Over Our Heads

Heres quiet an interesting article from the local news paper here in Brisbane, The Courier Mail's QWeekender Magazine, from October 30-31st 2010. It deals with more than just the hype theres a science bit too!

Some of the more interesting science bits are that the highest waves ever recorded hit Alaska in 1958 after a massive landslide created a Tsunami that peaked at 500m above sea level when it made land fall. Also thinking about how destructive waves can be think about this, water is 800 times more dense than air, so a wave just over 45cm high could knock a wall built to survive winds of 200km/h.

You can read the entire article here on Google Documents

Courier Mail: Over Our Heads

I'm also reading another book at the moment Crossing the Ditch, the story of Justin Jones and James Castrission's paddle across the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand. Its a great read, not only to give you an idea of what goes into planning an adventure like that but also a fairly honest recollection of the torment and emotions they went through along the way. Its written by James from entirely his perspective which sometimes seems harsh at times on his paddling partner Justin and others but at least he is honest. Its a great read for anybody into paddling.

Surfing Mennie Waves

Surfing Mennie Waves is the book from Northern Ireland born surfer Alastair Mennie. The book chronicles Al's adventures since he was a young lad taking up surfing at a time when it wasn't very popular. He spent his holidays at Castlerock Beach where he spent his days cutting his surfing teeth with his brother Andrew.

I first became aware of Al through the Driven DVD by Mr. B productions that I bought in Tubes in Cork a few years ago. The DVD gave a good flavour of what Al and his tow surfing partner Cotty were up to at the time and one particular accident involving their ski. What you didn't learn from the DVD was how Al ever got into surfing and big wave surfing and thats where this book fills in the blanks. From family tragedies to surf mishaps, its Al's honest account of his trials and tribulations leading to him being renowned at home and abroad as a big wave surfer.

While the writing mightn't be in the leagues of a Stephen King novel or anything, that lets you know that its Al's own words and lends to the anxiety you feel for Al and his buddies when they are in the big wave sessions described in the book. For anyone who hasn't a clue about the big wave scene in Ireland this book will go along way to informing you of exactly how it got to where it is today, where Ireland is renowned as a major contender in the big wave premiership table around the world. One day this book will go towards forming part of the history of surfing in Ireland.

My favourite part of the book...

"Cotty flew over on Monday night, arriving at 10:30pm. We drove for seven hours through the night, arriving at Aileen's at 5:30am, I nailed a sleeping tablet and bunked down in the back of the van under the guns and tow boards for a few hours."

"We only had one sleeping bag between us and Cotty insisted I used it so I gave him half my clothes to wear. I woke at 8am and saw Cotty lying there, wearing all his clothes, most of mine, a lifejacket and a board bag, it was hilarious! He still argues that I can't classify two hours kip as sleeping like a log..."

Thats dedication to your cause!

This book and copies of the Waveriders and Driven DVD are a must for anybody into big surf. The book is available in most good surf shops for around €20.

Best of luck to Al and Cotty in their future adventures.

http://www.almennie.com/

Staying High, Dry and in your boat

There's lots of ways water can get into your boat when you're out paddling. Playboats be they plastic or carbon or whatever are more often than not tested in fresh water locations and because salt water is slightly more dense than fresh water your boat is subject to greater pressures even when you're out in the most mediocre of waves than on your normal river paddle. Add to that the weight of water in big breaking waves and you're looking at serious pressures and in an already flawed system the best combination of gear won't keep that water out. You don't want to end up swimming in big surf with your ability to swim out of trouble quickly restricted by having to wear a bulky buoyancy aid and deck. You also don't want to have to open your deck to sponge out water for fear a wave creeps up quickly on you when you're not looking. So how could the current system possibly be improved?

Firstly Boats!

The last number of playboats I've owned (Necky Chronic & Orbitfish, LiquidLogic Spacecadet and Wavesport Project) have been riddled with holes between outside and inside of the boat. Grab handle, seat pillar and thigh brace bolts all leak water even if just a tiny amount it all adds up and no amount of changing washers and waxing or taping over bolts solves the obvious problem. The Jackson Kayak system goes a long way to resolving the issue and hopefully other companies can adopt a similar solution soon, not that the Jacksons are without its own internal outfitting issues but it keeps the water out.

Gear, the double bell system.

The cag, deck connection, I've never had a cagdeck but I've also not seen a good one. Most cagdecks in their design seem to admit that water is likely to get in any way or that they are not likely to be used in cold water locations. I've yet to find one that affords all the benefits of a separate cag and deck setup, outer neoprene gasket covers at the neck and wrists, more than one layer of material for warmth, well taped and glued seams on the cag and deck, combined with a bomber deck. None one seems to be interested in going all out on a piece of gear. You'll probably have to wait till a good deck and cag manufacturer come together to solve the problem. The problem with the separate pieces of gear is exactly the problem the cagdeck was created to solve I presume. When there is enough pressure caused by water outside wanting to get in and air inside wanting to get out the system fails and for me its always been at the double bell thats failed over neck or wrist seals. Usually when your upside down in surf you feel the deck waist tunnel flap as the exchange takes place and a fart sound is usually evidence that some air has passed out making the waist tunnel material flap rapidly and as the air escaped water has come in somewhere.

The boat-deck connection.

Again at one point I'm sure boat and deck manufacturers worked together to come up with the system of cockpit sizes but again it seems the connection has been lost, probably as a result of small manufacturers being bought out by big business and no deck is as snug or leak free as it might be. A new product only launched recently by BomberGear is trying to solve a problem that shouldn't exist. Its a good idea and fair play to the guys for coming up with something new and simple. Here's their video from YouTube....

So how might we go about solving these problems using existing technology?

Well how about kayak companies mould in the same pressure valves used in Peli™ cases into their boats. The valves are breathable and allow air to move in and out while stopping water from getting in. This combined with a good deck with a solid and broad contact surface between deck and cockpit rim would allow the water ouside the boat to put the pressure on the boats outer surface, air would escape by the easiest route possible without allowing water to enter. The boat contains the biggest volume of air and the impact on your gear is minimal as long as you haven't inflated your cag to make yourself look like the Michelin Man!

Wearing a deck with an implosion bar will limit the amount of pressure put on the air inside the boat to escape and then the flex in the material of the boat itself is all the that would have to be allowed for. The valves seem to work successfully in Peli™ cases, so why not adopt the same principle in kayaks?

There are probably obvious problems with plastic compatibility between the material used in the valves and that used in different boats but surely thats fixable? Well what ever the other possible problems are, if kayaks companies continue to claim to have invested years in developing each new playboat that comes out and still coming up with very little thats new then whats all the fuss about? All the craze currently seems to be around the carbon fibre revolution with lots of companies producing models of their latest plastic boats in carbon and others purely embracing the carbon format yet any noticeable achievements have yet to be made from it, a plastic Jackson boat devastated the last world championships, will a carbon one win in Platting next year or a GuiGui -Prod or Vajda even or will it still only be down to the best paddler? Only time will tell.

Next up on the blog a short book review of Alastair Mennie's book Surfing Mennie Waves.

Mr. Fisher in South Africa

This video has been around for ages but I never though to stick it up but its quiet impressive. Andrew Pollock and Steve Fisher out in Fluid Composite Element kayaks (http://www.fluidkayaks.com/wwkayaks/element.html) off the coast of south africa.

I dunno if this film ever came out? But the Composite Fluid Element looks like the shit, I'm not even sure if it is the composite version of the boats in this it might be the plastic boats and if it is they are flying and hold the face of the wave pretty well. They have a four fin set up and big rails.

Anyways back to more pressing issues, I'm in Australia now. I've come out here firstly to be with my girlfriend who has come out here to work for the year, secondly to escape the

recession / depression at home, I really try my best to be a light hearted and happy person at home, kinda modelling myself on the madness of people like Cora and Kev but found it near impossible with the doom and gloom. Thirdly I'm here to surf! Theres another reason..... oh yea get some architecture work experience but forget about that for a while! But it's not going to be in kayaks at least not for a while but on my board. I've been board surfing for a while at home but only really during the summer. I've never stood up on a wave anywhere near the size of anything I've been on in my kayak. But I feel to better understand surf I've got to work on my board surfing. Board surfing is racing away ahead of kayaking at home. Big wave surfing regularly makes the national news at home these days with a new big wave coming out in the news about one per year and probably making the RTE news several times a year. Thats the

cutting edge of surfing at home but whats the cutting edge of kayaking? Eoin Rheinisch at the olympics in 2008 was probably the last time a kayaker was on the news except for random paddlers in flood news stories last year. Made me think Mick Reynolds should have made more of his running the top drop on mahon falls all them years ago.

Thats it for now, if you any notions or ideas about any of this leave me a comment.

Mikef

Surfing Data: Its time to get techy

I know this blog is very hit and miss but its been very busy of late. Rather than blog about every big surfing day, I'll randomly post up stuff that has come out of those sessions and new ideas on big wave surfing in my tiny plastic kayak. for all things other in kayaking go here http://mdactripreport.blogspot.com/

This Blog!

Surfing Data!

Everyone uses Magicseaweed.com and Windguru.cz to get the forecast for coming swells etc and combine it with an amount of local knowledge and current local weather conditions before deciding where and when to gosurfing.

But often its hard to actually put a scale on what the surf was like when you get back in. Well now maybe you can. Introducing Sportstracker! A (currently) free mobile application for your i-phones and other devices. I have the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic the app is free from the OVI apps store and the app once downloaded runs side by side with their website, where you can set up your own profile and upload your workouts which is what the app is mainly meant for. You can find my profile here

http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/view_profile/mikef

The app is great it works with the phones gps system to track your movements when your out and about on your walk, cycle, hike etc etc. It also measures your altitude, distance travelled, steps taken, pace, max speed, max height etc etc etc it plots a map and gives graphs of distance vs time and altitude vs time etc. Once your finished your workout you an stop it and upload it to the workout or export the file to google earth and .gpx, .

csv, .xml files. this allows you to look at the raw data in all sorts of ways which is great.

So last Friday I hit Bunmahon and used the app on my phone safely tucked away inside my waterproof i-pod case from H2OAudio while I was out. I started the workout from the beach before getting into my boat, at the tide level and then paddled out and stayed out for 50mins, I covered 3.3km and my max speed at any one

point according to the app was 34.2 km/h

Using the exported file .csv file you can open the data in Excel and thrawl through it but be warned there is a lot of it, its seems to take data multiple times per second so you can imagine how much data there is in 50minutes! Any way heres the graph of the Speed against the Altitude over the course of the 50mins

On the graph the peaks in speed seem to match the troughs on the altitude graph which i suppose makes sense because you are likely to be travelling fastest at the bottom of the wave having just shot down the face of the wave?

Now remember the altitude will have been affected by the tide too, which would explain why the troughs seem to get deeper as the tide approached low tide. The altitude at the start on the beach was 61m and at the end having got out of my kayak was 58m so the beach is quiet steep and there was a very high tide last weekend so a nice drop in tide in an hour. The average altitude of the entire session is 54m but the max height was 76m, now I'm sure there is some inherent error in there but that must have been a big wave indecently that was once I whimped out of and then got the beat down and decided to call it quits for the morning session at that stage we did return later but didn't use the sport tracker unfortunately because the surf was massive!

So anyway its interesting to look at, the next idea might be to video a whole surf session and watch the footage back alongside the data and get a real feel for height of some of the waves.

More on this later. The next blog post could be quiet a while, I've sold my playboat and I've gone travelling for a bit talk to you all soon.

Mikef

Its been a while eh?

Its been quiet a while since I've put anything up here and there are several reasons why. Last year I failed my final project in fourth year and so between trying to repeat during the summer, while lifeguarding on the beach, I failed again. So this year rolled around and I had to find a job which luckily I did. I'm now working in the lovely new Londis on the quay in Waterford City. I've been repeating my project since Christmas and I've also been taken on as a contributor to the blog of the nice lads in Munster Dive and Canoe Kayak Shop on Finbarr's St. in Cork City. You can find the blog athttp://mdactripreport.blogspot.com .

In the meantime I have been doing a bit of surfing but big sessions have been few and far between and people to film and take photos even fewer but big thanks to all the lads who have come out and shot Tony and myself when we're out there. I didn't get any response to my questions from Liam McCarthy, I said I wouldn't push him on it.

Thanks to the job I've paid all my rent till june, I bought a new creek boat and I've nearly paid all my other debts so hopefully I'll be able to get one of those GoPro HD Hero Head cams soon then the real fun will start. Here are couple of videos I've made in the meantime, enjoy.

Session in Bunmahon

Session in Kilmurrin Cove

Laters

EDIT: Jesus, I hadn't realised exactly how long it had been until I published the this post, but I've also gotten me a shiny new playboat. A Wavesport Project 62. The Necky Orbitfish has moved on but since seeing Ben Marr in one in the movie "Stakeout" I really want a new one again. :-(

Big Surf Kayak Wave

Man Thats a big wave! Paddler is Alejo Pacheco surfing a wave in Costa Rica photo taken by Stonefish Photography on July 25th.