictability of boaterX but it really leads to some all-or-nothing racing for that top spot. The action gets even more exciting in the finals; there were eight people in each, all seriously fast boaters and all of them really wanted that top spot! Right from the moment the final race started everyone was taking full advantage of the lack of rules in boaterX and tearing strips off each other! Somehow, at the end of all the carnage I finished the A final in third place, which isn't a bad result considering the level of chaos that happened in the race! Two third places isn't quite the same as the surf kayak results a few weeks previously but it's still a good start to the creek boat racing season. It looks like I'll have to do a bit of training if I want to come out on top at the end of the league again though!
Hot on Odhran McNally's heels at Crana last weekend. Eight people running the Claw at a time led to some great entertainment! Photo by Adrian Durrant.
So that's pretty much everything that I've been putting off writing about recently! The hour is changing soon which will put an end to the after work surf sessions, but there's also a whole pile of rain forecast so it looks like the winter creeking season is about to kick off. Along with more rock climbing and yoga I'd say there'll be more than enough to do to keep me busy around here. At the same time I've got 40 hours a week to earn some cash, figure out where in the world I want to paddle next and ponder ways of doing outdoor sports for a living. It doesn't sound like a bad way to spend a winter! See ye all at the next event!
Congrats to Phil Connolly and Odhran McNally for taking first and second in the boaterX, it was a seriously tough race! Photo by Maria McGivern McNally.
