I got back from the Pacific Paddling Symposium on Sunday night. A very well-run event in a beautiful setting, with engaged students and instructors and one of the healthiest sea kayaking vibes I’ve been a part of for a long time.

Sea kayaks have been an integral part of the Ikkatsu Project since the beginning and although future projects may not rely as heavily on their use, they always will be a part of what we do. A sea kayak is valuable as a method of  travel in remote areas, a vehicle that can deliver a person and his or her gear to places that are difficult to get to and hard to study. There are sometimes other ways of doing the job, but few have the style and flexibility that a sea kayak can give.

For that reason alone, attending a sea kayak symposium from time to time is something that will always be on my calendar. It is a unique tribe of outdoor enthusiasts that I find myself belonging to, and it is always a good thing to go “home” once in a while. I presented the Secrets of Augustine film on Saturday evening and the feedback from that has been very positive and it was good to reconnect again with some people I hadn’t seen in a while and many others that I was meeting for the first time.

The instruction was great… solid coaching and well thought-out lessons. I participated in a day-long class that worked on underway strokes in a current and surge environment. We went out to the rock gardens near Race Rocks for the session and although there wasn’t much in the way of tricky water, it was still a good chance to practice some of the finer points of boat control. Rowan Gloag and Michael Pardy were the coaches, and did a fine job of keeping the class moving and building on successive examples to carry home their lessons.

So that was good. The next few weeks are going to be extremely busy… more to follow.