Paddling with my kids

Some of the more enthusiastic students asked me to go paddling with them before the holiday, and I kept the promise to them on Saturday. 6 of them rented boats, I brought my playboat down let them try, and got them the ball to play with. There was Dog and Bone games with the ball, teaching of ball shielding and stern dips and of course, rolling practice. Here's one of them camwhoring with my boat.

Yet another record for me - I taught a 13 year old how to do a handroll, within an hour!

Here's one of them trying to do handroll with forward recovery - I taught him to forward leaning handroll previously and he couldn't make himself learn the backward recovery handroll after that, and he's now so close to learning what most paddlers can't do!

I think they have so much potential, and I wonder if I should ask them if they want to receive specialised training in canoe polo or even playboating regularly. If they were to continue training like this on a regular basis, I think they will be at a second-year polo player level the moment they go into an IVP team! They only thing holding me back is...should I take up this commitment of time and effort, with no promise of reward other than gratitude?

New paddle!

I had to replace my playboat paddle cos the old 'shotover' aluminium shaft-plastic bladed paddle is going to expire soon. The shaft had numerous scars on it showing fatigue, streaks of silver fibres are exposed on the plastic blades due to constant degradation by UV rays, and one side of the blade is shaky and leaking water into the shaft.

So I was looking for another cheap plastic paddle, and found it during the last course when I used this one that SCF had. It's a 2 piece paddle, with a reasonably stiff blade (for plastic at least), can set zero blade offset angle, and best of all, it's only $84. On the other hand, it's 200cm long, a little too long for a playboater. I bought it nonetheless, and wanted to cut it down - yet another kayaking technical project!


First, I marked the length that I am going to cut, and measured the distance from the end of shaft to the holes. Noting the position of the zero offset fitting hole, I used a 8mm drill bit and made another exactly 6cm away from the position that I'm cutting the excess off. Thank goodness the sawing created reasonable straight and clean edges, or else I'll be filing it away like a madman.


After filing off what I can, I can see the pin at the right position but it is obstructed from popping up from the hole fully. I can either 1) file off the end a little more or 2) file the hole wider. Cautiously I proceeded with step 1 first, and went on to widen the hole just a little once I'm absolutely sure that the pin and hole position are alighned.


Final result - a perfect fit! It is very snug and tight, and doesn't not really have freeplay around it. I like it this way, but will ask JB to see if that's the way it should be. Going to try it out immediately later today! Kallang, here I come!

Paddling future

It was really good to see my former group of coaches last week, and the reunion sort of draw me back in into a small paddling community again.

Some of us are still doing freelance work, a few on a regular basis. Some are in the outdoor industry, and some specifically in the paddling sports industry. For only a few, there is still things that they look forward to in terms of personal development and in how they can forward the industry's practices, while most others like me are just engaging with the sport on a recreational basis.

It does awaken some dreams in me though, perhaps bringing back memories of my former self who is industrious in acquiring personal skills development. One suggested to JB that there should be a level 3 course just for us because so many of us are stuck at level 2 for so long. I wouldn't want to be coaching freelance unless it's for my own students or my friends, but I guess it'll look good on paper for me.

More expeditions and trips? I think I'm really rather sedate now, and weekend getaways to malaysian rivers will simply stress me out if I have to work on Monday. I do look forward very much to sea expeditions though, and will want to go for the yearly folding kayak trips (and persuade you-know-who to go with me!)

Special trips - I do dream of going on a park-and-play playboating excursion on a river, compared to a river-running trip. Somewhere with a nice wave that you can try surfing on, and do wave moves. And of course, go kayak surfing! Somewhere on a cheap Indonesian island perhaps. If the whitewater stadium does appear on this island, I'll want to try slalom too.

Can't hurt to dream right? I think it's fortunate I got a bunch of friends who have time to get these lobangs for trips sometimes, and each trip really invigorates you for months.

Annual kayak course

It was time for the annual paddling courses for my Odac kids again. Every year, I have to say that it's a hell lot of trouble to organise the course. Loads of paper work, admin processes to settle selection of vendor, mode of payment, edusave forms to chase, name list for each course, indemnity forms etc, and it's so crazy that almost a week after the course now, I am still trying to clear up the paper mess, chasing after forms/MCs/payments.

But it was felt really good to be able to rally the old coaching group together to do it with me, I have so much trust in them, and it's really nice to work together again as we hardly ever see each other, not to mention do coaching together these days. And when we started the course that day, everything ran smoothly like the old times, with good communications or through common understanding.

And I delighted in doing the unconventional in my 2 star refresher course. This year, there was only a grand total of 5 participants for my group, but that disappointment was offset by the fact that everyone had more individual attention to them. They learnt about their 2 star skills in depth, learnt hybrid strokes and several others not in the entire syllabus like the 'C' stroke and the bow draw, and covered everything in 3 star except for towing too!

Learning and practicing sprinting and rolling is a daily affair, and after they got to know about the characteristics of different boats and their uses, I got them my playboat and polo boat to try. It was really an eye-opener for them, and they really went away appreciating different paddlng activities.

Some notable achievements by my class:

• Turning 360 degrees using hybrid strokes in one smooth action
• Successful C to C rolls by most of them
• Good sprints with boat control in my polo boat
• 2 successful ends in a clean lean
• Successive hanging draws!
  

Not bad for a 2 star refresher course eh?

A great paddling day!

I had the chance to bring my students out for a very short kayaking program last Friday, and am glad I really made full use of it. The challenge was to fully utilise a 3 hour session with 42 kids, which will also have to include the shifting and fitting of all equipments from storage to the water, and back again after a washup of course.

It took 45 minutes to get eveyone into the water, with each sec 1 kids paired up with a senior. I wanted the session to be one whereby the newbies get some informal training from their seniors and an introduction to the water before their star course. And it turned out real good! I send them out in their boats without teaching a single thing, and from the first dip of the paddle each senior was busying themselves teaching basic paddling skills to the juniors. They raft up, and I just reinforced the learning points briefly.

Next, sometime I never tried before - I got the group in a raft about 30-40m facing the shore, teach the sec 1s how to disembark from their boats to get into the water, and then tell them they are to jump in from there one by one and swim to the shore, with their senior trailing in the kayak behind them. It was an exciting challenge that I think excited the seniors more than the swimmers, but all of them did the swim perfectly, with constant encouragement from the paddlers.

With a little bit of coaching about reverse paddling and seating position/boat control, it was time for the capsize drill. The seniors felt sort of deprived that they couldn't go swimming under the hot sun, and was clamouring to go in. When I told them that I'm going to grant them their wish, all went shouting "Yay! Capsize drill!!" Again, their enthusiasm rubbed onto the juniors all the capsize drill for the 21 kayaks was over in 5 minutes.

Water drained from the boats on shore, they hopped back in and proceeded back to the pontoon and the centre. With everything done, they reached the bus at 1815 - not bad at all!

Have a good feeling about the coming star course!

Waterproofing electronics

For those out there who wants to bring electronics out to sea, I have to say that unless the unit is waterproof in itself, there are few storage containers that you can trust for submersion.

Aquapacs
Reputed to be the best stuff around, but I personally drowned 2 phones and a set of walkie talkies encased inside them before.

Boxit
About the only thing I trust for submersion of phones, but you got to sacrifice usability when using your phone and live with its bulkiness. No flip phones or smart phones or phones with jog dials allowed, and call volume is much reduced.

Sealline
I saw this one with a roll-top, definitely a no-no. Roll top style bags cannot be submerged! (But they did say it only afford watertight protection.

Pelican Micro Cases
I bought it thinking it was waterproof, but every time I used it water will find its way in without fail; you only need to slosh it around an inch of water at the bottom of your kayak and it'll be wet inside. I went to the product website and scanned the entire site - nowhere on the site does it use the word 'waterproof'. Caveat Emptor!

D&G
I bought this green medium sized bag recently for $10 only at Beach Road, and stored my Solio charger in it. It has a 'ziploc' closure which then rolls down and is velcro-ed fast in that position. Inside, there are two thin plastic flaps which seals up together when pressed against each other, and can presumably keep any water from touching the stored items, quite a cool concept. Don't think I tried submerging it for long, should try someday.

And on waterproof electronics...
Pentax WP-series camera
Proved itself to be really good in operating underwater, never had problems with it. Picture quality leaves much to be desired though, even to my untrained eye, but maybe the newer models nowadays have better lens/processor.

Garmin GPS
My Garmin 76cx is supposed to be waterproof, being designed for boating use, but I had never dared to use it without protection - it's too expensive a toy! I am quite comfortable in using an Aquapac over it though.

And maybe I'll try waterproof mp3 players soon...

Waiting to get wet...

Everytime I return home I see the foldable boat bags propped up there against the wall, just waiting to be used and assembled. It always remind me of how great the last trip was, and how long I'll probably have to wait before I can use it again.

Maybe when my new place's up I can assemble the frame and hang it up or something, that'll make a nice display piece! It'll be a fantastic dust-trap though, and maybe we'll eventually start hanging up clothes on the frame even...

Man I miss paddling. It's terrible to do it like once every half year!

Langkawi Paddling Day 7 - Last paddling day

Next morning, we couldn't care less about tourists looking at us cook and eat porridge as they take brisk morning walks along the beach. It was the last day of paddling and the mood was relaxed and easy. We are to go over to Pebble beach, just 1.2km away from Datai, disassemble our boats there and catch cab from the road that runs by the beach. It will be too much trouble to try lug gear across the vast Andaman/Datai resort to take a cab at their lobby, even if they allowed us to.

In the morning light, we could see a flat stretch of sand and rocks linking Datai island to the bay, elevated almost half a metre above the water. We had to go around Datai island on the other side. The sandy beach on the right is the island where we camped the previous night.

After beaching up at Pebble beach, we took an hour in all to get all our gear disassembled, packed and waiting by the side of the road for some taxi to turn up. We didn't see any after almost half an hour, then a Proton Wira just stopped by us and offered to send us to town for a fee.

It was back to civillisation once again. We checked in Holiday Villa again, unpacked, went out to look for a spa to make an appointment the next day, and had good chinese restaurant food before lazying in the room.

It was a nice trip overall, with a few hiccups but hey, that's adventure isn't it? I'm sure Karen agrees.

Langkawi Paddling Day 6 - Eventful evening

As usual, we have a slow breakfast and check out around noon. Packing really gets easier by the day, and we launch off very easily, with the kayaks packed just above the beach. I think it must have attracted much stares throughout the night.

We are aiming to reach Datai in around 4 hours at a leisurely pace, but it turns out to be a little tough with the strong winds again. The heat spell is still on us too, and at some parts paddling can get real slow. We are going past one of the 'geopark' on the island, and it's all layers and layers of rocks on the cliffs.

Here's an interesting area where the rock gets folded like a large slab of plasticine after pressure from the side produces arches and whorls in the structure.

A pee break at this nice sheltered stream outlet to the sea. It's filled with smooth round pebbles and rocks all over, and I find it endlessly fascinating marvelling at their smooth shapes and natural colours.

I can't tell you why, but I really would love to cart a whole bag of these back home to display at my new place. I have a strong attraction to rocks apparently.

The wind was pretty bad when we turned round the corner of the island - Karen was going at 2km/h again, and if you were to stare at the cliff when you paddle you wouldn't be seeing yourself moving away from a fixed spot for 5 minutes. But I had loads of energy and towed her in, taking the chance to do sprinting strokes. Towing her, we were going at 5km/h and I didn't stop till we reached the beach a kilometer away. It was hard but quite exhilarating really, to fight the wind and waves.

We rested at a beach just after the turn and before Pantai Datai. Cute hermit crabs were everywhere around here too - how many can you spot here? Apparently, some of them are terrestrial, and maybe that's why they are always a handful scuttling across the beaches here.

The Nautiraid is point at Datai island here, which is a very short distance away from the end of Datai bay. The beach and the scenery here is nothing impressive, but apparently Datai resort is the most expensive one on the island because of its golf course.

I wanted to camp on Datai island and not feel like an alien staying between the 2 resorts on Datai beach with tourists walking around. The water was very shallow and rocks were all around in the water as we landed. It was here that we got our first sandfly bites for the trip, and we doused our feet with medicated oil (a very good idea, but we should have done it earlier).

In the evening, fishermen were out wading out from mainland and coming over to the island to fish. We had early dinner again and were in our tents before 9pm.

Due to the early nights, I have the tendency to wake up in the middle of the night. I woke up at half past two in the morning, hearing the loud lapping noises of the waves on the shore. It seems that the water level has climbed quite fast, and might possibly flooded the entire beach area! It was close to spring tide with the moon just waning from its fullness, and the big pile of shell debris behind our tent indicated the possible height of the water level at its peak.

In haste, we hurriedly pack up for our first night paddle. With all extraneous things already in the dry bags after dinner, we managed to break camp and get on the water in only 20 minutes! Headlights on us, we paddled easy for only ten minutes before reaching the Datai beach. There was a light somewhere in the middle of the stretch and we decided to land there, as it has a relatively flat area beside it for camping.

It turns out to be a walkway to the beach from Datai resort restaurant. 3 men came out eventually to the beach making their rounds while we were getting comfortable making milo for ourselves, but they wasn't very interested in us at all, which was nice because I had wondered if the resort would drive campers off their areas.

With another 3 hours to go before sunrise, I decided that it was still worthwhile to pitch the tent and get good sleep, and so we did.

Langkawi Paddling Day 5 - Best beach in Langkawi

I wake up very early everyday from the early night, and it is very refreshing to wake up before sunrise and enjoy the cool air. That gave us lots of time to have a great breakfast and pack up to go just before it gets too hot.

We paddle past the shallow waters off Pulau Rebak and head straight for the southwestern end of the island. In front of Pantai (which means 'beach') Kok, there's this long barrier surrounding the entire bay from far out. We thought we saw this bridge-like structure in the middle of it, but ther was no car or people on it. On the last day of our trip, we found out from a local that it is actually a tsunami barrier! Apparently Langkawi didn't lose any life during the last great tsunami from the Andaman sea, but the waters did wash up high over the land.

Right at the corner of the island is Pantai Burau, with 2 resorts there. From afar, we saw the Berjaya resort huts lined up looking at the sea, with the numerous peaks behind framing it, really nice.

The sun was strong on us, but the strong wind made the paddling feels all right. We had to constantly adjust our steering to go straight with the beam wind on us, and I towed the Nautiraid so that it can point at the right place. It was a really efficient way of guiding someone - very often the boat gets tugged back when it veers off because the line drags the water and that pulls the bow in.

I don't recall seeing anything comparable to this over at Tioman...

...but do make sure you get an upgrade to the deluxe sea-facing chalet - the view from the balcony of the chalet behind the tree probably ain't that great.

Karen wants to stay the night at a resort today, so we intended to paddle to Datai bay instead, on the northern shore. But after taking a break here, we decided to make a call to her sister and get her to check out the rates at these places. It turns out that Datai has the most expensive resorts on the island, and so it looks like we'll have to enjoy Burau bay instead.

Landing in front of Mutiara Burau resort, the other resort on the bay. Karen checked out the rates at the counter, but eventually got her sis to help us do internet reservations to get the only room for the night at almost half the price!

There's a nice rock garden on the left side of the bay, and it made for a scenic view.

On the right, Berjaya resort again. Berjaya has a nicer, more gentle beach, while Mutiara had a steep slope and a short stretch before the water. But then, we're price sensitive tourists. The view from here looks much better too, being at the middle of the bay.

Beyond the rock gardens on the right is Harbour Park, a place with lots of yatchs packed there.

We walked from the resort after checking in and a little cleanup, and walked over to a KFC nearby for food. We passed by this place along the coast with hawkers on vans and al fresco dining, a great idea! Seems like the locals enjoy the seaview too.

At sunset, the water receded and everyone had fun walking far out to the water's edge. It was a great stay at Mutiara Burau, they've got good courteous service, and it feels more like a resort rather than a hotel, and the beach can't possibly get better than this here.

Langkawi Paddling Day 4 - Holiday-style paddling

We set off quietly the next day from the village. Advice - don't be lazy and wake up late on an expedition, because when the sun comes out and shines with its might on you, you'll hardly want to eat/pack/move.

After last night's adventure in looking for a beach, I decided to head back to go anti-clockwise around the western stretch of the island instead of heading for the huge Kilim Karst Geopark in the east. Rock cliffs are bound to dominate for most stretches of the coastline there, and there's a swamp up at the northeastern corner too. The wind also plays a part in the decision. Now that we're turning around, Karen gets to move downwind fast with the sail.

We landed on this patch of rock and sand for a rest after some diligent paddling. Karen got first hand experience of the paddling heat spell which even I'm not immune to, and both of us were eager to relax out of the boat for a while.

The break made her feel a little more like she's actually on a holiday. Rest is good.

It's strange that she's fine with the Nautiraid's seat which kills my back quite quickly. She's showing off her gloves where she wears it the wrong side so that the rubber-impregnated surface is on the top instead to save her from a tan line at the wrist.

My one and only experience with JB's greenland paddle, for 2 hours of paddling before we ended the day. I can achieve a very smooth and quiet entry into the water with it, and can hold a very good speed, but ultimately I miss having the power and versatility to do different strokes. I'm not sure i'm holding it right too, and it bites into my thumb and index finger joints when I hold the 'blade' itself.

Another 2 small piece of rock opposite our rest point, with a cute row of neat mangrove trees in between them.
Round the rock, there's a light beacon to warn ships of its presence.

We were aiming to land at Pulau Rebak Kechil, just slightly ahead of our Holiday Villa's beach stretch. For the first time, it got cloudy on the trip, and eventually it did shower after we land, albeit a very light shower, for all of three minutes.

The place draws a regular stream of paddlers who rented kayaks from Pantai Cenang and paddled over, and there's even a group of people doing teambuilding program when we arrived. The beach was nice enough, but in addition there's some mysterious slabs of concrete there that we can't figure out what it's for, but it makes a wonderful site for cooking and sleeping on. Beach camping without the sand! We realised there's a small drawback though - the tent floor was very warm when we entered it at night, but thank goodness our mats insulated us from it.

There are hermit crabs scuttling everywhere! I managed to get several closeups of this particular one. They really are very adorable creatures. When night comes, they became fearless and ran across our campsite in droves.

We hold conversation for quite a while after dinner, sitting there in the dark with our lights off, admiring both the lighted beach and the dark sky. This is one very enjoyable paddling day, and I can't think of any single day on my other trips to match this.

Langkawi Paddling Day 3 - A beach too far

I never had such a easy time launching off on expedition day. We had a leisurely brunch, packed slowly in the air-conditioned comfort of the room, and then moved everything out to the beach at the checkout time of noon. We were quite a sight there on the beach, with everyone else lazing under the sun on deck chairs while the two of us moved around building our boats. I think many of the tourists there are envious of our freedom.

A Cambodian-Chinese man was fascinated with our trip and offered to take pictures for us before we set off. It's pretty hard to get couple photos when there's only 2 of you on the trip.

I think we spent another 20 minutes floating on the water after going out, adjusting our gear and so on. Karen's pinning a scarf onto her hat so that she can get all-round face protection against the strong sun.

The pink bandit. It didn't last long however - she reported being nauseous trying to breathe through the scarf, and gave up the idea early in the trip.

So what happened was that we started the paddling just before 3pm. The wind was demonically strong and the spring tide against us, making us go at a little more than 1km/h around a jetty. We passed a becah at 5pm, at which point I persuaded her to go further seeing that there's 2 more hours of light. Bad decision. The strong winds blew unabated and it turns out that that was the last patch of sand for that stretch! After an hour, we could only see jetties and ports stretching all the way up, and the town of Kuah still 8km away.

We wasn't mentally prepared to do night paddling, and pounced upon this fishing boat with 3 men, wanting to get them to help tow us to the nearest beach. They couldn't understand our English and we couldn't say more than a handful of Malay words, and initially they thought we were asking for directions. They intended to stay at the spot to fish overnight, and were reluctant to leave and return, but they gave in eventually after some pleading from us. Thank goodness we were pretty good with Charades.

We clambered on board and their motor boat towed the kayaks alongside. It was totally dark by then, and we travelled for 30 minutes before we entered a small river outlet at a village area. We basically camped on the ground beside the small boat pier, attracting much curious attention from the locals with our camping activity.

It was saturday night, and the KTV session nearby screeched till 3am. There was also a constant stream of people walking by our tent, apparently to fish at the pier. The sleep wasn't good, needless to say.