Peter’s Paddling Blog

I managed to catch quite a cold in connection with the surfing Saturday. Roll training Monday evening in surprisingly cold water might not have helped either. As a result I switched to indoor training during midweek.
I had dreaded getting back on the ergometer but I’ve actually been enjoying the sessions. The good old 1-2-3-3-2-1 with 1 minutes breaks program keeps amusing me.

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Blame the music in the background on the rowers in the room. Bringing your own mp3 player is highly recommendable.

For some unknown reason, ergometer training is rather rough on the hands. Soon you feel the lack of a protective lump(thickened hard skin) on the root of the left thumb. Three ergometer days in row and your hands look like those of a new kayaker.

[Inuit mode]
Two days ago Danish television broadcasted a documentary on life in modern day Greenland named ‘The Escape from Greenland’.
The homepage of the documentary is located here[Danish]. The page lists times and dates for reruns.
I’m sure the qajaq enthusiasts will find the program very interesting. I dare say Greenland is anything but paradise these days. As Greenland is a Danish province, this is certainly our problem.
[/Inuit mode]

Saturday I went back to Klitmøller for a new surf session. Conditions were nice with waves big enough to toss you around while not exactly super scary. With the water temperature dropping, I prefer to keep the tossing within bounds.

The town Klitmøller is really a curious place. Located at the northwest corner of Jutland, this is as far away as you can get in this country. Here a mix of Dutch, Germans and Danish wind, kite and kayak-surfers gather to enjoy the waves around the local reef.
One thing that always struck me about Klitmøller is that the township apparently doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the many visiting surfers. There are zero facilities on or near the beach and as a result people are stripping down and switching clothes on the windblown parking lot.

I’m fully aware that the old prejudices against surfers persist. While the visiting youngsters might not spend much money in the god awful tourist shops or rent expensive houses, the very existence of the surfers is clearly a big attraction for the regular tourists. These onlookers will from the comfort of their heated cars hang out, look at the surfers and think about their next meal.
Yes while some surfers seems to aim for a beach bum look, I wonder who really the resourceful ones are? Is it the onlookers in the cars or the kids throwing themselves into the North Sea?

[Politician mode on]
Today I mailed the windsurfing organization on behalf of the canoe federation to establish a contact between our two organizations. Saturday the sea was rather crowded as it turned out the windsurfers held the Danish junior championship. In the future when we plan our kayak surf gatherings, we should at the very least check the windsurfers’ tournament calendar.
[Politician mode off]

I have some on-water footage, which I will try to edit in the next few days.

Finally I got around to use the Surf Machine for what it was designed for. During the weekend 13 paddlers of various backgrounds met up in the small township Klitmøller located at the west coast of Jutland. The best surf spot of Northern Europe as some like to call it(No question that there are places in the UK with better surf conditions).

Saturday conditions were rather brutal with a force 7 onshore wind and a strong current pushing us into a stone reef. We stayed away from the outermost breakers as they were really too nasty looking.

I can now testify that a surf kayak is frightening fast. This also means that if you can’t control the kayak(and I can’t) you’ll get slammed in a number of extraordinary high speed crashes. Now I know why the surf kayak community calls it getting obliterated. Boy did I get obliterated! I’ve done a number of surf sessions before, but never has my upper body been flung around underwater like it did Saturday. It felt like some giant grabbing my legs and violently shook my upper body. No swimming all weekend though.

Sunday conditions were way calmer which allowed for a bit more of control during the surfs. We were sharing the breakers with 15-20 board surfers which in itself was totally unproblematic. This is only the second time I’ve experienced board surfers in Denmark.

We shot some videos but nothing fantastic. When I was filming I was freezing my butt off in my icy cold wetsuit. Lesson learned.

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I used a Greenland paddle Saturday and my Knysna wing Sunday. None of these were really optimal but good enough for now.

Having a surf kayak with fins is not unproblematic. No matter how hard I tried to be careful during launches and landings, the fins really took a beating. Not that they broke or anything.

We have now founded a Danish Kajaksurf Google Group to organize our surf activities in the future. Perhaps paddlers from our neighboring countries will be interested too.

In less than three weeks we’ll meet in Klitmøller again for a new session.