Sponsor update

Without our sponsors, this project would not have been as easy (or economically realistic) as it has turned out to be.

A few words on the sponsorships, before we set out:
RelaxShoe and Sparekassen Thy provided financial support for gear and for use during the expedition. Smyril Line kindly offered to ship kayaks, gear and food to Torshavn and back again.
Brødrene Vestergaard in Thisted has been our main provider of high quality kayaking equipment (Tomas even took home a lot of gear that wasn't in stock) at very reasonable prices. The shop is likely to be of particular interest to kayakers from the Faroe Islands - situated in Thisted, only 20 km south of Hanstholm, and close to the "test driving ranges" Limfjorden and Klitmøller).
PureKayaking sponsored safety equipment - a McMurdo FastFind MAX PLB (Personal Locator Beacon), as well as handheld and parachute flares that we'll carry for emergency use.
Friluftsland sponsored all the freeze-dried food that will be our main evening dish during the trip, and offered discounts on outdoor gear, most importantly the Hilleberg Nammatj 3 tent we're going to use.

A big "Thank You" to all our sponsors - we look forward to tell you more about the trip when we're home again!

Turbulent week

This week have been a turbulent and stressing week, after the training weekend in the wadden sea. I have been drying and repacking all the gear and preparing it for shipping with our sponsor, Smyril Line Cargo who willingly will ship all of our gear to and from Faeroe Islands for free. A special thanks to Aage Brun and his crew for making this go smoothly. This afternoon i have stuffed all the gear into a container in Smyri Line cargo center in Hanstholm, and the gear will await us in Torshavn when we arrive.




But that's not all I have been busy with this week. Tuesday, Nordjyske Stiftstidende printed an article about our expedition, and that started the medias interest in our quest, so i have been handling the press also. Yesterday, Tv midtvest was making an inteview, but for now we don't know if/when it will be broadcasting.

Today i was visiting P4 Nordjylland and making an radio interview about general kayaking with my college from Purekayaking Mette Bach, who also used the occasion to hand over kindly sponsored safety equipment (McMurdo Fastfind Max PLB, handheld flares and parachute flares).

Monday I will do an interview from 09.30 with Radio Midtvest, and Tue Olesen has done an interview with Faeroe Islands radio, so all in all a turbulent week.

You can also see some of our pictures from our training weekend, and of the equipment here.

DIY Hydration System

During the training weekend in Esbjerg, we had quite many hours of strenuous paddling. Keeping hydrated while paddling in swell, wind and moving water doesn't allow long breaks from paddling, to dig out a water bottle from the cockpit or dayhatch. The deck-mounted bag with a hydration bag and tube in it, that i had on the kayak when paddling friday evening failed to do the job, during friday night's surf session. The valve fell off the drinking tube, and the tube was generally just getting in the way of maps, GPS and all the other stuff on the deck.

That convinced me about the need for a PFD-mounted hydration system (a thing which i had, until now, been reluctant to adopt, because it adds more clutter and weight to the PFD). Unfortunately, Stohlquist doesn't make a hydration system for my X-Tract D PFD. After looking at a similar system from Kokatat, i thought "how hard can that be"?


A quick DIY-session with sewing machine and various leftovers of nylon fabric ended with a quite functional solution. Total material costs are negigble - working time was around one and a half hours, including sewing on the badge from Smyril Line (which kindly offered to transport our kayaks, gear and food from Denmark to Torshavn).


The PDF-mounted bag takes a 1,5 L hydration bag. First impressions are good, definitely better than the deckmounted system - time will tell if the concept holds!

The green lightning

This weekend i finally got it and this time in the right size, the green lightning.

We decided to upgrade our current kayaks (NDK Romany and Valley Avocet) to more specific expeditions kayaks, and after a great deal of thoughts and grey hair, i picked the Romany Explorer, The green lightning.

The green lightning is a MV Romany Explorer and the fit in the cockpit is just perfect, lots of space for luggage, and the handling on the water is just right, all in all the best choice for me.

So The green lightning is going to be my ship on the Atlantic and i'm going to paddling with a Nimbus Kiska 210 cm and a Werner Cypres 205 cm paddle.

My paddling condition is good but i have a minor setback, i have a big blister directly on my tailbone, after trying a surf kayak from Dragonossi (the Fish), so this week i have a break from sitting in a kayak.

this it from now but more to come.

sea u on the flipside

Jesper Tilsted

New tools (or rather, toys)

Within the last two weeks, lots of new gear for the trip has arrived from various kayak dealers and sponsors. Most significant are the new paddles from Werner and Lendal, and Jespers new kayak (more on that part later from Jesper).

The feel of paddling with the Lendal paddle (straight carbon shaft with carbon Kinetic Small blades on, 210 cm long) is quite different from the Werner camano (straight carbon shaft with fibreglass blades, 215 cm long). The powerface of the Lendal Kinetic blade is almost flat, where the Camano's blades have a pronounced rib along the centerline. My impression is that the Werner blade has more catch, and less tendency to flutter during the pull phase of the stroke. The blade tends to stick in the water when ending the stroke, thereby making the effort to begin the next stroke a little larger.

The Lendal, on the other side, feels much more smooth to paddle - both catch, pull and exit from the water requires less "grip" and effort on the paddle's shaft. During the pull phase, the Lendal blades have a tendency to flutter - with some hours of practice, i figured out much sliding away from the boat was required to avoid the flutter.

...so, that was only forward-paddling experiences. Next comes rudder strokes and rolling/bracing performance - but more on that later.

...to be continued.

Equipment upgrades

(See below for updates, added 10. june 2008)

For the past two weeks, new gear has been arriving. First of all, Jesper and I agreed to buy new kayaks for the trip. It makes good sense that both paddlers in the team use kayaks that are equally fast, so we avoid the situation of one paddler struggling to keep up with the other for all of the trip.

So - first new kayak is a (used) Rockpool Menai 18, which is now waiting to get the large seat exchanged for a smaller one. Apart from that, it is one mean load carrier, and from the experiences so far, it performs well on the water.


Next, we got a new GPS - Garmin GPSMap 76CSx. I'm using it this week for a round of geocaching to get familiar with it - next step is to get it in a waterproof bag (seems to be necessary even though it says "waterproof" in the manual), and take it for a spin on the water.

Update Tuesday 2008-06-10 on Kayak and GPS experiences:
Today, i recieved the seat for the Menai 18 - it fits perfectly and provides a much improved contact with the boat. This weekend, i had the chance to surf some waves on the danish west coast, which gave a good impression of the Menai's performance in rough water: Very forgiving and relaxing to paddle - the only thing i missed was some more edge control - the boat requires some effort to put on edge (compared to my Valley Avocet) - but i expect that this will improve with the new smaller seat.

Last week, i went geocaching for a couple of hours with the new GPS - it is a great tool (and toy) and after some hours of practice, using it becomes quite easy and natural. One of the neat features is that it can be configured to display information with really large digits, making it readable even when sitting in a dry bag in front of the kayak cockpit. One 'gotcha' that i needed an hour or two of paddling to figure out though, was that the built-in magnetic compass isn't useful (i ended up turning it off) when the GPS is not horizontal.

Happy paddling!
Tue

Dry suit testing and maintenance

This weekend, Jesper and I recieved two brand-new Kokatat Expedition drysuits for the trip, and had the first chance to try them out in the surf. The overall impression is really good, the quality and the attention to detail that went into them are amazing. One thing we discovered was the importance of greasing up the metal zippers - without some sort of lubrication, they simply get stuck which (as Jesper can probably testify) isn't ideal when you're wearing the suit and need to get it off.

Judging from this weekend's experiences, my guess is that the zippers need maintenance at least once or twice week when the suit is used on a daily basis. I went to the local diver's store and bought a stick of zipper grease, which seems to work really well. But what if you're stranded somewhere without that sort of stuff? What else works, and are there some substances to be avoided?