learning to sea kayak
Wednesday 31 May 2006
It’s been windy all weekend and all week (for the moment I won’t go out unless the conditions are very good). Today its much calmer with wind speeds around 3-4m/s from the northeast. So I blow out my weekly drinking / English conversation partner and rush home from school.
By 4:30 I’m loading the car for the short drive to a convenient beach – albeit concrete. And by 5pm I’m on the water. Read the rest of this entry »
Friday 26 May 2006
This hardly qualifies as a kayak trip. On the way back from the dentist I have an hour before the sun goes down to try out my new kayak. (The sun gets up and goes down way too early in Japan).
Just bought the kayak and I was desperate to get on the water in my new boat. Family watch from the shore as I gingerly push out to sea and struggle with the new spray deck. Feels pretty wobbly, oh oh. thats right you need to set up the feet rests things… Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday 24 May 2006
Well after reading hundreds of pages on the internet and a couple of books I finally decided to buy a kayak. I bought it at a Japanese outdoor sports shop called Mont Bell and it cost 145,000yen or 760 pounds sterling or about $1300.
It is an American sea kayak called a Dagger Charleston apparantly now discontinued but still available in Japan. It is a plastic rotomoulded 4.3m long 610mm wide Kayak with lots of room and all red (not that weird yellow red mix in the pixture). I chose it for various reasons: Read the rest of this entry »
Hello My name is Kieran Gaffney.
I am new to sea kayaking and thought a blog might be a good way for me to document my trips, share with friends and add to the relatively limited amount of information in English about sea kayaking in Japan.
I also like the fact that this blog will be about something other than navel gazing…
