* Expedition Blog *
Circumnavigation of Skye
I suppose firstly I should state the obvious, that sea kayaking can be dangerous and I would only attempt this if I felt confident in my skills and ability. This has been backed up by working as a guide for 5 years in the summer and river paddling in the winters. Also I've spent extensive time practicing rescues and self rescues and paddling in bad weather to see what if feels like. Unless you have trained as well as you can for all the situations you may meet, I would in no way recommend doing this, or suggest that it was easy.
[TP 2009] Finally this trip is actually happening - a dream come true! Writing this the night before leaving I'm frantically trying to get the website looking as if it hasn't just been bodged together at the last minute, even though it has! There're a few things below the you might find interesting. I had planned to have a separate page for everything but I'll just stick it all on one because I'm lazy. The contents is:
Before: Trip Planning; Training; Risk Assessment.
During: Blog; photos; meeting media people.
After: Interviews; Media Articles; Learning Experiences.
Also, here's a press release which went out which summarises things too.
BEFORE
Trip Planning
I've been planning the trip since last year. Basically trip planning consisted of the following things, roughly in chronological order:
1. trying to sort the website out from last year
2. sending a big long e-mail out telling people I was going to do it - this may come across as attention seeking, but I in know way even care in the slightest about the attention that I personally will get from this trip, I'd happily not tell anyone I was going, but I'm trying to promote more sustainable lifestyles and provoke some thought in people, anyway, I digress.
3. trying again to sort out the website
4. searching the web and e-mailing all the local suppliers in Skye plus other organisations I wanted to try and get sponsorship (non-financial) from.
5. 6. 7. etc included: buying maps, speaking to / e-mailing Sam to see if he wanted to come, and to talk about plans; buying maps and planning overnight stops and distances; planning alternative get out places and routes if things went wrong; planning to work with the tide using the Yachtsman's pilot to Skye and West Coast of Scotland and the Admiralty Tidal Atlas; giving up on trying to use the new updated website and reverting to using good old MS FrontPage at home in Barra, uploading at a whopping 1kb/s!
Training
I haven't got round to doing any specific training for the trip, but I'm confident in my skills, though I'm the first to admit and skills are only relative to a certain time and conditions. Therefore, Sam and I will no doubt spend the first day or at least half a day rolling around in the water and getting comfortable with the boats, practicing rescues and self rescues, and talking about what we would do if it all goes a bit Pete Tong.
Other than that...in general, I find having a comprehensive kit list allows you to deal with most situations. Set off a handheld flare for the first time tonight which was pretty cool. Expected it to burn my hand but the plastic handle just got a wee bit warm. I've worked as guide for a few years before hand, so enough experience under my deck to get me by.
Psychologically, paddling up the Western Isles was great for my confidence, so I feel confident about this trip. I'm not going to push anything or take any over the top risks, however, I do like to go beyond my limit sometimes, so there'll no doubt be some exciting paddling :)
Risk Assessment
The risk assessment is the same as last year's - see the Western Isles exped page. In general, Sam and I will probably have a think about the next day's paddle the night before and come up with contingency plans if X or Y happened, identify the main risks on the trip, look at how we can reduce them and how we would handle them. When I've been in risky situations which are inevitably high pressure, in hindsight, it's always easier to make decisions about the situations before rather than during. So that's the way we'll work. Other than that, we'll look out for each other and just use our common sense. Neither of us are very risk averse people so we'll probably take a few risks and just deal with them. It's so important that when the shit hits the fan that you don't panic, but deal with it - we'll try not to panic!
DURING
I'll be updating the blog, and will also put photos on it. Hopefully will also get some media attention too - I'll stick this on the news page.
AFTER
If anyone's interested after, I might do some more media stuff including maybe an article or maybe a slideshow. Where next I hear you ask? Maybe Shetland or Orkney - do they have potatoes that far north??
[TP Summer 2008]
Expedition is still in the aspiration stage! It is likely to happen sometime in 2009. Here's a little bit about how it got started. I did my 4* Sea training assessment and L3 Sea training in Skye. On both of them was a girl called Lara. We had similar aspirations to do lots more paddling, and after various chats, Skye was definitely on the cards.
If you have any ideas for things that we could do on the website, or if you would like to know more about the expeditions, or if you would like to get involved then please get in touch, or if you want to get in touch for any other reason please e-mail info@sustainableexpeditions.org
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