Humber Tributary

A blistering cold day in December and both Fi and myself needed to get out. Between all the Christmas shopping just time for a quick paddle over high water.  With icy decks and frozen hatches its still better than fighting for space in the shops.



Fi is eyeing up a goose for Christmas...




Loving the Taran still..

UK Paddling

For my own benefit I thought it would be interesting to mark on a map the locations I've personally paddled over this last couple of years.....and I came up with this, locations marked in red.

Surfing Rockpools

Big, big sea over here on the North East coast, chance of a bit of fun within the fairly sheltered bay of Filey. Dave brought his Alaw Bach and I was paddling the Taran.

A wonderful day catching nice clean waves along Filey front, I should have had an amazing video of us both surfing the same waves in tandem and much more but alas the Gopro was playing up. A few stills from the day..





We were both having such great fun as the surf built through the day, nice big clean swells that eventually broke sending you bongo sliding towards the beach at a fantastic rate.

Unfortunately Dave stayed on one wave far too long and ended up bongo sliding into a submerged concrete post....



We weren't going to let this spoil our day and it will fix.

Taran

Feeling rather under the weather - man flu - and a 7 occasional 8 forecast it would have been very easy to stay at home but I wanted to have a run in this boat.

The tidal river looked like the sensible option, so after downing more pills it was onto the water at Weel Bridge Beverley. Ipod on and up the river I shot. Any feelings of instability soon dispersed and the boat handled lovely, for the majority of the journey the rudder was simply not necessary leaving the boat to handle through simple strokes and edging. Quick? Yes very, but then that is what its built for.









As the sun disappeared over the horizon the temperature plummeted, a quick stop and within seconds the wind chill painfully bit into my hands. Back onto the water and a sprint for the finish, a total distance of 28km, 14Nm for the afternoon.



Now I've familiarized myself with the boat I'm keen to get onto some more challenging water, but not until I've got rid of this blasted man flu.