First Date

Sussing each other out over a few phone calls, Paul and I decided on meeting up for an over night paddle trip. With the SW Canoe show around the corner I suggested meeting up there before moving on to the south coast for a small trip.

I gathered together a few paddling ideas and ended up suggesting a small trip around the coast from Thurlstone Sands up the Salcombe estuary to Kingsbridge. Have a read about it on that link, it really is a great little trip.

While at the show we took the opportunity to have a chat with some of the seakayak product suppliers and manufacturers that had supported me on the Bristol Channel Crossing challenge back in 2006/7. Given the amount of kit that we were likely to need to do the circumnavigation unsupported, I had to look at getting a bigger boat than the plastic Cappella I was used to paddling. It has ben commented in the past that she looks “very low in the water” when carrying me and all my camping gear.

I was keen to try and use as much British equipment as possible on the trip and given my previous experience with P and H Sea Kayaks I had chat with Liz Forshaw about the expedition. She showed an enthusiastic interest in our proposal and gave us a big thumbs up for their support. A Cetus HV was on the cards as the boat of choice.

While the expedition boat was being made for me Liz was happy to provide a demo version of the original Cetus to use in the interim. At least I could start to get out on the water and begin familiarising myself with the larger composite boat. How’s that for support!

One major hurdle overcome – I now had transport!