4 Star sea in San Diego

Busy, Busy, Busy!
Here's a few photos from a four star that Jen, Ginni and myself ran in San Diego.
This is a rough ground landing on the breakwater that seperates the San Diego River from Mission Bay Matt on the same breakwater sticking plasters on make believe holes in his kayak!

We did some surf landings on Dog Beach, I tried to take some photos of the guys in the surf, but inconsiderate dog owners kept getting in the shots, ya gotta hate it when that happens!

Here's a man happy in his work!!!
Next day we headed North to La Jolla (it's pronounced la hoya!), this is a really cool place, sandy beach and sea caves - here's Ginni and Mike getting kitted up (Mike took some of the photos in this blog entry)

CNTP in SD

BCU love their TLAs (three letter acronyms)

But this is a four letter one - Coastal Navigation and Tidal Planning. This is a pre-requisite of four star sea, so I took over Jen's Aqua Adventures shop in San Diego over a couple of evenings to deliver this course to local paddlers.

I did have to get my head around the US differences in navigation, their bouyage is backwards and they have negative tides and no cardinal marks, phew! Luckily Ginni was around to help out when it all got a little to complicated for the simple English boy!

Students seemed to enjoy it though, look how studious they are!

Level 1 in Loreto

Jen and myself running Level 1 on Rattlesnake beach, don't let the pictures fool ya - it was really tough work!For one of us at least!BCU sylabbi at the ready!I did get a litte rest occassionally Girl Power! Yuri, Jen, Leah and Ivette - looks like a bit of product placement for Werner!This was home for the week - the Tripui Hotel - what an awesome place!Food was excellent too, this is 'mole' which is actually chicken in chocolate sauce - how cool is that!Unclaimed piece of meat turned up in Baja - turned out to be Foxy!

Baja!

OK so thanks to Ginni and Ivette from Sea Kayak Baja Mexico http://www.seakayakbajamexico.com/ Jen and myself find ourself delivering BCU courses in Loreto at the first Loreto kayak symposium. Ginni lives here - this is her camp on Rattlesnake Beach - this is the coaches getting breakfast, day 1.When she aint living at Rattlesnake Beach or in Washington, she lives out of this truck - Ol' Blue! The Mexican students were very happy to meet their English, American, Dutch and Canadian Coaches!The vultures seemed very pleased to see us arrive too!I've coached at some pretty amazing venues, but this rates right up there with the best of them! I love Baja Baby!Not a bad view from todays office - Axel and Jen taking a well earned rest from the rigors of BCU coaching!Jen found this Mexican stray mutt on Rattlesnake Beach, it's a cross eyed cactus hound, I called it One-Eater because it only had one tooth!So Jen fell in love with the cactus hound, we took it to the vets in Loreto for rabies jabs and worming pills. Apparantly it's spelled Juanita, she has perfect teeth, and is now a 'bone' fide passport carrying US citizen, residing in San Diego - the American Dream is alive! How come I never get to keep my pets??????

Road Trip - Mexico!

Back in the Big Truck again, this time we are off to the First Ever BCU Symposium in Mexico. 1000 miles down the length of the Baja peninsular to Loreto. Check out the canoes on the trailer, we were planning to run BCU 2 star and Level 1 Paddlesports Coach courses, so needed canoes, five days of driving round trip taking canoes to the Sea of Cortez!The road is pretty scary, some wicked grades and curvas peligrosas - you better get to know that translation isf you wanna do this trip! It's also very narrow for most of the time, check out this semi (that's what yanks call artics), nearside wheel touching the white line, offside touching the yellow! Imagine how close they get when they meet each other. On the bends it can get pretty hairy! We did stop for a leg stretch and photo opportunity, that's a Cordone cactus - only found in Baja apparantlyJen showed me this little cave - Some really coool pictographs inside, historians have nicknamed this the 'children's cave' because they think that these drawings were done by kids of the tribes, as they are quite different from other cave drawings in the area

Four Star

So after one day at home it's back up to North Wales to help Rob Yates and Jon Cox deliver a 4 star canoe assessment.

Rob on the bottom wave at Mile End Mill

Day One, and we are on the Dee, it on about 4 on the guage - so plenty of water for what we want to do. After the warm up paddle up the canal we are on the Dee just below the Horsehoe Weir, and paddling to the first little leadership challenge - Chainbridge Rapid. It took a bit of deliberation but we are soon looking down towards the Serpent's Tail, at this level it's a bit sporty for canoes, and outside remit for 4 star, so we are off with portaging and lining.

We just had time at the end of the day for a spot of surfing fun in the bottom hole, in glorious sunshine.Next morning it's off to Llyn Tegid - Bala Lake, and the glorious weather from yesterday was decidedly absent! the mist was so thick we couldn't see the water, Rob and myself simultaniously said - "Navigation then!" The candidates looked slightly worried, but not as worried as I was, I'd heard the stories of Teggy - the Llyn Tegid Monster!!!!

No-one seemed in much of a rush to launch into the unknown -

I made sure I kept 'line of sight' that was about 50 feet!

"Teggy, Where are you????"

Eventually we found our way into the Upper Dee and began poling and tracking our way up, After a spot of lunch on the banks of the Dee we paddled back into the lake and witnessed a minor miracle, the sun was now out and the weather so glorious it was as though we had paddled to different country!There wasn't much wind for sailing canoes! - so we played with trim! Some of the group were so happy with the lovely weather that they dipped their feet in the lake, convinced that Teggy wouldn't come up now it was sunny.If you fancy paddling with me, drop me an email - I always find fantastic weather!

Not a bad job!

Welsh Canoe Symposium

Each year there is an open canoe symposium, it rotates on a three yearly cycle between England, Scotland and Wales - this year it was the turn of the Welsh. It's quite an honour to be asked to work at these events so I was happy to get an invite to coach at this one again this year. The Welsh event is traditionally held at the Urdd Centre Glanllyn on the banks of Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake). It's a fantastic venue for a great event, waterside facilities, close to the Tryweryn and other North Wales rivers. Accomodation is excellent as is the food, with camping close by for the hardy types! There are workshops over both days for all abilities and tastes and very entertaining talks in the evenings.

Glanllyn - My first workshop on Saturday morning was improvised sailing, using the wind to blow you along, using whatever bits of kit you happen to have to hand - all open boaters have a brollie about their person - don't they? Then we played around with cags on paddles, tarps on poles, survival bags etc - Then we played around with some slightly less 'improvised' sailing - not much room on that little 15 footer with the Jolly Roger flapping around!My second sessios was Deep water strokes which really was an excuse to take my Northern Sound Birch Abenaki out for some paddle waggling! - I found Alex out there with another one of Rob's Northern Sound Birch canoesThe next day I went for a more sporty day on the Lower tryweryn, unfortunately the camera battery was flat so no photos of that!