Working 9 till 5 (2) vs. Expedition Planning! (1)

Planning this expedition sounds great, learning about what I can and can't eat off the land, practicing self rescues, and lighting fires - great fun! That's what I'd like to be doing, but trying to balance planning and expedition with everyday life including a 9 till 5 job is difficult, especially when I still feel like I don't know enough about what I can eat on the shores/land.

I'll be honest - this expedition is going to be a steep learning curve! I haven't had either as much time for research/planning or as much practice of doing stuff as I wanted. But hey, I'd always say that anyway...I know I'm pretty experienced at living in the outdoors, and I'm a not bad kayaker, so it's just there'll be more learning. I'm guessing I'll have a pretty steep learning curve with:

• what I can and can't eat that I will find throughout the Western Isles;
• how and when to catch fish;
• how difficult it is to light a fire from a spark and some tinder/kindling;
• what it's like to be on my own on expedition for 3(sh) weeks;
• how exposed the west coasts of Lewis/Harris are (worse/more fun than Barra?).

So back to work. Today I'll finish the big feasibility study that I've been written for Barra and Vatersay, which looks at all the renewable and alternative energy and waste reduction, reuse and recycling things that could on on the islands. A day of work, then off for a paddle...

Whatever happens, next week will be full on planning and then next Saturday (May 3rd) I'm off to Mingulay. The two things I'm most looking are: camping on and paddling round Mingulay, and paddling up the west coast of Harris and Lewis! Can't wait!

Survival thoughts

I've just been watching sea kayaking and white water kayaking videos on Youtube. Last night I continued reading Sea Room by Adam Nicholson, the family who own the Shiant Isles just of the east cost of Harris.

I'm mixed with feelings with extreme excitement about paddling up the western isles, and in particular the west coast of Harris/Lewis. And also feeling anxiety and fear about what might happen. What if I'm paddling along the west coast of Lewis with no landing zones and a gale picks up, sure I'm happy paddling in big swell with strong winds, but what if I have to make a surf landing?

You know when you haven't done something in a while and you start to wonder whether you're still capable of it? I feel that way about sea kayak surfing just now. Admittedly I've done a fair bit of draining and been battered around, but up there I'll be on my own. What will the weather be like? I'm just about to buy a helmet, and want to get at least 2 more days surf training before expedition. Also, 1 day of self rescues out at sea, on my own.


In Sea Room, he talks about a lot of deaths at sea around the Shiant Isles, from fisherman in sailing boats in the 19th Century. And yet all Google Earth thinks of the Shiants and the sea around them is shown above. The main cause he talks of is the wind and sea picking up unexpectedly, causing wind against tide (the tide flows fast over the shallowing waters between Shiant and Harris/Lewis) and waves emerging from the depths. The Blue Men he calls them. But these are sailing boats that couldn't right themselves, and would sink. My boat won't sink, and I can right myself, so can we as competent kayakers take on the elements more so than others? I'm also a lot better prepared than them: I can get the weather forecast anytime by listening to the radio, or speaking to the Coastguard on VHF or mobile phone - I just hope it isn't as cold as it has been in the last week (see forecast light N winds below).


My main concern is safety/survival. As much as I'd like to be, I'll have to face up to the harsh reality that I'm not invincible. The sea is the boss. It's in charge, and if it lets me on my journey safely, great, and if it's looking like it's not going to let me, I won't take the risk. But where's the line? Is that what makes life exciting - using your skills and knowledge to control the risk, and avoid the hazard? Maybe. one thing's for sure - big river kayaking really scares me, and so does the sea.

I'm not sure what will happen - I guess that what makes it an adventure. I'm really looking forward to getting immersed in the elements and seeing how it feels. It's been a whole winter without guiding, so it'll be my first long camping experience of the year. I'm looking forward to putting myself up against the elements and seeing how I cope.

So what can you eat in the Western Isles? Pigs, cattle, sheep, oats, sea weed, nettles, cockles, muscles, potatoes, carrots, fish. What else?? How am I going to survive? I guess I'll see. Whatever happens, I'm sure it'll be fun.

The Learning Curve - my interpretation

I’ve been trying to think about how and when people learn, the processes involved, and how we can improve them. My main thought is really that we don’t understand how the brain works, but we try to come up with models which seem to work and help us understand, some better than others.

One process I think that goes on is below - on the left is what I think is going on in the brain, and on the right are the tools we can use as coaches to affect the quality of the activity and learning. We do an activity, which then involves learning about something, and the end result is knowledge and/or skills.

As coaches, we can affect every part of this process, and good coaches can yield a higher quality of each, which is what I’m aspiring to. It then got me thinking:

• What is experience? Is it when we have lots of knowledge, or lots of ability, or is it when we have spent time doing something?

• And what happens when you haven’t been doing something for a while?

• What about if you’re learning more intensely, does that increase your experience?

• That’s a steeper learning curve. On the learning curve, it’s on graph, what are the axes on that graph, i.e. how do you measure learning?

I’ve tried to come up with a model for experience/learning.

So how do those two models tie together? I think that in gaining experience, there is lots of skills and knowledge acquisition, and the cycle in the first model is repeated over and over again for different skills and knowledge, and different cycles are going on continuously in parallel. I also think that memory is an issue, and memory of something is improved simply by more processing of it, i.e. the more you process something, the longer you will remember it.

You could go in to a huge if not infinite amount of detail about teaching / learning. I’ve just been thinking about how we learn because I wanted to identify some kind of process that I can work with and have some way of understanding it in my head. I have not authority on teaching or than that fact that I’m BCU/SCA coach, and am interested, so these are just wee ideas. I hope if you have read this far, you’ve found it interesting in some way.

Oh swell...

A few days ago I paddled home round the west coast of Barra from Halaman Bay to Cleat bay. It was a personal challenge that I'd been wanting to take on for a while. The swell was probably about 5 to 6m, and I know the you often see that forecast and it's not that big when it hits the beaches, but I guess the forecast (from Windfinder.com) is for out at sea.

I packed my boat, did a final pee, and set off through the surf. Watching the houses and people shrink, I headed north, side on to the swell and wind. So I was off the west coast, coming past Borve, where there is a reef quite far out. You can see massive waves breaking over it when the swell is big. I've kind of got a phobia about big waves - phobia or healthy respect, I don't know, bit of both - so I wanted to go out and see them. So, after the session with the kids, I headed off. It was difficult to get a photo that conveyed that intimidating nature of the sea I was in, but below is my effort.

I was surprised, as I usually am, at how quickly when you are put in a new situation, you can get used to it. After I had past this reef, I was quite happy, no, more than happy, in the big swell. I was on my own. The feeling of solitude and relying purely on your own ability and judgement is awesome! I was glad to get round the corner, when I could then paddle with the wind. At one point I surfed the reflecting waves back out to sea to get away from the rocks! Trying to take a video was a wee bit awkward at the headland as I was being thrown around like a puppet by the clapotis, recovery strokes galore! I was glad to see the following at the end of the paddle...

After a wee surf in, and collecting the things from the water that weren't tied on to my deck, it was home for nice hot bath.

I'm really looking forward to the Sustainable Expeditions expedition up the Western Isles next month. Like it says on the website, I've kind of divided up training into on, and off, the water skills. So I'm not just doing these crazy paddles for the fun of it, though that is the main reason, it's also to gradually increase my comfort and ability zone so that I can handle the expedition confidently. Train hard, play easy!

Learning experiences :
1) Using charts and in particular depths, you can get a really good idea if how the waves will behave, i.e. points of shallow/reefs will break, steep sea cliffs will not have breaking waves, but will just have up/down movement. This is common sense I know, having to avoid a reef with 6m breaking swell was a very graphic illustration.
2) Everything that's on the deck needs to be tied or fixed on, or expect to loose it!
3) Sometimes videos seem to tell the story of a situation better than pictures, at least when you get the videoing right.

Anyway, enough. I'm off to read others' blogs...