Warm up advice

I recently published an article in Canoe & Kayak UK about fitness and training, and the response to that has prompted me to share some of the advice from it here, too.

If you paddle a kayak, especially in the UK where it's a bit chilly a lot of the time, you are probably guilty of getting in the boat without doing any kind of physical preparation. Maybe you think you can ease into it by paddling gently at first. But the forces of nature might have other plans. So... 


Warm up and Stretch
I never did bother with this when I was younger. And I was injured a lot. I also found that after thirty minutes in the boat I was starting to get tired, because I was fighting cold muscles and unyielding tendons. By the time I was properly warmed up, it was game over. 


I was worn out from battling against my own body. I thought I was really, really unfit, but I wasn't. 

I was just doing it wrong...

It takes ten minutes of gentle exercise like fast walking, jogging, star-jumps or whatever you like, if you're a teenager. If you are middle aged I would suggest thirty minutes of even more gentle exercise than that. It's a massive drag and I never feel like doing it, especially as it cuts into my actual boating time, but it does help a lot.
Stretchy power bands like those pictured here are a really good warm up strategy that you can use in the car park (attach them to the roof rack, or a tree) and won't make you feel too much of a loon!
 
Having warmed up, do a range of basic stretches on dry land. Google them, I'm not a trainer!

Finally do some rotation and forward and backward stretches in the boat. This has the added advantage of making sure your range of movement in the kayak is unencumbered and that there's nothing in the cockpit that is likely to injure you. That reverse cross-deck rotation is a good way of checking you've screwed the drain plug in, too...

If you do this, I'm willing to bet you'll enjoy your paddling more, and be far less injury prone to boot!

Behind The Scenes 1

One of the tricksy things about creating a book like the Haynes Kayaking Manual is to captivate the reader from the outset with fantastic imagery. The words may well be entertaining and informative, but you just aren't going to buy it unless a cursory flip through the pages ticks all the right boxes!
At the planning stage, I was pretty confident that I was going to shoot high quality technique pics (I hadn't planned for the British weather, but that's another story), and I knew from the start that contacts in the kayaking industry would help out with mindblowing action pics. What I felt was missing was a bit of lifestyle to tie the message together, a few shots that said "Kayaking is fun, cool people with happy lives go kayaking..." And strangely that's more of a challenge. A wicked action shot looks awesome as long as it's basically in focus and correctly exposed - no one is too worried about the composition and the finer points of lighting. But unless a lifestyle shot is super-über-mega-well executed, it will end up looking like someone's holiday snaps, and that does not stand up to scrutiny in a book on the shelves in Waterstones.

© Haynes Publishing Ltd, photo Bjorn Thomassen

 I didn't want to go overboard with this strategy - out of 500+ photos in the book, I just wanted about six completely posed lifestyle scenarios, interspersed through the book, enhancing the feel. All the rest of the shots are "live" action, with the exception of a few headshots of kayaking personalities that I interviewed. But to get those six I was going to need an exceptional shooter. I considered a number of photographers, but the obvious choice was Bjorn Thomassen. I'd seen all kinds of different work from this globe-trotting maestro but what always stands out is his exceptional use of light and the magical "texture" he gives many of his shots. He's really in demand, so I wasn't sure I could get him on board, but when I visited him at his studio in Cornwall he revealed he was a keen kayaker himself, and was almost as enthusiastic about the plan as I was!
The photo above is the chapter opener for the surf kayaking section. The surf's a bit messy, but I think the image successfully conveys warmth, and happy sun-tanned people enjoying a balmy tropical evening? You'd never know it was shot in a howling gale and driving rain on a bitterly cold beach in North Cornwall.

photo © Simon Burfoot. Bjorn uses Elinchrom lights, Canon cameras/lenses.

 The twin Elinchrom Quadras light the models, utilising weatherproof and portable battery packs. The lights are carried here by Izzy Tulloch and Josh Gosling, while Bjorn shoots from the safety of his umbrella. Since the tide was rushing in, it was necessary for the whole scene to move back several metres between each shot - otherwise the flash units could have been free standing.

Bjorn briefs the models - in this shot the Elinchrom light has triggered from Simon's on-camera flash. ©Simon Burfoot

The combination of this highly portable and controllable system, and the high quality lenses and cameras from Canon, allows Bjorn to create an image where he, not nature, controls the quality and texture of the light, despite being far away from any power source.

Mattos, and Kitty James. Valley Surf Kayaks, Kober Paddles, Nookie Eqpt  © Simon Burfoot

 There were unique challenges for every shoot in this series. On this occasion, a very limited timeframe (for reasons of availability of models and the lovely British weather, the shoot was scheduled for late evening, and the crew had assembled from all over the UK) was compounded by the unseasonable cold. There's only so long you can look as though you're not freezing! But as you can see, we nailed it.

The crew assembles the gear and the models get ready to freeze. © Simon Burfoot

Shooting the other direction presents no problem when you've brought your own light! © Simon Burfoot

 

Big Dog Ad

The latest copy of Canoe And Kayak UK magazine contains this very fetching ad for Big Dog whitewater kayaks, using a photo I shot of Josh Gosling on the Egua river in Italy.

I was really pleased with the degree of freeze on the exploding water droplets here, and the colourful feel considering the amount of black gear in the shot.

The tough part of getting these kind of shots is just being there. It's not usually practical to hike in so you have to paddle Class 4-5 with a heavy waterproof Pelicase between your legs, then somehow keep the kit dry when shooting. There's a lot of clambering in and out of the boat in sketchy eddies and it's pretty tiring, but the reward is in the results.


Thanks to Big Dog kayaks, Kober paddles and Nookie softwear for keeping me afloat, and Lowepro bags for stopping my cameras getting granite rash, even when I do!

Haynes Manual Launch

The Haynes Kayaking Manual is released today, and apparently a copy is winging its way to me on a Fedex truck. I hope Fedex have my phone number, because otherwise this isn't going to work out at all. Unless Fedex now use snowmobiles, which I doubt.
Anyway, this project that I started almost exactly a year ago today has, it would seem, finally come to something like fruition and I must admit I'm more than a little excited. The spreads all look good as pdf's on my screen, but there's nothing quite like having actual bound paper pages in one's hands.
The book is available from all the usual book shops, kayak shops, and Amazon as well as Haynes themselves.  Please note that Amazon says pre-order for release date April 4th, but the books are shipping right now, so I expect that to be updated at any time.
I hope this thing's going to be inspiring and useful for anyone wanting to learn about kayaking, but also a tome that can have pride of place in any experienced kayaker's bookshelf. It is a Haynes Manual, after all. And that's kind of special. It's also packed with amazing photos and contributions from some of the best and most ground-breaking kayakers in the world, and it's written in the same random and completely irreverent style as my earlier book, Kayak Surfing, the book that educator and adventurer Debra Searle MBE  was kind enough to describe as "the best instructional book ever written on any sport (all books should be written this way)". But then she did contribute the forward (which is very good), so she might be a teeny bit biased.

So, I hope you're going to enjoy my new book. I did enjoy writing it, apart from a few stressy, low blood-sugar moments mostly concerning photo rights. But don't worry, it's full of THE best photos, and if you get around to reading the words, they're kinda fun too! And did I mention it's a Haynes Manual?

Surf kayak testing

I'm always excited and flattered to be asked to try out a new prototype. In retrospect, there's nothing I'd have liked better than to have been a test pilot, or a test driver for F1 cars, or milk floats for that matter. It's not about speed, or bling. More that it combines my need for motion with my penchant for being methodical, analytical to the point of madness. Counting the paving slabs, cat's eyes, that kind of thing.

Peter Holgate has made a surf kayak. He started with a Mega Neutron, but made a new mould, and has changed it in several important details. The finish and outfitting, too, are all new.

I have to say from the outset that while plastic is a very suitable material for kiddies' buckets and spades, I'm generally speaking underwhelmed by plastic at the beach. Plastic boats in general frustrate me, mainly because of their weight. By the time I've carried them from the garage to the car I've gone off the whole idea of paddling them. I put up with it in kayaks for extreme white water, because of the safety and resilience that plastic can offer. Otherwise, forget it. Surf kayaks, in particular, seem to have no excuse for being plastic. Plastic is heavy, plastic is slow, plastic never seems to stay flat on the bottom of the hull. The only benefit it ever seemed to offer was its relative cheapness. But why not buy a second hand fibreglass boat for the same price as a new plastic one? As a politically incorrect Cornish armchair god of the surf kayaking community once said to me: "Class in glass, ******* in plastic!" (I'll leave you to guess. It rhymes...)

Until today, though. This Venom kayak looks nothing like a plastic kayak, apart from where the plastic has been trimmed around the cockpit rim. It feels nothing like a plastic kayak. It's hard and shiny and when I pick it up. OK, it's not like the one-fingered lift of my pro spec carbon-kevlar boat, but it's an easy one handed lift and carry. But it's when it hits the water that astonishment truly sets in.

Chris Hobson © Chris Hobson

The surf isn't great, but it's just what we need. Using a little skill and cunning, I can paddle out without getting my head wet, which is important, because it's frickin freezing! The waves are big enough, however, to make steep and powerful shoulders that can test this kayak's charging ability, if it has such a thing. And it does. I paddle for a lump of a roller more out of impatience than any real hope, and the boat picks up and planes. Like, instantly. Feels more like a surfboard than a boat. Interesting. 
Normally what happens when you've caught a wave straight and too early, is that the boat settles down to the bottom of the wave and resists any attempts to make it dynamic, pivoting from the back as it squats into the wave. Not this one - it carves smoothly into a bottom turn with no squat, and I find myself back at the top so quickly I almost throw myself out of the boat in my rush to top turn before I surf straight off the back! Odd.
The boat just doesn't feel plastic. It feels... fluid. Intriguingly slippery, and with an acceleration/speed relationship that defies the basic laws of physics. Bit like a shortboard. This is nuts...
I am struggling, because I haven't outfitted the boat, I can't reach the footrests, and my fingers are in agony from the cold, but I can see that something has happened here. Maybe it's the additional length and width over the original Neutron, maybe it's the profile of the rails, maybe it's just the finish and the exact hardness of plastic. Probably a combination of all of these things. It's very good. Not just as an entry level boat, but for anyone but a pro, probably.

You'd be forgiven for thinking these are surfboards

Carrying it up the beach to photograph the detail shots, I notice again that it's not heavy. In fact it doesn't blow about in the wind like a composite boat, which is a good thing, today. I wonder if it's thin plastic, but that doesn't make sense, because there's no hint of "oil-canning", the curse of normal plastic boat hulls. And Peter tells me he's hit it repeatedly with a claw hammer, barely leaving a mark.
This is just the first test shell from Venom Kayaks. But I think I'm going to be seeing a lot more of them, somehow...

Cleanest rails I ever saw on a plastic boat

This foam back rest with logo imprint is a nice touch

The thigh grips are composite, and there's talk of carbon fibre outfittting as an upgrade

Pleasing overall shape and balance

It's all looking pretty sharp

So shiny you can see your face in it

Whassup?

Just a little bit of fun: here I am SUPing on the Nookie homepage for their new line of upstanding softwear. For now I'm having fun, errrm, I mean, working in the snow, but I'm looking forward to getting back into warm water for some surf and SUP action later in the year!

main photo © Pierre Mellows

Pretty please x

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photo © Bjorn Thomassen 2012