Who: Half of the outdoor education class

When: 7^th of June 2018

Where: Paradisbukta

What: We meet two days in a row prior to this trip to learn the basic kayaking skills. We learned how to keep our kayaks going in a straight line by using trunk rotation while paddling. We learned how to turn using the sweep stroke, stern rudder, and leaning while doing these. We all practiced how to do a rescue the first day in case someone was to fall in of the following day trips. On the third day we all meet at the parking lot of Paradiscukta, about a thirty-minute bus ride from Kristiansand, to start our final overnight trip of the semester.

Why: The purpose of this trip was to test out our skills that we had learned the past couple days. It was also to see how comfortable we were on the open sea and to practice our sea navigating skills.

Equipment:

• Water proof trousers/jacket
• Swimsuit
• Towel
• Tank top
• Shorts
• Down jacket
• Long pants
• Socks
• Hat
• Sunscreen
• Cellphone
• Map
• Compass
• Sleeping bag
• Bivvy bag
• 2 lunches, macrol and crackers
• Dinner, instant noodles with sausages
• Snacks

Challenges: I personally had a hard time keeping track on the map of where we were. After traveling for a bit all the islands would get mixed up in my head. Having to back track of where we were and tracing our steps every time we stopped to look at the map I seemed to be one of the last people to get back paddling. At first, I was not able to look at the second side of my map because it got wet, a map case would have been most useful on this trip. We also had the challenge of people being slower than others. While crossing open areas we did not stick together like we should. Even though as a kayaker we have the right away and other boats should move around us, it would have been impossible at some points for them to get around us from being so separated. I did not notice much of a difference on paddling a kayak with gear and without it. I was more cautious of tipping over, because the kayaks are older and used by lots of people, storage compartments are not completely water proof. One of my small compartments must have had a hole in it because every time I cleaned out the water more would come into it shortly, luckily, I didn’t have anything that couldn’t get wet in it.

Food and Water: Being on an active trip your body needs more fuel than on a normal day of school. During this trip, along with every other trip I brought marcol and spread it on crackers for lunches. After being on so many trips, eating this week after week, it has lost its good flavor. It was nice in the beginning because it doesn’t take up much space in a ruck sack and it is light weight. On upcoming personal trips, I plan to mix it up by making sandwiches. For Dinner I brought some instant noodles that my mom sent me from home. These are light weight, easy to make and don’t take up much room in a back pack. Having a large 34-ounce water bottle and another bottle that can hold 24 ounces of water I had plenty of water to cook my dinner and stay hydrated through the trip.

The island: After paddling for about 5 hours we arrived at our island for the night. The white sand beach where we left the kayaks for the evening was powder in our toes. When arriving we noticed a balloon and a note with a map. We followed the trail that was marked for us to the other side of the island where there was a troll statue. Under this troll there was a bottle of wine, a chocolate banana cake, and some candles. Being one of my classmate’s birthday we knew this was a sweet surprise for her from some of our other classmates. Seeing the corner of some bags that were trying to be hidden we searched the island to find four of our other class mates. Before we found them, the group cohesion was good, we all got along, did the job we needed to do, but when these four were found they boosted the mood to another level. The cohesion this night was flawless, after doing random things such as cliff diving, swimming, flower picking and rock sitting we ate dinner and all came together in a circle in the open grass area. We did random things such as seeing who could stick the most of a grass blade up their nose until we relocated on the tallest rock on the island to watch the sunset.

After the sunset and it started to cool down everyone headed to bed. At first everyone was trying to sleep in the open grass area where we were sitting earlier, but the mosquitoes chased most of us out quickly. Moving to a tall rock with my sleeping bag, bivvy bag, and sleeping partner, Marijn, we were safe from the bug for a short period of time. In the middle of the night we both woke up from being attacked by the bugs. They made us move to another rock, hopping for less bugs. We slept on and off fighting the bugs away from our faces until the morning. Almost everyone on the island woke up at the same time. We took a quick dip in the ocean to get the itchiness of the bug bites off us, ate some breakfast, packed our bags, and set off with our kayaks. Just like the day before, we took turns in pairs of twos navigating the water. Not stopping for lunch this day, we made it back to the parking lot 10 minutes before the bus was to arrive. The four of us taking the bus quickly packed our bags and ran to the stop, we made it seconds before the bus pulled up.

In the end, I think this trip was very informational. I liked how we got to work with sea maps and got to practice our kayaking skills that we had been working on the previous days in the open ocean. I wish I would have brought bug spray or netting to go over my face at night. I also wish that throughout the course I could have worked more on both sea navigation skills and kayaking.