Pacific Horizons

I've seen quite a few reviews in paddling blogs of the recently released "Pacific Horizons" DVD by Brian Smith. I'd have written one allot earlier myself except that my copy took over a month to reach remote Isle of Man. It can be dangerous of course to say what you really think in a blog, unless of course you are about to do nothing but praise the production. The internet can be viewed pretty well everywhere on the planet, and once out there you can't really pull it back; someone somewhere will still have it in their cache. Having said all that there's no point writing anything if you're not going to be truthful.
The film focuses on sea kayaking in the Pacific North West of the USA and Vancouver Island in Canada. I went to Vancouver Island last year and paddled, and fell in love with the place. This film should have blown me away, tiding me over through a grey Manx Winter evening with sunshine images of my favourite place. Don't get me wrong, I like the film. It's extremely competent and the high definition photography is stunning. The feature on tidal races went down particularly well at KAYAK.im . Problem is, there was something awfully familiar about this movie. It must be difficult to think of a new format for a sea kayaking film after the excellent and extremely successful "This is the Sea" series of films by Justine Curgenven. However, is it also necessary to always have reggae type music in the background? Perhaps only Caribbean rhythms work in sea kayaking films? I don't know, but I really did have to go and double check the DVD sleeve to make sure that I hadn't put "This is the Sea 2" on by mistake. Having said that, I enjoyed it and Justine herself appears in the extras on the DVD and looks particularly "hot" I thought - can't wait for "This is the Sea 4"
As an aside, the picture above is not of Vancouver Island but of South Island New Zealand. It could pass for Canada however, as Vancouver Island was once part of the New Zealand land mass millions of years ago, but migrated up north through the Pacific to lie off the west coast of Canada today.