Kayaking Isle of Man - Thanks.

It's Monday morning and there's allot to be grateful for. My three day stint "on call" is over during which I once again became an expert with the Sky+ box. 9 movies later only a trip to the gym kept my body, mind and possibly soul healthy! The huge ash tree which overshadows my house remained upright, despite the Winter gales. A new kayaking and fishing tackle shop has opened nearly opposite to my house. Bazaarly, I live 2 miles from the sea and in open countryside! Never the less it's only 9:30 and this looks like being a good Monday.
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Kayaking Isle of Man - Content.

There's a force 9 gale blowing here on the Isle of Man. The winds are moving at 75 to 88 km/h, there are high waves (6-7 m) with dense foam, wave crests have started to roll over and there is considerable spray! It would be fare to say that these are difficult conditions for kayaking. Still, paddling is the last thing on my mind as I enter my third consecutive day "on call" as a Consultant Anaesthetist. The good thing about the poor weather is that it's usually quiet at work when the weather is this bad. Instead of contemplating how I could possibly go kayaking in a force 9, I'm thinking will I get called into the hospital at any second to sort out an emergency patient? I'm also looking forward to the next week or so at work. I think to say that these coming days and weeks could change mine and my colleagues work lives is no exaggeration. Our pensions may be devalued, job plans reviewed and with other important "work structure" meetings scheduled, our professional roles are likely to change beyond recognition. Potentially, these changes over the next few weeks will be too much for some and there could be resignations!
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Sea Kayaking Isle of Man - Why?!

I regularly consider terminating this blog? Certainly Isle of Man Kayakblog has caused me a great many headaches and life would be so much more simple without it. The current reasons for continuing with the Blog as part of www.KAYAK.im are overwhelmingly technical. The Blog is incorporated into KAYAK.im’s homepage. This serves to keep the homepage rich and fresh with new photographs and text appearing every few days. In addition, the Blog, and especially the archive, help to keep the main web site optimised so that search engines like Google can find it more easily (I won’t go into the technical details of how that works here). And so a blog, as opposed to simply renewing photographs and text directly on the homepage, is necessary.
www.KAYAK.im is held on a server based near Castletown on the Isle of Man. I pay about £70 per year for 25 mega bytes of server space. The Blog on the other hand, with it’s huge but important archive, runs into many hundreds of mega bytes and is hosted for me free of charge by Google’s servers in America or somewhere. Either way if I had to pay for all those mega bytes to be hosted on my own server the costs of having the site would rise by many hundreds of pounds per year! I am very grateful to Google for providing this service, but it did mean that I had to find a way of marrying together two pages, held on different servers, into the combined home page you see today. This is done by loading the main page held here on the Isle of Man, and then loading the Blog from within an iframe. This would normally be very simple to do, but, due to the "transparent" nature of my main web site template design it did throw up a few technical difficulties.
The templates incorporate full PNG transparency which allows the background image to be seen through the transparent text boxes. By simply changing the background image I can completely change the look, colour and feel of the whole web site. This in itself led to problems as PNG transparency is not supported by earlier versions of Internet Explorer (IE) which are still widely used e.g. by the Isle of Man Government. To rectify this a JavaScript program runs in the background to convert the images to GIF format which IE 5.5 and 6 can read. However, this program will not make the Blog appear transparent. To do this I had to rewrite some of the code in the Google template. Unfortunately, this fix would only work in modern browsers such as FireFox and Chrome. In Internet Explorer the background will not default to transparent but to white instead, giving different visitors a completely different web experience depending on which browser they are using. This explains why, unlike all other pages on KAYAK.im, the home page does not achieve full transparency. Instead a compromise Blog background colour was used which blends seamlessly with the graduated colour on every tailored web page background, at least giving the impression of some continuity between the two pages.
Unfortunately, technical difficulties are not only headaches I have experienced due to this Isle of Man Kayakblog. Many have been due to it's content and I will discuss this in my next Blog posting.
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Sea Kayaking Isle of Man - 53 minutes and 20 seconds part 2.

I wasn't planning to post another blog entry so soon but it would seem a few facts need to be cleared up. Yesterday, Ian and myself posted a time we clocked up for circumnavigating the Calf of Man by kayak of 53 minutes and 20 seconds. Earlier last week Steve Watt of Manx Paddle Sports, posted his new personal best time of 54 minutes and 40 seconds. It would seem that we started our paddles from a slightly different point to Steve . Steve says "The start, as pointed out to me many years ago, is with your stern in line with the ladder/concrete steps in the small launching bay east of the cafe. (no need to have a timer on the shore) the finish is when your bow crosses the same line. I have timed myself 5 times from this point." Ian and I started and finished at the small race below the Cafe, where a line drawn from the white cross below the car park to the "pepper pot" intersects this narrow channel! I think it would be fare to say that Steve feels very strongly that this may have made all the difference and that our times are not comparable.
(lower two photos by Ian Smith)
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Sea Kayaking Isle of Man - 53 minutes 20 seconds.

A few days ago Steve Watt set a new personal best time of 54 minutes and 40 seconds for circumnavigating the Calf of Man by kayak. He encountered difficult conditions and the trip sounded like an epic. On Saturday Ian and myself decided that we would try to beat Steve’s record. We had SW force 2 to 3 winds and a moderate tide. We put virtually no planning into the trip other than deciding to paddle clockwise around the Island, a decision we had made at the very last minute. The best we could do was 53 minutes and 20 seconds! We were both surprised by how slow we were and had expected to knock at least 10 minutes off Steve’s time. Indeed, with better planning, timing the tides more effectively, and ensuring a following wind down one side of the Calf whilst enjoying shelter from the wind on the other then a much better time should be possible. With this in mind Ian and I will be back but at present the time to beat is 53 minutes and 20 seconds if any one fancies a go?
(top 2 photos by Ian Smith)
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Kayaking Isle of Man - Solo Paddle.

This Kayakblog entry is by Steve Watt of Manx Paddle Sports.

First there was a solo paddler coming to grief off Douglas Head, then John had a swim off Bradda Head, then someone ended up in the water off Kirk Michael and today I had a very near miss going around the Calf on my own. If we must paddle alone it is important to learn from everyone else's mistakes. So here goes.
I set off from the ladder by the cafe at noon and headed across the Sound to make a clockwise circuit of the Calf. Three degrees Celsius, a fresh easterly wind, visibility of about four miles and white horses down the left side of the Calf, but I'd said on facebook I was going to race around the Calf and male ego is a terrible thing ! The sea got progressively rougher with strong reflections off the cliffs and it was survival paddling all the way to the Drinking Dragon. Several times I had waves breaking right over the kayak and I had to make far too many high recovery strokes. I was tense, paddling like a novice and extremely worried about everything. I was wearing tights, sweatshirt and light spray-top, didn't have a paddle leash and my flares were in the boat. My new paddle float was in the garage with my towline and pump. I was soon extremely gripped and way out of my comfort zone expecting a swim at any moment and worrying that I would lose the boat in the chaotic sea. There was no turning back as I was on the spring tide, definitely on a one way trip. I managed to surf through the Dragon's gap which is surprisingly narrow at high water into the calm water beyond where I was sick! Got away with it then, but only just. I blasted around the rest of the Calf, just made it round the top of Kitterland against the increasing flow and made it back to the ladder in 54 minutes 40 seconds, a new p.b.But no, I'm not that happy about it, just really concerned that things could have turned out very differently. Next time, if there is a next time in winter I will try to do all of the following. Dress properly for a swim, attach myself to the kayak with a towline, use a paddle leash even though I had a spare, take a pump, have flares in my buoyancy aid and give Julie a precise plan to follow in case I wasn't back after 90 minutes.Have fun in all aspects of your paddling but remember that if you go alone there is a far greater risk and you need to have prepared yourself thoroughly.
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Sea Kayaking Isle of Man - Surfing Ramsay.

The waves were half the size they should have been! The wind had shifted through 30 degrees and no longer opposed the receding tide. Still, most of us had driven the full 12 miles from Peel to Ramsay. As a proportion of the Manx national geography that's like driving from Los Angeles to New York and so retreating home without a paddle was unthinkable! Gerry, Steve, Stu, Ian, a young girl and myself took to the icy water for a fairly sedate surfing session. Having said that we all managed a few runs and I even rolled as I leaned off a breaking wave trying to squeeze a few extra yards out of it. You can view Steve's account of the session in video format here.
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