As we've been meeting up with paddlers and other interested people along our trip, we've been promising links to much of the stuff we've been talking about.

 Well, here they are:

Our club is the Swaledale Outdoor Club www.swaledaleoutdoorclub.org.uk, based in Richmond, North Yorkshire. It is a multi-activity club, as you'll see from the website. We have about 20 active paddlers, who play on both the sea and whitewater. Whilst we've been in Ireland, a group has been sampling the whitewater delights of the Soca in Slovenia.

Our boats are North Shore sea kayaks. www.northshoreseakayaks.com Claire and Pete paddle Polars (now called Polar LV) and Wendy paddles an Atlantic (now the Atlantic HV). They are all fitted with deck mounted towing rigs and compasses. All of us have bulkhead footrests, maximising the space available in the front hatch, and all have keel strips to help with the wear of landings. We all carried split paddles as spares. Claire's main paddle is a Nimbus two piece, Pete and Wendy both use Lendal carbon 4 piece padlock paddles. Wendy has a straight shaft with Kinetic Touring S blades, Pete has Nordkapp blades on a modified crank shaft. None of us had any wrist problems, probably as we have all used these paddles for several years now.


We all carried safety kit: Marine VHF radio, McMurdo Fastfind PLB and flares. We had a comprehensive array of first aid kit between us, and a fibreglass repair kit (needed for the repair of some transport damage on two of the boats)

All of us had the gear arranged so that we were totally self sufficient, with shelter, food, drink and cooking facilities. This is done in case we get split up, and saves the problem of being stranded away from the rest of the group without food and shelter.

Our maps were bought from Dash4it www.dash4it.co.uk who kindly supplied them at wholesale rate. On these. tidal and other navigation information was added. This information was gleaned from a variety of sources. Mainly it came from the two editions of Sailing Directions produced by the Irish Cruising Club, which cover the whole coast of Ireland, and the marine charts. A lot of additional information came from Oileain, written by David Walsh. This is a mine of useful information. Our information came from the book, but it is available on-line www.oileain.org. The composite maps were then laser copied onto A4 sheets of waterproof paper.(Rite in the Rain www.ritr.co.uk) It was all a bit messy and complicated to sort out, but it worked well in the end. The paper stood up to repeated wettings, and then being screwed up and stuffed away after use. The maps will be OK for our next attempt!


We relied on good old fashioned map and compass for navigation, and used GPS only as a distance logger, except for a couple of occasions when we used it to check actual positions. We used a Magellan waterproof version primarily, but this died when taken out of its waterproof bag, then we resorted to a Geko (in a waterproof bag), but the small display made it difficult to see at a glance.

Fresh water was a constant issue. We only carried enough for a couple of days, so we needed to make sure we kept topped up. Many people helped us with this (and whenever Wendy and Claire did the asking, they usually ended up with tea and cakes as well) The generousity and hospitalty of people was amazing. We would probably carry a bit more (next time) but that's got to be balanced against the added weight.

We took a kayak trolley. We weren't sure if it would actually be worth the trouble, but in the end, it was invaluable. I don't know the make, but it was bought a few years ago from Knoydart Sea Kayaks http://www.knoydartseakayaking.co.uk. It's a fairly simple bit of kit, with detachable wheels. The frame was carried on the deck of Wendy's boat, and the wheels in the cockpit. It proved to be efficient on sand (providing it wasn't very soft), and shingle and pebbly beaches, as well as slipways and tarmac. It allowed three of us to move a fully loaded boat with 'relative' ease.