Rocketeering

The house that I used to live in was, without doubt, the best place to go if you wanted to know what the weather or swell was going to be doing for the next few days in North Cornwall; we worked, breathed and slept the forecast and it was normally displayed on at least one screen in the living area, and not because we surfed:  My housemates founded and run Cornish Rock Tors Ltd, an outdoor activity company specialising in coasteering and sea-kayaking, and are masters of reading weather forecasts because of the central role that it plays in operating their business.  

Coasteering is the pursuit of exploring a largely inaccessible stretch of coastline from the water with a guide: swimming, traversing across the base of cliffs, going in and out of coves and caves and, of course, jumping from the rocks into the water.  It's a journey involving many different disciplines and challenges, and has become an enormously popular summer activity around the south and west coasts of the UK.  My friends were one of the first providers to offer coasteering as an activity alongside sea-kayaking and climbing;  they swam the coast, plumb-lining the water depths beneath safe jumps, measured the effects of the swell and tides, and explored the multitude of caves with waterproof torches and glow-sticks.  It's a strictly controlled activity with a licensing body and some full-on insurance requirements, and as such it demands the utmost professionalism from guides.  That is why it is such a shame that when coasteering is featured in the national press the article is often beneath an attention-grabbing and sensationalist headline that does more to damage the industry through negative associations rather then applaud it for its stringent safety standards.  Tomb-stoning this is not.  Planned, assessed, controlled (as far as you can in the natural environment) and led by experienced and qualified local guides, it is.  

I recently headed out on a coasteering session with Cornish Rock Tors, the first time that I've been out with them in several years, with my camera rig in-tow to see what sort of imagery I could capture.  The stretch of coastline where they operate is truly stunning on a summer day (although I'm heavily biased because home is where the heart is) and never more so than when viewed from the water - a perspective that not many people ordinarily get to experience. 

I asked Jon (CRT's Head Guide) to wave to me from the top of this jump.  He misheard and instead pulled out his party-trick, this enormous back-flip.  Jon is an incredibly experienced guide and has perfected this "stunt" through a great deal of time spent training in a pool, so don't try and copy him.   

A moment of calm in the sea caves.

Cornwall looks positively Caribbean when the sun shines, with beautifully clear and turquoise water.

Whilst I was coasteering a kayaking group paddled past so I swam out into the bay to get some photos of them too.  They're able to travel further in a half-day session and access some really beautiful and remote coves and beaches further up the coast.  

If you're interested in exploring the Cornish coast from the water, learning more about the marine environment and perhaps jumping from a few rocks along the way then give Cornish Rock Tors a call. They offer guided coasteering, ecoasteering (with an emphasis on the marine environment), sea kayaking, wild swimming and climbing around the Polzeath and Port Isaac area, Cornwall.  

The Ra Expeditions

Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) was a renowned Norwegian archaeologist, anthropologist and explorer: a social scientist who backed up his theories about the spread of ancient cultures and population migrations across the ocean by testing them on a 1:1 scale.  In 1947 Heyerdahl skippered the Kon Tiki, a balsa wood raft with a crew of 5 other Scandinavians, 6000km from the west coast of South America to Polynesia in a demonstration of his theory of how the South Pacific was originally populated.  Then in 1970 he made two expeditions on boats made of papyrus reeds (Ra I&II) to prove his idea that the ancient, sun-worshipping, pyramid cultures on either side of the Atlantic Ocean in Egypt and Mexico could have been the result of a trans-atlantic voyage on a reed boat rather than just being down to coincidence as many at the time thought.  He stepped right into an ongoing debate between two schools of archaeological and anthropological thought, those who believed that ancient cultures on either side of the Atlantic developed in isolation, and those "diffusionists" who argues that there had been cultural exchanges pre-Columbus.  The central pillar to Heyerdahl's backing of diffusion theories was the existence of reed boats of startling similar designs from as far afield as Ethiopia (at the source of the River Nile) and Easter Island.  In comparison to these two points on the map where reed boats were still in sporadic use, the distance between Morocco and the West Indies didn't seem so far after all.

Ra I encountered difficulties shortly after embarking from Safi and starting to break apart, limping a fair way across the Atlantic before finally being abandoned to the depths.  Ra II built on the design and construction lessons learnt from the failings of Ra I, and arrived in Bridgetown, Barbados with all eight crew members and the ship's mascots (a duck and a monkey) safe and well.

Heyerdahl's expeditions fostered in him a strong sense of humanity and the environment.  He observed the degradation of the marine environment on his voyages over forty years ago and became a global advocate of marine environmental causes.  He also bore witness to the shrinking world, and conducted many of his projects through times of great world conflict - purposefully taking an international crew and flying the flag of the United Nations as an example of international co-operation on a man-to-man scale.  His opinions on humanity, our shared history, relationship with one another and with our planet are fascinating and clearly born of a great deal of time contemplating a vast horizon.

"The earth of our forefathers no longer exists.  The once limitless world can be circled in an hour and forty minutes.  The nations are no longer divided by impassable mountain ranges and infinite ocean gulfs.  The races are no longer independent, isolated;  they are connected and becoming crowded.  While hundreds of thousands of technicians are working on atomic fission and laser rays, our little globe is whirling at supersonic speed into a future where we are all fellow-passengers in the same great technical experiment and where we must all work together if we are not to sink with our common burden."

Thor Heyerdahl, The Ra Expeditions, 1971

One thing is for sure:  To spend 57 days on a boat made from woven reeds, crossing an ocean without any serious sailing experience in order to test a theory, is incredibly brave.  It is a testament to Heyerdahl's research, convictions and pioneering spirit that time and again he was joined by a crew of adventurers who were often prepared to drop everything at short notice to accompany him on his bold and fascinating expeditions.  

Calling All Cartophiles

I have to admit to having a bit of a thing for maps and charts; I find them utterly fascinating and can lose myself in them in just the same way that I can stare for hours at a fire or the ocean, and I don't think that I'm alone in this.  

Close your eyes, stick a pin in, and make a plan to go there.

Maps have been with us for thousands of years, allowing us to locate ourselves and place ourselves egotistically at the centre of our own personal universe, however big or small.  They allow us to travel without moving anything more than our eyes, faster than the speed of light, shrinking geography to a manageable scale and making every single one of us an explorer.  

Maps and charts transcend languages and, I would imagine, predate human speech - how else do you think homo sapiens who'd not yet figured out how to organise their grunts into primitive language were able to direct each other to food sources and co-ordinate hunts?  I'd like to think that they grabbed a stick and used it to draw directions in the dirt - the original mud map.  At some point our artistic interpretations of the landscape around us took to the skies and showed our world as the gods saw it.  We looked up to map the constellations, and we did our best to look down, taking an educated guess at what lay over the unknown horizon and beneath the sea.  Where there were blank spaces yet to be explored, cartographers used their imaginations and either made something up or drew a monster.

Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather on my mother's side worked at the Ordnance Survey. Somewhere there is a wonderful photograph of my grandfather in North Africa during WWII surveying as part of his role as a map maker for the Royal Engineers.  Perhaps my appreciation of cartography is partly down to genetic memory?

Maps take many forms and information can be presented in many different ways, the most obvious being the two flavours that world maps come in: political or geographical, one being subject to the short term nature of humanity and the lines that we draw in the sand and the other showing what is physically present but only in a narrowly defined scientific category such as vegetation or elevation.  No map can show everything and therefore no map is perfect, and in fact most of the information that we are shown is presented over a flawed template because it is so difficult to present the surface of a sphere undistorted on a flat surface.  Gerardus Mercator produced the best attempt to date in 1569 and that still forms the basis for our view of a flat world map 445 years later, but there's no getting around the fact that Greenland just isn't that big.  If a map is conveying information where location is one of the key considerations, then how it is presented is down to the cartographer.  When Harry Beck sat down at his drafting table in 1931 to produce a new map of the London Underground he took inspiration from an electronic circuit board and spaced each station more or less equally, showing how stations related to each other across the entire network rather than laying them out geographically.  It's an iconic design that has been printed more than any other map in history and is absolutely fit for purpose, but you couldn't use it to navigate yourself overland from Hammersmith to Upminster very easily.  All the same, I don't understand why I've never seen anybody waiting for the tube with Harry's famous coloured lines tattooed on their forearm.  

Other maps show such information as GDP per capita, weather patterns, military spending by country, place names sized in relation to population and how many people are currently online.  The list of what we can convey using a map goes on and on, and there are many different ways in which we can do it.

I have no idea how I manage to get any work done with this lot stuck up in front of my face above my desk.  W.Graham Arader III (the most famous, wealthy and contentious map collector/dealer in the world) probably doesn't have anything to worry about, but I am pretty fond of some of my maps and charts and the day dreams that they trigger.  Current favourites include the "Anti-Piracy Planning Chart" and "Time Zones of Antarctica" map.  

I recently picked up a second hand book called "The War Atlas", a volume of "carto-journalism" produced as part of a series illustrating inequality by a socialist publishing house.  The spread shown above shows the post Cold-War distribution of nuclear weapons (c.1982) looking down on the North Pole.  It is equal parts fascinating and terrifying.

Maps do an awful lot of things and one of the things that they do incredibly well is arouse curiosity where they are meant to sate it.  They tell us enough about a place to pique our interest but never transport us there physically.  They are the ultimate cause of itchy feet, and for that I love them.

My oldest friend gave me this beautiful three dimensional relief nautical chart for my birthday last year.  He said that he'd tried to find one for somewhere that I'd visited on a surf trip but then, as my birthday drew near, he panicked and "just bought the coolest looking one that they had" and in doing so inadvertently added another destination to my "must visit" list.

Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands is one of those books that I dearly wished I had written.  I think that I would probably have written a slightly different subtitle if I had been the author though:  

"Fifty Islands I have not visited but intend to".

 The stuff that dreams are made of/dual purpose bedside lighting and inspiration.

 If you want to see an incredible collection of maps then check out "40 maps that will help you make sense of the world" over on Twisted Sifter.  They are incredible and many of them are very thought provoking.  

And, if you're looking for some bedtime reading in old-fashioned paper and ink form then "On The Map" by Simon Garfield will tell you everything you ever thought you wanted to know and then some about cartography in it's many guises.  That, and an Atlas.

The Explorers Club

 Oh, now here is a club that I wish I could get in to.  The Explorers Club was founded in New York City in May 1904 by a group of men active in exploration, at the request of Henry Collins Walsh.  It's aims were to "unite explorers in the bonds of good fellowship and to promote the work of exploration by every means in it's power".  It is an international multidisciplinary professional society whose members are committed to the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space.  But membership is hard to come by.  For instance, amongst the accomplishments of it's members past and present are titles such as "first to the North Pole", "first to the South Pole", "first to the summit of Everest", "first to the deepest point in the ocean" and "first to the surface of the moon".  A daunting set of hats to hang one's own up alongside, I think you'll agree.

Their Headquarters, at 46 East 70th Street looks like the the club house for some sort of exclusive society from the start of the last century; which in essence, is exactly what it is.  The virtual tour on the club's website shows trophy rooms filled with the sort of artefacts and curiosities that should technically class the place as a museum.  Many of these Trophies are the taxidermied remains of beautiful and rare animals that these days many of us consider grotesque and unnecessary, but at the start of last century were considered necessary proof of a scientific discovery and a requirement in order to determine each new exotic discovery's place in the biological order of things.  But stuffed animals aside, who doesn't want to hang out in a place place with dark, wood panelled drawing rooms filled with wingback chairs, trinkets and curiosities, a place whose staircase is lined with portraits of famous explorers and which has a dedicated flag room.  I quite fancy the idea of turning up, ordering a drink and sitting down in between Indiana Jones and Jaques Cousteau.

The Trophy Room.

Roy Chapman Andrrews (1884-1960) personifies the typical 20th Century explorer.  He spent his entire career at the American Museum of Natural History, which he eventually became the director of, as well holding the presidency of the Explorers Club from 1931-1934.  He led five expeditions to Mongolia's Gobi desert and discovered the first ever fossil of a complete nest of dinosaur eggs.  And he wore a rad hat.

James Cameron and his Deepsea Challenger submersible, image courtesy of National Geographic.

A few weeks ago, on March 16th at their annual Explorers Club Dinner, the Explorers Medal was awarded to filmmaker James Cameron (of Titanic and Avatar fame) for his 7 mile (11km) dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.  The annual dinner is famous for it's exotic menu which this year featured delicacies such as goats eye martini, pickled bull penis and strawberries dipped in white chocolate with black maggot sprinkles.  

All of a sudden, the local pub doesn't quite cut it does it?

All images courtesy of The Explorers Club apart from James Cameron, via National Geographic.

Explore

ex·plore

verb /ikˈsplôr/  explored, past participle; explored, past tense; explores, 3rd person singular present; exploring, present participle Travel in or through (an unfamiliar country or area) in order to learn about or familiarize oneself with it - the best way to explore Iceland's northwest - explore the world of science and technology Search for resources such as mineral deposits - the company explored for oil Inquire into or discuss (a subject or issue) in detail - he sets out to explore fundamental questions Examine or evaluate (an option or possibility) - you continue to explore new ways to generate income

We had to rent the car.  There was plenty of swell about but it was at a funny angle and seemed to be marching straight past all of the spots within a walk or hitch-hike of where we were staying.  There were also massive tides to contend with and on our first evening (and best surf of the trip) a giant harvest moon rose above the mountains at sunset, a sure sign that there'd be a lot of water moving around over the next few days.


So we drove.  We drove north up the coast and we drove south down the coast, bearing west off the main road down every lane and goat track that we could find looking for waves.  We had a map and some whispered advice and hunches to go on, and it was a far better bet than sitting around at base camp drinking mint tea, watching and waiting.  We didn't score any epic waves because every spot that we found to the north was suffering from the same unlucky combination of swell and tide that were ruling out our first choices, and further to the south on the northern fringes of the Sahara desert the  land-sea breeze whipped up by the powerful sun on sand was vicious.


It was by no means a fruitless couple of days though because for all of the unread pages left in our books we gained a hoard of priceless information.  Fishermen in little villages told us about the waves that keep their boats on the beach, we confirmed the locations of several hinted at secret spots and we bumped into a photographer who I'd met a year previously in Sri Lanka who drew us a mud-map to a really good and really hard to find right hander.  
Our michelin road map is now covered in scribbles about set-ups, directions and optimum swell direction, winds and tides for a multitude of surf breaks that don't appear in the guide books.  


All the result of a couple of days crammed in a hot hire care and a good old fashioned spirit of exploration, and a very good reason to go back next time a good swell appears on the horizon.

 "STOP", we presumed.

On the right day... 

Donkey in the Spring growth. 

Beached Blue Boats. 

A sure sign that you've driven to the edge of the desert, and probably the limit of your hire car's capabilities.

Desert panorama. 

"Bierut-by-the-sea" which looked like it could get all time, and sometimes does from what the local fishermen told us...

Joe Round Britain

Joe Leach is a straight up legend of a human being.  He is currently approaching the halfway point of a 2,500 mile marine litterpick whilst he attempts to break the record for the fastest solo unsupported circumnavigation of mainland Britain.  

Joe set off from Falmouth, Cornwall just before 7.30am on May 2nd and paddled around the Lizard Peninsula and Land's End on day one.  Any of you who are familiar with the Cornish coast will get an idea of just what a big challenge Joe has taken on and the sort of top-rate paddler that he is to be able to take on even just the first day of what is expected to be an eighty day marathon.  On day two he came out of the gates just as hard and made it from the far south-west of the county up to Polzeath, a distance of 45 nautical miles (50 "normal" miles) which is massive for a single hit.  

My housemate Matt stood on the wet sand at the water's edge in the dark and flashed his headtorch across the bay towards Stepper Point.  Way off in the distance, just outside the black shadow of the headland came a series of flashes in response.  Joe hauled up on the beach just after 10pm and dropped his daily catch of 3 pieces of marine litter into our bin then ate a mackerel the size of a small whale and a lot of brown rice and crashed out on our sofa for the night. The next morning he got up at 6am and carried on to Lundy Island.  

Approaching Lundy Island on Day 3.

And he's kept on pushing.  Every day he scoops three pieces of litter out of the seas around the British coast (pick-up 3) and paddles hard.  He's had favourable weather and not so favourable weather, and taken on some massive open water crossings to his home on the Isle of Man (40nm) and then on to the coast of Ireland.  Right now he's about to round Cape Wrath and turn East along the North coast of Scotland towards his theoretical half way point of John O'Groats.

Joe is updating his blog with progress reports and photos on an (almost) daily basis and tweeting from his kayak via his mobile phone which he's carrying in a waterproof case.  Follow how he's getting on here or find him on twitter @joearoundbritain.  

With camping spots like this Joe is fast collecting an amazing set of memories of places around the coast of our island that not many people will get to enjoy.

Joe is aiming to raise the modest sum of £1000 for Surfers Against Sewage.  You can donate here or through his website.  Not only is he taking on an unimaginable challenge for which donations will help to drive him on through the tough moments, but he's providing a service and personally removing around 240 pieces of litter from the sea.  Feel free to dig deep the best way you can, just as Joe's digging deep the best way he knows how.

View Joe Round Britain in a larger map

Hitting Paydirt

"Twenty years from now

you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do

than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbour.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

The phrase "If you don't go, you'll never know" gets bandied around a lot, particularly in the "action sports" (I hate that label) arena. But in fairness there is a truth in there.

These days it's difficult to search out novel experiences; in almost every endeavour you can bet you bottom dollar that somebody else has already been there, done that and posted it on the interweb. But not always, and even if they have, that doesn't mean you can't come a close second. Surfing-wise, you'd struggle to find a rideable wave that's yet to be ridden because in the past 60 years surfers have scoured just about every nook on every coast and checked every kink in every reef. When they find a wave then sometimes they'll tell, but if it's good then they generally won't. But secrets out over time and so the surfing map slowly grows. It's nice to think though that there are still mystery spots out there, or fickle, rarely surfed stretches of coast that rarely see a wave and even more rarely see a surfer. It gives me hope that perfect, uncrowded waves are still out there if you can get the stars to align.

I have a bit of a thing these days with that faint possibility that I might find an as-yet un-surfed or un-named or unknown place to catch a wave. I scour maps, study swell charts, tear photos and articles out of newspapers and magazines and relentlessly pester friends or acquaintances for information on far flung coastlines.

Sometimes I hit paydirt.

So the past few years I've tried to follow up on some of my hunches and research and gone looking. Now, I'm not so devoted that I'd risk hauling my boards around on a surf trip with a high risk that I might not find any surf. I still want to catch waves. Instead I've tried to tie my inquisitive forays into slightly bigger trips, either as an aside or as part of an extended stopover on the way to or from a wave-rich destination. I guess if I had more time, more money, and a 4x4 then I'd be able to indulge my curiosity but alas this is the best I can manage.

In August of 2011 I headed back to Jeffreys Bay in South Africa to visit some friends and scratch my Supertubes itch. From there I had two choices: West to the cold Southern Atlantic and the cold, sharky left-handers that peel along the base of the sand dunes of Namibia, or East up the coast of the Indian Ocean to look for warm, equally sharky right-handers in Mozambique and up towards Tanzania.

From the images of the flawless right-handers rolling down tropical points above and below, you can see which option I chose. I have to admit that my decision was mainly down to my desire to surf in boardshorts and my preference for surfing on my forehand.

I'm not saying where these photos were taken, the only clue that I'll give is that they are on the East Coast of the African Continent. The few people whom I managed to prise information about surfing up here from warned me that I ought to take a good thick book with me because I was most likely to find a flat ocean devoid of swell, whipped up by strong winds and teeming with sharks. The stars aligned however and I lucked in, but there were still plenty of X's on my map that I didn't/couldn't make it to where I'm sure I might've found equally good waves but without the handful of other surfers that I ended up sharing the water with. Those other surfers weren't a bad thing though; despite my desire to find solo perfection, it's nice to reduce the odds when there're that many big grey fishies swimming around beneath you.

So next time you wonder whether or not there might be waves there, or have an extended stopover some place strange, or even just want to run the risk and go looking for adventure as well as waves, pack your board and do it. You might just hit paydirt too.

Go looky,

Get lucky.

Images, top to bottom:

• Ponta
• One of the handful of other surfers whom I shared waves with, doing a pro-lap up the point.
• Local Lady on her way back from market.
• Dawn launch, in lee of another point.
• Well, it was offshore.
• Well worth the risk.
• Sunset swaying.
• I dare you to pour some of this on your food.
• Back beach barrels.

P.S.

If any of you read The Surfer's Path then you may well have noticed that an article about wooden surfboard maker James Otter and mine's "The Storyboard" project has made it into print. It's in the Jan/Feb issue (#88) and we're dead stoked about it. The Storyboard exhibition is also due to go on display at the Scarlet luxury eco-hotel at Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall, for the rest of the winter and into Spring, please go check it out if you're in the area.