Paddle4Play: March 2011

Toome Training 27 March 2011

With the lack of water over the past few weeks has seen people start to get itchy feet looking for water, A post popped up last week saying Toome wave (Northern Ireland) was back working,

Toome only works in low water when everything is dry the fish pass to the side of the weir gates forms a retentive wave the only problem are the steel girders which are in position as an Anti Poaching measure. this makes the feature shallow and means boats get very beaten up if not careful.

Heres a quick video put together by Conor Macken from Sluice Crew.

Toome Training, Spin to win or Die.

CANI Paddlefest 2011

Once again Paddlefest time of year was upon us in recent years this was a chance to load up the shop and go and show the world what was on offer but with the dates being the Paddy’s day weekend meant a low take up of participant that along with having to work meant we could not travel until after the England Ireland Rugby game on the saturday night,

This Years Paddlefest was due to take place at the newly redeveloped Tollymore Outdoor Centre in The Mournes and WOW it is truly remarkable!

We arrived with talks and lectures in full swing with showings from Richard Lineham and Jeff Allen as well as Lowri Davies on the Friday kept everyone entertained,

This years theme was Journeying and expedition with many sessions looking at skill needed for these situations,

The sunday activities of both river and sea skills was taking place at a small tidal flow in Dundrum Bay so with the I-Canoe wagon loaded we set our selves up with a selection of Demo river and sea kayaks for all to try. With a lot of interest in the new Project 56X and the old Favourite 2010 Allstar we had a small freestyle workshop right in front of us.

Back to the centre for catch up and debrief with familier faces and we leave paddlefest for another year.

Well done to CANI Paddlefest has a great attraction for all even with lower number the event was a huge hit.

Sluice training

The week before the selections at Sluice saw the ESB dumping 3 meg every lunch time making a perfect break in the day for some training, Myself and Tricky Woo Walshy spent the week training hard and working on improvement

heres some footage