The long awaited day has finally come. It’s Monday 03.06.2019 and our team is travelling to Holyhead on Anglesey to take a ferry tomorrow to cross over to Ireland. After few months of scattered preparation we seem to be ready to go.
We are aiming to circumnavigate Ireland by sea kayaks over the two months in June and July 2019. We called our journey Dropseat Adventure in recognition of the very specific nature of the drysuits we use as women.
The hardest part of the preparations are done. All of us, Zoe Robinson – university professor in sustainability, Lindsey Harris – a nurse, Natalie Maderova – teacher of students with special needs, managed to get a leave from our works for 8 weeks.
All of us have been kayaking for a while, so getting the kit together wasn’t such mission. However we are delighted that as a team we received support from Kokatat providing us with our drysuits, and Peak UK. We have all chosen boats that we are comfortable to paddle in.
We decided to go to Ireland for few reasons: to keep our carbon footprint low, the coast is of reasonable length to be doable in the time scale we have, and it’s meant to be pretty.
Natalie’s now excited to go to Ireland as for her it is the third European island by size around which she will paddle.
It terms of experience, it can be said that Lindsey it the least experienced of us when it comes to multi day paddling, long crossings, and expeditioning. She is involved with the King George and Queens Hospital Charity, which supports people undergoing major lower limb amputations. Following the procedure patients engage in long periods of rehabilitation and are often wheelchair dependent up until the time that they are ready for prosthetic limb fitting. Through our paddling we would like to raise money towards an upper limb bike – ergometer for our amputee patients. The upper limb bike will allow individuals to keep as active as possible on the ward and to help build their upper limb strength for the use of self propelled wheelchairs.
Lindsey’s fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/lindsey-harris10
Natalie continues to support young people at Shadwell Basin and their access to adventure sports within the city. So if you liked any article and want to let me know, please, do it here: