Before starting to write about our second last trip this semester, a short advice to myself and others: never go on a kayak trip without having slept the night before. You’ll probably fall asleep in your kayak and if so the chances to capsize are indeed considerable.

The date of the kayak trip was unpleasant as we met at 9 am the day right after National Day. Because of the bad bus connection, Jonas and I went there by bike. A good way to get awake. After unloading the trailer and talking about the plans for the day, we went onto the water. Fortunately we had very good conditions, with almost no wind and waves and relatively warm temperatures. It was the first time for us that we had to navigate on the sea. However, after having paddled the first few hundred meters westwards on the coast, I recognised that it was not too diffucult to follow our route on the map and see the different reference points that were on it in the water or next to the water. The map looked quite different to the maps I knew from navigating on the land. Instead of contour lines to show the height, there were numbers to show the depth of the sea. I saw many crosses on the map. Len told us that they are indications for rocks or other objects under the water you cannot see or just in low tide. Another unknown thing on the map turned out to be a lighthouse that shows different areas where you can go with your boat and where you should not go.

We regularly changed the leader after some hundred meters. For the most part the sea navigation worked way better than the navigation on land and everybody led us to the given points very well. One of the most important tasks for the leader was to keep the group together and not let its members paddle too close to the shore, especially because of the waves and the onshore wind.

When we changed the leader we always came together in a raft, to socialise a bit and take a short break.

For lunchbreak we paddled into a beautiful bay where we went onshore at a small and nice beach. We spent an hour there to have lunch and to wander around before we set off again.

We continued the second part of the trip as before so that everybody could lead the group at least one time. As we paddled away from the islands into more open water, the waves got bigger and the wind increased a bit. Now it was even more important to stay a few meters away from the rocks at coastline that the waves could not hit one of us on the rocks. We also had to pay attention not to paddle sideways to the waves but straight across, so that they always hit the bow or the stern of the kayak.

On the last part back to paradise bay, Joey decided to capsize. It was not just good to amuse us but also to practice how to save someone out of the water and bring him back into his cayak.

The first try was a big chaos and no one knew exactly what to do. After we had made a raft joey was able to climb on our cayaks so that he was at least out of the could water. The turning of his cayak took some time. The second rescue started way better but when Domenic capsized as well, it skipped into chaos again. Nevertheless ,we eventually managed to bring both of them into their kayaks and paddled back to paradise bay where we went onshore again. The rescue was a very good practice because you can not learn these procedures only in theory. I think now it is clear in everybody’s mind how to react in a situation like this.

Even if I was very tired the whole day, I really enjoyed the cayak trip and am a little bit sad that we just did the one day trip instead of a two day trip. The pace was not too high, so besides paddling I had some time to relax and to appreciate the day on the water. I think that does not reflect the mood of all of us. Some conceived being on the sea with these shaky cayaks as stressfull and absolutely not relaxing. But in the end everybody was happy about the trip and I am looking forward to go cayaking in the summer again.