Seekajaktour: Umrundung Irlands im Seekajak 2015

Mental Skills
While coping with sea and weather conditions we not only improved our
paddling but also our mental skills …
While paddling think yourself over to the other headland
Before I went to Ireland my maximum time in a boat was limited by the fact of not
being forced to wee into a bottle. i.e. I needed to get out after max. 3 hours. Going
round Ireland however, especially meant going from headland to headland with
distances longer than 15 km. So “shoveling water” for 4 to 5 hours, focusing on a tiny
dot on the horizon, was a new experience as well. For me neither the wee, nor the
boring continuous paddling turned to be a big problem. Being used to the watery
desert in eastern Frisia (North West Coast of Germany), I went on “autopilot” and
paddled, keeping my mind busy with thoughts how the next headland might look like
or looking forward to the next RiZ. (=Riegelzeit / Break to eat a chocolate bar). Mirco
being the rough water playboy and being used to workout sessions in the tidal races
of Anglesey, got a bit slow on the first bigger crossings. Only later on he found his
own way how to deal with long crossings mentally.
Going on means matching expectations with conditions
For me the paddling itself was a challenge, as the skills I needed were so
completely differently from my paddling at home. Although the weather, as stated
many times before, was not always fine, giving up for such reasons never was an
option. For Mirco going on in these conditions or leaving people and places where we
both would have liked to stay, meant doing the trip completely differently to what he
had expected. Making the best out of it was an issue for him for quite a while. When
we finally did a 3-hour crossing to Newcastle with a headwind force 4 picking up to
force 5, he shouted into the wind “Oh come on, just give me more. That will make me
even stronger”. So he finally made his peace with the way we had to do our journey
due to the weather.
© Christian Dingenotto 2015
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