Incident Management for the Sea Monkey's of Massachusetts

Almost totally flat conditions welcomed us onto the water this morning. We were running an incident management course for the Sea Monkey's of Massachusetts, a self proclamed eating group with a severe paddling disorder. The calm conditions gave the guys and one gal the chance to put a good stamp on basic rescue and towing techniques, The morning was what you could describe as a wet session, but not half as wet as the afternoon was to become, Launching again after lunch we noticed just how much the swell had changed, giving us perfect conditions to take the level up a notch or two and expose the guys to more realistic rescues and incident scenario's. Difficult landings turned out to be the highlight of the day for most of the guys as well as dealing with un-conscious casualties, dislocated shoulders and missing hatch covers...A very special thankyou goes out to Billy, Galen, Bob, Walter, Jason, Werner, Suz, Jon, Rick and Ollie. Well done Ollie for pulling off your first re-entry and roll!

Flat conditions enabled the guy to put a stamp on the basics

Contact towing

Ollie swimming his kayak in for a rough water landing

Werner & Billy there to give a helping hand getting kayaks up the rocks

Come on Suz, you can't hog the jacuzzi all to your self

Nearly everyone out on the bank, one to go.

Hadas & Tomer in Newfoundland
Update

It's a jungle out there!For weeks now people have been asking if we saw any whales and we said,not yet. Well, it turns out that when these small fish called Kaplan, come close to shore, so do the whales to eat them, and many other swimming creatures as well. One of our days out there on a big sea rounding Cape Race, we saw from far a humpback whale lifting his big long white side wing, and diving down, maybe 20 seconds later we noticed 2 big white spots moving under our kayaks making turbulence on the surface, giving us nearly a heart attack!We felt this was our scariest encounter with the wild life. But then the next day we had a whale come out of the water only 50cm in front of my kayak, diving right under Tomer's just inches away while both of us were racing away from it in opposite directions. At the end of that day we had more than 10 humpbacks around us feeding peacefully.Both our mom's on the phone asked if we got any pictures and both of usseparately answered that we get so scared it paralyzes us so neither goes for the camera. too bad we can't share these experiences.We haven't seen the sun for 2 weeks now because this area has the Labrador current meeting the golf stream bringing thick for, so again we crosses in dark fog another bay with dolphins, seals and whales popping up everywhere.Again, hoping to hear the lighthouse horn, we finally heard it from far. After another hour we saw braking waves and only when we were right under them, we saw these really high cliffs. Yey.... we made it. We kept paddling, rounding the spectacular Cape St Mary's with its bird sanctuary, which meant for us thousands and thousands of birds all over, under and around. What a sight!Finally had a shower and laundry after 2 weeks and are ready now for moving forward.Ciao TS & HF

Road Trip in New England....U S A

Getting ready for a day on the water with Jeff and Sue

Hats, hats and even more hats whats a hairy hat man to do when it comes to choosing a new hat!

Simon and Ollie waiting patiently for Clam burgers

Well we have started our two weeks over here in the North East of the U.S. The journey over was a bit of a nightmare, getting form the Hebrideas and for Simon and Oliver up from Cornwall to London, where we stayed with Harry Wheelan. Harry always gives us a good send off, which is normally marked by hangovers during the journey. This time Harry wasn't there to say good bye, he was still partying at 6am the morning we left, but the hangover reminded us he was there at some time. The flights were delayed and we missed our connections so didn't get to Boston till near midnight. Luckily Susanna was there to meet us as we were all flagging.

The next day we had a good session on the water with Jeff and Sue. practising strokes rescues and some rock gardening. Most importantly for me Simon taught Ollie to roll, and later on that day he actually had to roll in anger! Well done Ollie, and cheers Simon.

While we are here we shall be conducting a presentation on some of our expeditions at the Kittery Trading Post, so yesterday we visited it and I have got to say its an amazing outdoor store, with everything you need to live an outdoor life, which is obviously so important to the people in New England. More importantly they also sell hats, I need a new hat but found there was just too many to choose from, so we went off to have Clams instead..... Having a great time so far and looking forard to heading North, Simons off to Tom Bergh's place at Peaks Island and Ollie and I are off to Bar Harbour for a five day trip in the Acadia National Park...Awesome.

Hadas & Tomer in Newfoundland latest update

Ok, so we have been paddling along the eastern coast of Newfoundland forthe last couple of weeks, and it has been a very demanding paddle. Most of the way is big open crossings in wind, rain , fog and some more fog, but this is what it's like on this coast. Some of the days we think...why are we here at all???Yesterday was maybe our scariest crossing, not the longest but thick fog the whole way paddling only on a compass bearing, our eyes not moving off the compass, and only after 6 hours we actually started hearing in the far distance the fog horn from the headland lighthouse. So, now we are stopping every few minutes listen exactly where it's coming from but still just ahead of us, we were so exhausted and by the time we finally saw a small view of the headland we were so happy, we could relax and take some pictures, go for a pee and continue thru the big seas exploding onto Cape St Francis headland. Wow, what a day. Then heading to the nearest town in the fog, expecting as usual to get into the safe harbour, but getting disappointed again because this was the first place there was NO harbour and all we saw were exploding seas against the rocks. Wow... how depressing...finally we saw a very steep slipway between the waves and after a small pray to god, we managed to get ourselves off the water on to safe dry land.Oooo man!!!The only highlight of that miserable day were a pack of minke whales that passed right under us, we almost flipped from shock of course but, wow!!!Today we just paddled 25 km into the capital and now are strolling theStreet’s and getting a rest on dry land. It looks like there are some good restaurants around so we are going to check at least one of them out.Ciao for now

HF & TS