A mystery guest on the Wyrda IJmeer-clinic

Here is a delayed post about the trip of Kayakclub Wyrda on the IJmeer Sunday. It took me two days to finish it because Blogger’s Upload tool refused to work yesterday. Grrrr…

Yesterday’s trip was more a clinic than a tour. The day was meant for preparing a group of 6 Wyrda paddlers (novices on seakayaking) for their first daytrip on the North sea next week. I offered them a relaxed program, not paddling big distances. Everybody trained skills like self- and partnerrescues, paddling in a group, handling winds from different directions. That sounds like work and we all got wet, but with coffee on the beach and Hans baking pancakes during the picknick (on one of the little islands in the IJmeer) time flies! After my first week back at work I enjoyed being outdoors again. It’s so nice the sun came back after a very cloudy, dark and rainy week. So bad the weatherman said it is only for one day…
And the weatherman was right: today (monday) it was raining all day with terrible showers in Woerden: when I came home from work (in the Hague) the garage was flooded. Everything was soaking wet. I hope the dryer and the washing machine (standing in 3 inches of water) survive… That’s the price we pay for living below sea-level.

Back to the IJmeer trip: during a break on one of the islands suddenly a solo paddler in a white Mariner seakayak turned up. It was Arthur, a Dutchman living half the time in Canada/British Columbia (Shawna and Leon’s place, it must be great kayaking over there!). Arthur had done a introduction on seakayaking in BC and was up to starting with kayaking in the Netherlands. We invited him to join our group for this day. He was very enthusiast to the get the chance to paddle out with us and to catch some nice surfs, paddling in a following sea. Of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to advertise the activities of the NKB-Sea-kayaking Committee; I think we have one more participant on the Vlieland-kamp! ;-)

For the Wyrda-people: Some more pictures of the IJmeer-trip on Mijnalbum.nl. Making photo’s and doing wet exercises isn’t a good combination: water on the lens makes blurred pictures. Sorry: I had forgotten the piece of cloth to dry the lens.