Happy New Year 2013

muddy mad waves

My friend Rami Gil runs the Beit Daniel kayaking club. They are situated on the Yarkon river in Tel Aviv and paddle through the estuary into the sea. The estuary is a narrow opening with crazy surf at the best of times, but last Saturday the sea was really wild, making the place an exciting if not dangerous place to paddle. Here is a video he posted of his club paddlers playing in the muddy mad waters, its a great show, hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Have a great holiday season

To all out there in the world who celebrate Christmas, I wish you all a happy holiday and great new year.

kayak building meeting, beer ,peanuts, etc etc

 Yesterday we  renewed our kayak builders of Israel meetings. The beer and peanuts were enough to tempt everybody to attend and we had a good turnout. There were the same number of non kayak builders, I guess they also like beer.

 When I built my first kayak 10 years ago, there were only 3 of us, and no smartphones. Now we had 10 builders present and each had his project up on his phone to show off

 It was a very successful meeting and hopefully will become a regular feature. We agreed to meet on the beach next morning to go surfing if the conditions were favourable

 Nobody complained of a hangover and we met as planned, but the conditions were not conducive to good surfing

 Racheli was the morning photographer, Hadas the cheerleader.

 Actually Yoni and Tsiki were out surfing

 We just hung out watching and chatting

The sea is supposed to calm down a bit and so maybe later in the afternoon we can still go out and get some action

another weekend storm

It seems like there`s a storm every weekend this winter, stopping us from going out  for our usual weekend paddle.

The web cameras at the beach were not working so I had to go and have a look, just to be sure.

The interesting part of the storm is what gets washed up on the shore, lots of shoes and sandals.

Of course some sports take advantage of the extreme weather and enjoy flying about in the strong winds.

another winter storm, more rough water

 The wave forecast showed rising seas, but the timing is always off a bit , and so when we got to the club this morning the decision was to go out in a smaller group, experienced paddlers only, and to stay and play in the bay

 The sea was building with nice confused waves, just right for beginners

 We could catch a few waves and practice bracing in the swells and soup

 So when you feel your stern rising thats the time to paddle hard to catch the wave

 Its always a lot of fun in the surf

 Some surfskis also went out to play

 Vered was having a great time in the waves

And from time to time there were rest periods between sets of waves.
 What a great way to start the day

a week of rough water

Rough water paddling last Saturday, not too many kayaks out on the water

Surfers had a great time

Magnificent rainbow early in the morning

We all love to watch the stormy seas, there`s something  hypnotic about it

And today the waves were very friendly to the surfskis

now you see him now you don`t

And Hadas had 3 new paddlers in her paddling course.
What a great week on the water.

club matunuck

and then there were 4

Guy,Izy,Etay and I have all built our Matunucks and now are getting them on the water.

Although Hadas does not have a one, she is an honorary member and can use mine whenever she wants

We are still learning how to use this amazing kayak , and having a lot of fun in the process

Hadas on the other hand is an experienced surf kayaker and shows us how its done.

paddling with protection

 The seas were supposed to rise this morning with a big winter storm beginning. As usual it was a bit late and we managed to get in a morning play session . Now we are all afraid of the Evil Eye, the cause of many misfortunes,  and so Zohar has found the ideal protection. She has stuck a magic glass eye that is guaranteed to give the owner protection from all the malice of that nasty Evil Eye.

 In the beginning she  was a bit wary and still showed a degree of sceptism

 But after a few close calls she was convinced that the Evil Eye was being kept at bay

 Now we could let rip and really play in the wind and surf

 Racheli was with us in her surf ski, and Eyal too with his trusty Greenland paddle

The storm is supposed to be here by now, I guess mother nature has her own timetable , lets see what happens tomorrow.

Sea kayak filmed by a quadrotor

Heres a  shot of Guy with his flying video camera, I guess you could call it a non military drone if you like. great for getting that fly`s eye view of your event.

If you look closely at the picture you will notice  Guy on the left with a remote control panel, he is flying his Quadrotor, in the picture on the right in front of David as he paddles to the shore. He has a video camera mounted underneath and is taking a video of David .

He also got some footage of Yoav and I getting some rolls in after our paddle on Wednesday.

Heres the video he took of us, the potential for surfing videos in rough water is astounding, we have to get him to come around nest time the surfs up

Rain

The week ended with a rain storm .

While the rockets were flying in the south of the  country earlier this week, we had some great days of paddling. It seems surreal that we can be at war with a deadly enemy, daily we can have rockets falling on the south of the country and millions of citizens having to run for shelter and we can have a nice peaceful paddle  in the middle of the same country.

We were missing Yossele who had been called up for duty. He was down south waiting to see if he would be sent into Gaza with the IDF forces on the ground.

By Friday some sort of cease fire had been agreed on , the attacks had stopped and the even the weather had changed. We had a wonderful rainstorm which delayed our paddle while we waited for the lightening to pass.

After the 7am paddle we could buy fresh bread from the bakery at the kibbutz

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Saturday we still had some rain, clam seas and no lightening, what a gift

There was even a bit of a wave to play in.
So now I guess its back to normal, for the time being.