thevoyagekayaking

This is quite fascinating actually, I had no idea there was such a thing as a planked waka.

I'd love to see a reconstruction of this one day, it sounds like an extremely capable craft.

What do you think, are they still around?

I do notice all these sightings seem to be from tourists, and they never take photos.

There's a large number of invasive species in NZ that could have been eradicated, had decisive action been taken early on to remove the infestation, including a number of marine plants, so I'm glad to hear in this case we are making the effort and trying to eliminate this pest outright.

Pretty impressive for Stabicraft that a 300 kg dolphin can crash land in the boat and not damage anything.

It sounds like there are options for controlling this weed, the question I have is, why don't we bite the bullet and eliminate it completely? It's something that's been done successfully before with aquatic plants, so why not here? Why wait for it to spread?

A wave park heated with free (to them) heat from a data centre. This is seriously cool.

I work with fire alarm systems for a living, so it's fascinating to see a building get so bad it is shut down entirely by the fire brigade.

No BWOF since 2017 is just incredible though.

This was my weekend on the water, Makara to Titahi Bay Sunday, and a Kapiti island circumnavigation Monday.

These are both very tide dependent trips, so required a reasonably early start to catch the tide.

Both were great trips, and we were very lucky with the weather.

Saturday, the Rangitikei river.

I forgot to start the recording until we stopped for a break, but this was a great section of the river.

Sunday, the Blue Pools section of the Tongariro

A big step up from what I'm used to paddling, this stretch is at the upper end of grade 2, and I feel I learned a lot paddling it.

Any questions you have, feel free to ask.

This is a trip I did a few months ago now, from Makara to Owhiro Bay on the Wellington coastline. I've only done the trip once before, and the trip is tide dependent and requires meticulous planning, tides can run in excess of five knots along this coastline, so it's important to have them working in your favour. The tidal flow gave us a big push, I'd guess taking at least an hour off the trip.

I've also got a Cook strait crossing one I will dig up.

I didn't actually know they were building a new wharf on Somes, it's great that the island is getting more infrastructure. And great they caught the ants, obviously.

The topic came up on my last post about winter paddling, so I thought I would share these, some photos from a road trip around the south island of New Zealand. The photos are lake Ruataniwha and lake Tekapo, boat is a Mission Eco Bezhig. The air temp was just above zero, water temp about the same, no wind, and I had the lake to myself both times. Awesome trip.