The coming of spring has been late, but finally the ice has melted. I did pass the weekend paddling along the SW coastal line & islands: both days in full sunshine and calm waters, total of 30 miles. Water temperature was about 35 to 38 F. The Nordkapp moved like a hot knife into butter. Someone told me that Finland was during the weekend the warmest place in Europe, but surely that did not warm the sea water... I was checking the weather each morning from the radio, carrying among other things a GSM phone and equipped with a PFD, pogues, a paddle-float and a brand new two-piece dry-suit. The trousers of the dry-suit are not breathable, so I might call the inner climate of my dry-suit rather tropical :-) after the trips. Still, I did spend quite a long time before going out, considering the situation: my route could have been nearer the coast. Finally, because of the lack of wind I chose to go further out and check the views. I counted seven other kayakers, a great number of swans and geese. Especially the young swans, born last summer, were looking extraordinarily funny because their feathers were not pure white, more like dirty brown combined with white ones. And how clumsy the swans are: I am always admiring the way how rising from the water and starting to fly takes such much energy, time and hell lot of splashing and continuous squawking. Really h e a v y birds! I was once unexpectedly confronted with two of them, because I was not able to notice their close presence behind some rocks. Four of the kayakers told me that they had spent three days trying to paddle to an island, rented to their club since the early seventies, 15 miles away. Before the 1st of May it was almost impossible becouse there was so much floating and packed ice, they had to stop and stay overnight at some islands. Then the wind turned and the ice left during one night, though there was still some occasional large chunks of ice floating around us. Not very much traffic, only the semi-professional fishermen with their small aluminium boats trying to catch sea salmon, which is moving at this time of year to warmer and shallower waters. The sea was quiet and crossings were safe, until I found in the midst of a nice and comfortable Sunday afternoon between two islands two jet-skiers zigzagging and making awful noise. It could be heard from a distance of five miles, and it took exactly same distance and a lot of time to paddle away to get lost of mymore than aggressive emotions. I hope it is possible to get a kayak equipped with a rocket launcher... Cheers, Ari Saarto "Home of the Famous & Traditional Scandinavian Skinny-dipping [TM]" Finland - Europe GSM +358 - 50 - 526 5892 fax. +358 - 3 - 828 2815 e-mail: asaarto_at_lpt.fi *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:49 PDT