Santiago and cityscape

I recently got totally fed up with iPhoto as a photo managing tool, and decided to switch to Adobe Lightroom instead. Unfortunately, as is the case with most software upgrades and changes, there was something of a steep learning curve involved, and it took a while to figure out how to make it work, and, more importantly, how to make it export photos to Flickr. I think I have a handle on it now, and spent this morning sorting through my pics from GGSKS a couple of weeks ago. All my decent GGSKS pics can be seen here at my Flickr page.


tower

Until the incident at Netarts Bay last fall, I hadn’t given much thought to going after the BCU five star award. After the ass-kicking that was handed to me at Netarts, I decided I needed to rethink that. So when I saw that a five star training was being offered at Golden Gate Sea Kayaking Symposium this year, I decided I needed to go.


paddling back

The regular symposium ran Friday through Sunday, and the five star training ran Monday through Wednesday. I couldn’t afford to be away for the whole time, so I arrived Sunday morning, and Santiago and Morag Brown and I went for a nice paddle out to Point Bonita and back, and got a little taste of what an ebbing tide at Golden Gate feels like. Paddling back around Lime Point under the bridge was a bit of a workout, and we were only dealing with about half of the max current for that day. We filed that one away for future worrying.


bridge and kayakers

Monday morning we met in the class room and talked about what we were hoping to get out of the class, and then we geared up and got on the water.

We paddled up into the bay towards Angel Island, initially hoping to go up through Raccoon Strait and around the island, but by the time we got there there was a pretty solid ebb flowing out of the channel, so we ferry glided across and landed on the south facing side of Angel Island for lunch.


paddling around Alcatrez

After lunch we headed on south towards Alcatrez Island, and around it. I think we had a cooler view of the island than the tourists on the boat were getting.


prison structures, Alcatrez Island


prison structures, Alcatrez Island

We finally got back to the marina and spent a little time in the classroom again, and then headed back out after dark for some night navigation exercises. All told, it turned out to be about a 12 hour day. I got home to where I was staying in Fairfax around 10:30. I was so happy to find a working hot tub out behind the house!


Night Navigation

The next day we started out talking about and practicing towing, and then headed out under the bridge for some rescue and towing practice in amongst the rocks.


paddling under

Then we headed over to the nearby beach to practice landing an incapacitated paddler in the surf, something I had never tried. I don’t have any good pictures of me getting yanked out of my kayak in the impact zone by a too-short tow rope, sorry…


looking west

After lunch, and some group photos, we saddled up again and headed back upstream. I knew that our timing was such that we were going to end up going around Lime Point against the full strength of a 4.75 knot ebb current, so I was starting to play it safe and conserve my energy. I had seen it at about half that level of current on Sunday, and wasn’t really sure what to expect today, at max ebb, except harder work.


BCU Five Star training course

On the way back we stopped to do some more rock garden play, and to practice landing and launching ourselves on and of the rocks, another thing that I had never really done before.


landing on rocks exercise


landing on rocks exercise


landing on rocks exercise


landing on rocks exercise

After we were done swimming around and climbing on the rocks, we headed back towards home, stopping at Lime Point just long enough to get tasked with one more exercise for the day: towing an incapacitated paddler around the point, into the current. My group initially tried a rafted tow with two people towing it, but we got all tangled up and pushed up against the rocks, and had to break it all apart and wash back out to try again. This time they broke us up into two simple tows, and with a hell of a lot of work, I finally made it around with my tow, trying as hard as I could to stay right on the rip line the whole way. And so ended day two…


headed home

The last day we spent on land, working on navigation problems with UK charts and current data, and going over kit and scenarios. Eventually I’m sure the UK tidal data will become something I’m comfortable with, but so far, it doesn’t make intuitive sense to me yet. I need to get some books and practice more.


end of the day

Since I had driven all this way, and hadn’t been to SF in many, many years, I took an extra day after the course to drive over the bridge, instead of just paddling around underneath it, and spend a little time in the city. My mission was to find some of the wild conures that live there, and that the wonderful documentary “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” was made about. I had heard that they had expanded in numbers, and no longer were primarily seen in the Telegraph Hill area. I didn’t know anyone personally who had succeeded in finding them, but I figured it was worth a try, so I parked just outside the Presidio and started walking into it. I saw a small group of them almost immediately, but flying far off in the distance. Forty five minutes later, I found a pair hanging out near the YMCA, and watched them for a while until they flew off. I followed in the direction they had gone, and a few minutes later I caught up to them, and sat like a bird-nerd tourist for a half hour or so, watching them with binoculars. And no, I was not able to get a single decent picture of them. What I would have given for a good telephoto lens on the Canon!

I did drive over to the Coit Tower, just to see if there might be some over there, but no luck. And with that, my SF trip was over, and I headed home, stopping in Sacramento to visit some friends.

As soon as I got home, I registered for a San Juan Currents class with Body Boat Blade on Orcas Island. I need to get out more!


overexposed!


seeds!

Well, here it is, almost Halloween and more than three months since I last posted anything! It has been a busy season, and I just haven’t felt very organized about blogging and posting pictures to Flickr. I have to admit, Facebook has absorbed a good deal of the time and energy I have for blogging and social interaction on the computer, but I am not ready to give up the blog just yet. So here’s a somewhat long update.


Pelicans at Buoy Ten

Salmon fishing this year was incredible. Almost every time I went out, everyone on the boat limited. One day Brian and Lisa and I went out in the ocean and kept six fish in under an hour, and put back five natives. It was about as hot as I have ever seen it. I smoked and froze a bunch of fish and when it got to be too much fish to have time to smoke it all, I vacuum packed and froze fillets instead.


Coho

In August, we held the Loco Roundup kayak symposium on Puget Island again. After a whole lot of last minute wrangling and logging approved training hours, I took the BCU four star sea kayak assessment, and passed. This is something I have been trying to get done for almost a year and a half, and it finally came together this summer. It was a two day, on the water assessment, leading a group of paddlers near Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River. I was so focused on the task at hand, that it was only later I realized that I hadn’t taken a single picture for two days. But I did take pictures during the training sessions, and that’s where this picture is from.


Cape D

I also passed the three star canoe assessment, and took the new Level Two coaching class. With luck, a lot of hours practicing, and piles of paperwork, I might be ready to take that assessment next spring. I helped Ginni with two BCU assessments this year, one of them was a new two star with canoes and one was a three star assessment with candidates from three countries, speaking two different languages.


Canoe fun


navigation project

At the end of August, Shannon and I went to see Al Green at the Edgefield. Does Al Green still have it goin’ on? Yes, he certainly does…


Al Green at the Edgefield, August 28, 2009

Near the beginning of September, Columbia River Kayaking got the news that we will be allowed to run our own Elderhostel programs here next year, without the need for a middleman like we had this year. This will allow us more direct control over our interaction with Elderhostel and we will keep more money in the bank at the end of the day as well.


pilings and kayaks

Oh, and Elderhostel, for reasons I cannot fathom, decided this year to change the name that it has spent 25 years building brand recognition around. Apparently there is a sizable piece of the over-55 demographic that found the word “elder” to be offensive. The new name, which I might never get used to, is Exploritas. I’m sure there were many interesting committee meetings involved in that decision…


smooth water

Skamokawa Center continues to languish in limbo, though. There had been a foreclosure auction scheduled for October 2nd, but the day before, Greg and his LLCs filed for bankruptcy, which automatically shielded him from the foreclosure action. The auction was rescheduled for Friday, November 13th. Heh, heh, heh….


Sunrise in Port Townsend

The well ran dry this year. There was not enough August rain to keep it full for the whole dry season. I carried water for about three weeks, which isn’t too bad compared to other years. One year I hauled water for something like 80 days. Unfortunately, it always runs out just at the time that there are fish to clean and process…


the well

It was a great year for food preservation. For the first time in a long time, I was very organized and persistent in keeping on top of all the food that was showing up this year. Besides fish, berries were also in abundance and I made a lot of jam. And when Ginni left for Mexico, we had a big garden gleaning day at the farm and hauled away bags and boxes of produce, including an IKEA bag half full of jalapenos. I pickled a bunch of those, and Shannon and I made some jalapeno relish, and I have a big tray of roasted ones sitting here that I need to finish putting in jars tonight. I still have to get in the rest of the apples from here and Ginni’s place.


blackberries!

All of that food, plus the fact that I’ve been really broke this year led me to break ground on a new garden. I haven’t been willing to go all out with gardening here, since the water is not all that reliable, but I have been reading Steve Solomon’s “Gardening When it Counts” and setting this garden up with his minimalist irrigation plan in mind. Basically, you give each plant more space, and then relentlessly weed out any competitors for the water. I borrowed Krist’s tractor and tiller attachment and tilled up a space about 40×60 feet, and then made nine, five foot wide beds out of it. I planted three beds to garlic and the rest to cover crops for now. Fencing is next.


new garden

This will be the biggest garden I’ve grown since I lived in Salmon Creek, in 2000.


garden beds

This is also the first year I have purchased a hunting license. I didn’t grow up with hunting, so I never really learned anything about it, but I have had deer and bear in my yard this fall, and there are always elk around here, too. Last year, we bought a quarter of a local steer for the freezer, and spent several hundred dollars on that. It was delicious, and it’s nice to support local folk who are growing local meat. We bought a half a hog this year from Crippen Creek Farm. But I sure would like to put an elk or a bear in the freezer, too. We’ll see how that goes. With hunting season in mind, I’ve been sifting through the armory here, looking for an adequate elk rifle. I’ve been shooting my brother’s Dragunov rifle, but I haven’t been able to set it up on a bench and sight it in properly yet. It seems to shoot a little low and to the left. My practically new Browning shotgun might actually get put to use this year, too, since grouse are abundant around the land here and they are open until the end of December.


Dragunov SVD Tiger

I should have put up more firewood this year. I did a lot of work in the woods here this summer, making tractor trails so I can access the stands of trees there. But what I pulled out in that process is still only a cord or so, and three cords is more like what I use in a season here. No doubt I will actually end up purchasing a cord or two this year. I’ll get back in there in the spring to pull out another batch of logs to inoculate with Shiitake mushrooms.


alder logs


rocks

This event took place all the way back in AUGUST, and I’m just now getting around to writing it up! That should say something about how busy the last few months have been, or I guess it could say something about how disorganized I am as well….

I’m going to try and catch up a bunch of entries this week.

Last year was the first annual Lower Columbia Kayak Roundup ever. It is the brainchild of Ginni Callahan, and it is held on her property, Slow Boat Farm on Puget Island, WA. This event combines a BCU skills symposium with a weekend of classes and tours for all levels of kayaking. This year, we were the event where the new BCU standards were rolled out for the West Coast of North America. We had coaches and paddlers from as far away as England, the Netherlands, Denmark and New York.

The work for setting up and organizing this event started weeks before (months actually!) with menu planning, BCU organizing, mowing pastures, setting up camping and cooking facilities, finishing out the office and installing the broadband internet, putting up the canopies, grocery shopping, setting up the composting toilets, etc etc…


Leon with the frog goggles

Two coaches were brought over from across the pond for this event, Phil Hadley and Ed Christian. Just so folks don’t get the wrong idea about British BCU guys, here’s Phil hefting a Greenlandic seal hunting harpoon, and Ed, partying down in a sit on top kayak.


Phil Hadley and the harpoon


BCU coach Ed Christian on a sit on top

These guys were awesome coaches, and we had a great time with Ed as one of our coaching class leaders, and Phil teaching canoeing skills and running assessments. Phil particularly thought it was very funny that we had brought him over from England to teach North Americans how to use canoes, a North American craft. Lots of jokes were made about the 1776 revolution…

The week started on Saturday and Sunday with the coach update and fun with canoes. The new BCU 2 star award involves basic competency with canoes, something that had not been required before. On Monday, I took the Foundation Safety and Rescue Training, which replaced the old Canoe Safety Test. This was a pre-requisite for the level one coach training that would take up the next four days for me and eight of my comrades.


Amanda in the whitewater boat

We spent some time in the classroom, which was the converted chicken coop at the farm, talking about coaching techniques and cramming our heads full of acronyms of all kinds. The rest of the time was spent practicing skills, such as using throw bags for rescuing swimmers, playing all kinds of games in kayaks, practicing rescuing various kinds of kayaks, assessing different venues for teaching, and practicing coaching each other in various paddling skills, in all kinds of craft including whitewater kayaks and canoes.

On Friday, the last day of our coaching training, we were presented with a half dozen or so real students, recruited from the local clubs and other places, and given the task of running a brief coaching session with them.

In the evenings we ate fantastic dinners cooked by Dave and others, and played silly games like this one pictured below, where two people stand on upturned buckets and try to pull each other off with a rope strung between them. Phil was pretty much the undisputed champion of this activity.


Leon and Phil on the buckets

On Saturday, I had a couple of classes to teach, rather than taking them myself. I taught two balance bracing classes, which is the trick of laying on your back on the water, while still in your kayak, to put it as simply as I can. This trick is a gateway to rolling a kayak, and the young lady pictured below was a super fast learner and quickly mastered the balance brace and went on to quickly learn a basic rolling technique as well.


rolling lessons



Saturday afternoon, we held the second annual “sticks and stones” Greenland rolling competition. Last year we had five competitors, this year we had seven, including Cheri Perry from the east coast, who pretty much swept the field clean and left most of us in the dust, points-wise. But I moved up a few points from last year and had a couple of new rolls since last year as well.


sticks and stones


Cheri Perry with the stone

Sunday was the last day of nine days in a row, and I took the opportunity to take a 3 star canoeing class from Phil. I learned more about canoe handling than I ever would have imagined. All in all, it was a fantastic nine days, and I am already looking forward to next year’s event, August 17-23rd, 2009. Hope to see you there!


Phil and the canoe poles