Peter’s Paddling Blog

Years ago I was told of the small island Helgoland some 50 km of the German mainland and how real(tm) German sea kayakers paddles to Helgoland and back at least once in their lifetime.

Well as I’m not a German this challenge had no direct impact on me. Still I often thought of Helgoland and 4-5 years ago I even bought the charts for the German Bight as I wanted to paddle from the Netherlands to Denmark including going to Helgoland. Unfortunately the weather had other plans and I went on a trip round Denmark instead.

Then two weeks ago while paddling with the Germans in the Danish Wadden Sea, I spoke with Matthias Panknin of my plans to go to Helgoland this year. Matthias had already paddled to Helgoland and back three times but wanted to go a fourth time. I could ask for no better companion as Matthias is highly experienced. In fact I believe Matthias ranks among the top sea kayakers of this world though he is way too humble to ever admit that.

We met up Thursday evening at the German beach resort St. Peter Ording, packed our kayaks and build up our tents close to the water. A few hours later at 4 o’clock in the morning we got up and launched the kayaks in a calm sea. The wind, waves and tide soon helped us along and after 5 hours and 29 minutes we paddled into the harbor of Helgoland.
We made a good team. No problems and no bullshit. Every hour we made a short rest, ate a bit and took turns setting the course for the next hour.

St. Peter Ording before sunrise. Matthias is putting away his kayak trolley.

Arriving at Helgoland we made the grand tour of the island which is actually pretty short. Read the Wikipedia article for details of this rather fascinating place in the North Sea.
Helgoland once belonged to Denmark so perhaps I should start promoting the idea among danish sea kayakers that they have to go to Helgoland?

Yours truly with the red rocks of Helgoland in the background.

The rest of the day we wondered how and when we could return to the mainland as the forecast was gloomy as hell.

I spend a rather miserable night as I had only brought my minimalistic tarptent which didn’t cope at all with the high wind and the rain. I was only rescued by a pair of ear plugs and the dryloft shell of my sleeping bag.

We started the return trip at 10 o’clock in rather messy, solid and chaotic waves. We had to go two hours earlier than we would have preferred but the forecast warned of an increasing headwind later on. As a result we had the tidal current against us and only made slow progress. Later the tide turned, the wind died and getting back to St. Peter Ording was a walkover. We landed in a mild surf on a highly crowded beach and quickly joined ranks with the many people swimming and bathing.

Later we drove by Freya Hoffmeister and Greg Stamer, who have just returned from their trip around Iceland, got some icecream and looked at rolling kayaks(I want one).

I’ve uploaded the GPS data from our trip to Motionbased. Here you can view the track from Skt. Peter Ording to Helgoland and from Helgoland to Skt. Peter Ording.

Kayaking(and canoing I should say) is really living at the mercy of the weather. One month ago at our surf symposium we had dead calm weather. Now at the weekend of the Danish flatwater championship all hell breaks loose with stormy weather resulting in a cancellation of the last competition day.

This clip from Saturday of the C1 Youth 18 1000m finale demonstrates the trouble of paddling a ICF style canoe in a stiff wind. Do notice that paddling a C1 is way way harder than the most tippy K1. No emptying a canoe at the 200m mark is not normal procedure.

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You’ll find a bunch of clips from the other finales here.

My trip with the German paddlers was likewise altered because of the wind. We choose a more sheltered route to avoid being exposed to the North Sea Sunday.
It was a nice and instructive paddle. It’s a bit weird but no questions that the Germans are much more experienced paddling the danish Wadden Sea than any danish paddlers.

Not to beat a dead horse but during the trip I was once again reminded how important strength and power is for safe traveling at the sea, when I was asked to tow a kayaker.
Perhaps one of the numerous sea kayak instruction books should offer advice on how one actually gets fit to paddle a kayak. Dear reader – you got to admit – forward paddling is not exactly given much coverage unlike say how to make a solar still and signal an airplane with a hand mirror…

I’ve put up my photos from the trip here.

The Danish Flatwater Championship is taking place next weekend at my very own lake.
The event is organized in a co-operation between the Danish Canoe Federation, my own club and the neighboring club.

We recorded some video clips at the training center and I created a video teaser for the event(isn’t flatwater racing cool ):

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As for myself, I can’t attend the event as I’m joining a paddle through the entire Danish Wattensea organized by the speaker of sea kayaking of the German Canoe Federation. This will be a EPP level 4 training trip.

Speaking of EPP, the Danish translation of the EPP Sea Kayak levels have been made available for download.