Triathlon Marshalling

30 August 2008

An early start for OSKA on at 07:45 on Saturday morning (and yes, there WAS a 3 line whip put out!) but 10 paddlers all reported in as promised.

With a southerly coming straight into Scapa, there was a little choppiness although this settled somewhat by the time of the race start.

Angus (the man with the conspicuous shiny brand new kayak!) led the 17 swimmers around the 2 laps of a triangular course within Scapa bay, Lesley and Peter took up the rear with the rest flanking the swimmers.

As in previous 2 years the swimmers became quite spread out as the race progressed and low sunlight contributed to direction finding problems for quite a few swimmers. Several swimmers had to be "persuaded" that heading to Flotta was not part of the deal. With heads immersed, shouting at the swimmers often did not get through. Sometimes, the only effective manoevre was to blockade the swimmer by positioning kayak across the swimmer's errant path.

Another issue with an onshore wind was that kayaks were often moving faster than the swimmers, necessitating a fair bit of backpaddling to stay alongside the swimmers.

All competitors completed the 1900m course safely, to continue on with the 90k cycle and 21k run.

The F in Fog

Thursday 5 June

The exercise had been cancelled by the lifeboat crew (Jeck was devastated!). It was, however, a beautiful calm and sunny day so we agreed to meet up, as planned, immediately after work. At this point someone suggested that, as we were no longer constrained by the lifeboat exercise and it was such a lovely evening, we could perhaps do something a little bit more ...

9 kayaks launched from Mill Sands across several miles of seaweed (or so it seemed at the time) at just before 6pm. Johnny was resplendent in his brand new skyblue and white Eddyline kayak. The water was lovely and we made across for Mull Head hitting the shoreline again close to Halley. The journey was idyllic and we were in no hurry. We explored the north coastline of Deerness in detail, popping in and out of every geo and cave.

Then, just before getting to Mull Head - the haar came in, came in good and proper, a real pea souper.

2 of us were separated from the rest of the group at this point but soon gained a fix on a well kent pair of vocal cords! The group now reunited, we realised that we were getting hungry (yes, we had come out before tea intending a short paddle). Emergency chocolate rations then came in handy before setting a course back. The sun filtering through the sea mist made some interesting visual effects.

We had got a deck compass (but no map). Our estimated bearing of due West would not have been far off the mark. However, we were understandably unkeen to to let the shoreline get out of sight. After exchanging greetings with a Dutch yacht, and land ahead we decided that Mill Sands was to the port side. We eventually heard the sound of cars on the main road and realised we had strayed south and were by the old Toab school at the Bay of Suckquoy. We were a little off track. We turned around closely following the coastline back to Mill Sands getting back at after 10pm.

The detour had cost us an extra 4 miles. The one silver lining was that the tide was now right in and there was no portage at the end of the day. Home for tea. Johnny and Peter agreed on a plan to tell their respective wives that it was all the other's fault, a plan doomed to failure.

Tuesday 29 April 2008

Tuesday arrived bright and clear after the heavy rain on the Monday. That evening, 8 kayaks headed out from Inganess to the Head of Holland. After a straightforward pleasant paddle out, we rounded the Head where we were surprised to find a young lamb and ewe at the foot of the sandstone cliffs. Sadly the ewe was dead -probably having fallen from the cliff. The orphaned lamb was left on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff without any apparent way to get back up again. We considered the situation - without help the lamb was unlikely to survive. So Johnny Johnston went ashore to retrieve the lamb which was then placed in the back of Matt Orchard's kayak. Matt then paddled a few hundred yards further round to a point where both he and the lamb could get back up to the fields above. Mission accomplished, we took a brief look in to the Bay of Meil before returning to Inganess with the setting sun - a pleasant and hopefully worthwhile evening. Interesting question was whether lamb was born before or after the fall.