Seekajaktour: Umrundung Irlands im Seekajak 2015

Downs – learnings
A German saying goes “the sum of difficulties we got through without getting
totally bust – that is what we call experience”. So we had some experiences,
luckily nothing too dangerous …
Daily life is the true threat to expeditions.
The PPD (= Porridge Pot disaster)
I was lying on my back groaning with pain. My shoulder hurt so much, that in the first
moment I could hardly move. Still the porridge pot in my left hand I already saw an
imaginary newspaper headline in front of my inner eye: “Circumnav attempt of Ireland
ended, while one team-member fell on a slippery slope with a porridge pot in his
hand …”. Really ridiculous, I thought, having passed the heaviest seas in my
paddling life and then just falling on my “a…-levels” in the morning. After the first pain
passed a bit, I could think about what had happened: It had rained quite a lot that
night. I made my porridge as always and wanted to go down to the beach to have
breakfast looking at the sea, as always. When I went down a slope, I slipped on the
wet ground, fell backwards and landed on my elbow which gave a hard push to my
shoulder in the end. The height of the slope was 20 – 20 m or 2 m? No 20cm! The
situation could not have been less ridiculous and annoying at the same time. After a
few minutes I managed to get up and after some minutes more and a 600 mg of
Ibuprofen we could go back to business as usual. Of course I could not use my europaddle
– too much strain on the shoulder. But with my greenland-paddle (or stick
how, some paddlers call it) I could go on. We even managed to cover 40 km that day,
reaching the Old Head of Kinsale and Jon Hynes and family. The night was awfully
painful and I discovered that the absurdity of the accident had not only bruised my
body but my mind and motivation to go on. I really was not sure if I should continue
and Jon gave me the nicest kick in the a.. I ever got. “If nothing is broken, it is going
to hurt anyway. So you can go on paddling anyway …”, he said.
So I stuck to the stick, my daily dose of Ibuprofen (+homeopathic globuli of Arnica)
and to Jon´s helpful words for the next two weeks.
Hey Jon, this is for you, perhaps you did not realize: You saved the trip for me and
some of the best experiences in my life. Thanks for that.
Mirco later on suggested to call the porridge-pot-disaster “PPD”. That really sounds
more professional and dangerous. Instead of falling on your buttocks with a porridge
pot in your hand, you could fascinate your audience by telling them that you finally
recovered from a severe attack of PPD.
If you do not find yourself as a team – you lose yourself, sooner or later:
First Navigation of the Muingtreana Creek
Yes, it was not easy getting used to the situation, that due to the weather our trip was
more like using weather windows and eating miles instead of exploring areas and
landscapes. Not known to each other very well we had to learn it the hard way how
to become a team. Apart from going round we had many discussions that “everything
could have been easier and more relaxed”… So after 800 km of paddling and some
really good proofs of seamanship we made some bullshit due to these little quarrels.
After an evening full of discussions we really did not focus on the next day´s
paddling. “Just easy paddling north through an inlet to Belmullet”, we thought. It
© Christian Dingenotto 2015
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