Tahe Greenland Carbon

OK, I promised you some carbon after my “bluepeteresque” post below… so here it is… my carbon kayak :-) It’s a sliver under 18ft long and weighs just 14kg… to put that in perspective it’s just a couple of inches longer than my Tiderace sea kayak (which does actually have  quite a lot of carbon and kevlar in it…) but pretty much 10kg lighter…. It’s a greenland style boat – very low volume, hard chines, not so much primary stability (although the secondary is OK), super responsive and very exciting to paddle. It is more fragile than my Tiderace so rock-hopping tends to be a much more ‘considered’ activity but in rough seas it’s the closest thing to an ocean ‘play-boat’ I’ve come across. In rough waters now that I’m tuned into it it’s a huge adrenalin rush… and it’s the easiest boat to roll I’ve ever come across – not that I’ve come across a boat hard to roll, it’s just that this one seems to roll by telepathy if you see what I mean… :-) I do have a Greenland paddle which is great for doing various rolls and relaxed cruising but I must admit I prefer my Euro-style paddle for the power it gives me to accelerate over the wavetops, and surf the ocean swells… in a decent swell it’ll go forever… two weeks ago I surfed one off-shore wave approx half a kilometer… before I lost it and came back up upright laughing like an idiot… (hey, i try to live up to expectations :-) If there is a downside it is the tiny cockpit, being such a skinny boat as well, getting into it is more akin to pulling on a sock than getting into a kayak. Having said that it does enhance the feeling of being an integral part of the boat in the water. When there’s no beach a floating entry and exit can be a bit of a comedy if there is much movement in the water… especially if tired. Sometimes when it’s rough (or even if not…), there’s no safe landing and I’m worn out the easiest thing to do is simply release the spray deck, roll it over and slide out. It has a retractable skeg but to be honest it sits so low in the water I’ve not yet had to deploy it more than halfway even running in a force 6. Best thing about it though… it looks the absolute dogs bollocks and always causes a stir wherever I take it :-)

Anyway, given that shortly I’ll be on my bike for nearly 3 weeks in Eastern Europe this weekend has been given over pretty much completely to the blue, salty variety of adrenalin (though I did get a ride in yesterday). It all began Friday night with a stunning evening under clear skies. Launched (in the Greenland) from Sennen Cove around 6.30pm with a few friends for a trip out around the Longships Lighthouse and reef… the ground swell was running at around 2.5 metres in height… seemed rather big to me sitting down low in a kayak… but the fun really started around the longships reef itself – with a strong tidal race in flow, plus the ground swell and rebound from the exposed rocks the seas were the ‘heaviest’ and most challenging I’ve ever experienced to date, though my kayak experience ain’t exactly global – confused peaks piling up to over 3 meters (possibly more, at times the top of the lighthouse was hidden from view…!) in height with chop on top of that… the kayak was bouncing in all directions as we picked our way around and through the reef.. white knuckle stuff, very exciting…. I had a camera with me but to take a hand off the paddle would have been silly I think. so instead you’re going to have to make do with a distance shot… (I really must get myself a video cam to mount on my head) On reflection I might have been better off in my Tiderace in such rough waters but hey, nothing like pushing boundaries and it’s surprising what this kayak can cope with despite the feathery build and sharp handling.

(not mine, borrowed from the public domain but it gives you the idea… a stunning place)

From there we transited across the tide back to Lands End itself before rock-hopping back along the coast, past the shipwrecks, to Sennen for a half hour playing in the surf before the sun dropped below the horizon with a perfect green flash*… Couldn’t help thinking of all the folk stuck in traffic on the M5 motorway, fighting their way to Cornwall for the long weekend…

This morning the surf forecast wasn’t that great so rather than take my whitewater boat I took the Greenland (again…) down to Sennen for a session. Was there by 7.30am and had the place to myself. The surf was bigger than expected, sets up to around 1.5-1.75 metres, which is plenty big enough for some excitement in a long sea kayak. The sea this morning was crystal green under clear skies … beautiful, and not a soul :-) I surfed for around 4hrs I guess, with a few comedy moments that really should have been captured on film… wiping out in a sea kayak is a rather different experience to simply falling off your surfboard… locked in by the thigh braces and spraydeck – the potential for spectacular mishaps is as much part of the rush (for me anyway…)  as surfing a perfectly smooth face…. I think my best ‘crash’ today was burying the bows of the kayak coming down off a steep wave, standing it virtually on end before a half corkscrew to land upside down on the face of the wave… I rolled three times with that wave before I managed to get a grip on the situation and roll back upright… would love to have seen that on film.. the Atlantic ocean is still dripping out of my sinuses as I type… :-)  Not quite the same but by a bizarre twist (well, not that bizarre really) the Sennen Webcam “image of the day” picked me up at 9am hanging around out the back waiting for the next decent set… one of my friends who joined me around 9am in his surf kayak emailed it this afternoon… how cool :-)

anyway, back to the boat… got mine from Peter at Shoreham Sea Kayaks , if you’re interested in this or any of the other Tahe boats you could do no better than give him a call,  and you can find out more about the boat on the Tahe website here. The construction quality of mine by the way is excellent.

* the green flash just as the sun dips below the horizon is a refraction effect of the atmosphere – higher frequency light (green/blue) curves more than lower frequency light (red/orange), so green/blue rays from the upper limb of the setting sun remain visible after the red rays are obstructed by the curvature of the earth. So there you go… don’t ever say this blog ain’t educational :-)

Now I really must get my arse in gear and sort my bike touring gear out…. so if you’ll excuse me.. à plus tard ;-)

** update 4 JUly 09: More photos of the Greenland here: http://mikesimagination.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/tahe-greenland-more-photos/