Friday, September 19, 2014

looking towards the end of summer, or no more skills sessions

Thursday at 5pm, time for skills sessions during the summer. Now we will soon change the clocks and loose an hour of daylight. It will get darker earlier and the summer will slowly disappear. The water will still be warm enough  and we will continue to paddle all winter, but the skills sessions are over and what a lot of fun they were.

The only way to get better at seakayaking is to paddle a lot and to practice the lessons you learn. To challenge yourself in rough water and have good instruction.

Every time you go out you should practice something, either rolling , self rescue or any of the steering strokes, if not used all the time these skills become rusty and not part or your routine movements

Sometimes you have to create scenarios

sometimes you can tow your friends

whenever there are waves or surf you can practice 

               surfing is always fun and useful when landing  through waves

self rescues are vital to safety more so in rough water, but the basics are learnt in quiet seas

bracing is fun in the small shore breakers

assisted rescues in windy conditions are a bit more difficult




Don`t know what this is good for , maybe there`s something unpleasant in the cockpit

bracing in the waves


rolling takes time and patience but is the ultimate self rescue

launching from the beach and getting in your kayak while in the surf is also helpful

sometimes you have to swim yourself to the reef



Cheers for now, it was a great season

Friday, September 5, 2014

looking around narsaq town

The supermarket where you can get anything from butter to a new rifle

Information about the local goings on 

Inside the fish market

Supper

local canine

good place to have a drink and contemplate 

welcome to the souvenir shop

Frederick has a set of scaled down hunting gear

inside the museum


The museum consists of a number of buildings housing artifacts from the past. the kayaks are fascinating, much smaller than expected and the paddles and harpoons are all authentic. As a group of kayakers we were all very excited to see these kayaks and paddling clothes, they gave us a feeling of being connected in some way to an ancient tradition.


If you are in any way interested in kayak building then seeing these kayak frames in real life  gives you an appreciation of the genius of the old kayak builders, how they managed to make their frames with incredible joints held together with bits of sinew and wooden pegs.




the paddles I saw were all very narrow

protection 

Inside one of the little houses were these daily products

this was a store







heres a great underground house.









 It was a great experience spending time in Greenland, paddling in the wilderness and visiting the town . I sure hope that I get a chance to go back sometime. Meanwhile I can look at the photos and remember just how beautiful, remote and clean it is.