Advanced sea kayaking and the Euro Paddle Pass

Monday to Thursday Ive been working with Olly Sanders who runs Rock and Sea Adventures and helping to deliver the Euro Paddle Pass, black paddle 5 training course, their advanced award.  Details can be found on this website and at the end of the day it resembles our advanced 5 Star Leadership award.

Five Danes were across for the week and seemed well prepared.  Following Ollys intro and outline for the day I followed on with tidal planing for the Stacks, as the guys were also working on the BCU Open Water award.  A few sore heads latter and we had a plan, to paddle from Soldiers point to South Stack and back.  The only down or upside was that we would hit North Stack at max flow and on a big spring tide, with a NW swell and now a F3 wind ...yep it was going to be exciting and some!!

We took the top eddy and did some eddy turns, before running down the main race.  It was fairly confused and the guys did super well ...

The main race was great, with some big smooth rollers and then steeper snarling curling ones ....

I then led a session exploring the caves, consider good leader positioning and

Seals were on the beach at Parliament House cave and as its  near to pupping time we decided to paddle on towards South Stack ....

It was a fast ride and we were soon there ...almost to soon and driving down into a ferry glide to miss the steep middle section ... with Chris suddenly getting caught and riding side surf before being left to continue his journey ...

We had 10 mins at South Stack and then found a rocky cove for some lunch before paddling back round to North Stack.  It still had an hour or so but we easily paddled up through and what a super start to a week!

2nd day was on the Straits and for some reasons my photos have migrated ... needless to say ..."it was going like a train"  Lots of personal skills with eddy turns, ferry glides and reading water to use features to move out on to waves.  Only one capsize which the group managed and provide lots of useful learning with a number of small mistakes, that had large impact!

Lots of initial chart work to begin with  and then tidal planning for Point Lynas.  F4-6 S and the tide changing just after mid day, put us in a good place and today we worked in two small groups, with lots of leadership, positioning, rescues, towing, rocky landings, surfing, rolling, self rescues and scenarios ...

Rolling in some flow, while one of the group covers him ...

Day 4 and with a swell forecast of 3 metres Treaddur Bay, with swell and surf was our destination.  That is after a couple of hours on open crossings. This helped in delaying and allowing a cold front to pass, with its heavy rain and as it was due to ebb round 1230, allow us some beach ... well we needed more for the 7 of us than the above!!

Lunch and 45 minutes latter and we were on, working on the entrance of the bay doing circuits and a couple of rescues, that needed to be quick due to the wind blowing towards the rocks.

And then into leading a group back through surf ...and some personal surfing ....

The guys worked really hard and as Ive experienced before, Europeans tend to be strong when it comes to surfing as this is their main form of sport, what with the small tides.  So when the wind blows there out ..."surfs up"

For me, being my last day it was a great way to finish and I'm sure ill be seeing some of these guys again in the near future ...

roger chandler
www.coastalspirit.com

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advanced sea kayak courses