Sea Kayaking
This trip was originally meant to be with Len but turned into a self-organised trip as what Len planned to teach us we had already learnt during the week in Randøya.
As a group we looked at the weather forecast and decided to paddle on the Tuesday and the Thursday as there was a storm on Wednesday. We then split into 2 groups and each group was in charge of planning one day.
Day 1 – Tuesday 06/06/07
The weather forecast for today was sun and cloud with the wind increasing from the south east by the afternoon. The plan was to paddle west to an island which we would paddle around and then make the same way back to our start point. In total the trip was around 14km.
We had good conditions when we set out and paddled quickly, we reached the island we had planned to go as far as within 45minutes. We talked as a group and decided to go a little further and stop for a lunch break before returning. We didn’t specify how long we would stop for lunch and so myself George and kyle got restless as everyone was lying around in the sun when we wanted to paddle, so we set off to explore the nearby area in between the islands surrounding us. After we had been paddling for about 40minutes everyone was still lying and the sun with no sign of wanting to continue with the trip. We asked them if they were going to join us on the water anytime soon as the wind had picked up and it would take longer than we originally thought to get back to our start point. We also wanted to explore the islands and bays along the way and not just travel in a straight line into the wind on the return journey. The rest of the group weren’t keen to move yet and wanted to sit in the sun so as a group of 3 we decided to break away from the others and return on our own.
In this case not all group members wanted to get the same thing out of this trip. Some wanted to explore the coastline and spend more time paddling while the others wanted to journey from one point to the other in a relatively straight line and spend less time paddling. Maybe we should have made it clear at the beginning what we all wanted from the trip so we could incorporate everything everyone wanted and therefore keep the group together.
In all it took us 2 hours to get back to the start point. The final stretch from Kristiansand harbour to Roligheden harbour was very difficult. We were paddling into a strong head wind and over large waves that were beginning to break on their tops. At times I felt like I was nearing the edge of my comfort zone. Because of the adverse conditions we stuck close together in case someone was to go in the water and also so we were able to communicate easily without having to shout over the wind. 
Day 2 –Thursday 08/06/17
Today we had planned to meet Len with the kayaks at 10 and paddle east from Roligheden towards Herøya and Randøya where we stayed last week. However Len phoned us at 9.10 to say the kayaks weren’t available so we could not kayak today but we could use the canoes.
As a group we now had to make a decision whether we wanted to canoe or do nothing, and then we also had to decide where we wanted to canoe on the sea or the river. I found this decision was a lot harder to make as a group than it should’ve been. One reason was because we weren’t discussing it face to face but over messenger on our phones so not everyone replies quickly and it takes a lot of time and effort to get answers out of people. In the end we all met Len by our accommodation to discuss the options. We decided to stick with our original plan but just use the canoes.
The weather forecast was cloud with westerly winds of 5-6m/s which compared to Tuesday was not much wind. As soon as we were on the water we discovered that the canoes were affected by the wind a lot more than the kayaks and it was much more work paddling the canoe on the sea than the kayak. We paddled for 40minutes without trouble in between some islands. We then had to turn south to get around a big headland. Here we must have paddled for at least another 40minutes into the wind without getting very far and had to make the decision to turn back the way we had come. Paddling into the wind like this was not very fun and it also made it hard to communicate with each other.
We stopped for lunch on an island and the wind picked up again and we began to get cold. We decided it was best to head back to the starting point as there were limited options of where we could go due to how much the wind affected our paddling. Again it was hard to keep the group together when paddling back as one boat wanted to fish and always ended up very far away from the group meaning when we waited for them to catch up, our boats were blown off course from where we wanted to go making more work for us to do.
Throughout the day we were paddling very far apart from each other, I tried to shout to the front boat many times to ask them to slow down so we could stick together due to the high winds. As we were so far apart it was very hard to communicate and also if someone was to fall in it would take longer than desirable for another boat to get to that person, or even notice that they were out of their boat. I think we didn’t have a very good group dynamic today, I feel within our boat pairs the dynamics were good but as a group they were poor.