New site, Florida Kayaker and wildlife photographer. Here’s a link to the blog:
http://paddletales.blogspot.com/
Many nice shots of birds of the gulf coast. Here’s some of mine if ya wanna look.
http://flickr.com/photos/tonyolsen/collections/72157600004887151/
Take care all.. Safe paddling
Tony
Carlos of Diario de kayak sent me a couple of links on kayaking in the Mediterranean. The link to the pictures is here. Also included is a link to a video taken from a kayak, with the camera under the water link: Bajo de Agua
Thanks Carlos
Tony
Here’s a guy that can really roll a SOF kayak. Interesting viewpoint, the camera is mounted on the bow.
Another bunch of Greenland style rolls here.
Enjoy!
Tony
Very nice kayaking diary from Spain! Non Spanish speakers don’t fret, there is a translate flag for you to click on to get it in English. The stories loose a bit in the English translation, but the general thoughts can be understood.
On this site are a tons of very nice pictures and trip reports. Sure is making me want to head back to Spain! Check it out by clicking this link: diario de kayak.
Tony
A little late on this post, but here it is.Â
We had a good time, me; 1 redfish and 1 trout. Jim; 2 trout. This was good enough to keep us in first place for quite a while but some harder core guys came in later and bumped us down to 4th. Had a good day, and will do things a bit different next year.
Since then, I’ve taken on a contract job at South Texas Project. A dual PWR (Westinghouse) plant that is going into a re-fueling outage. Good for a bit of money for more epoxy and glass for the next boat :) The instrumentation department calls me back every outage.
Since starting this job, I’ll be a bit busy for the next 5 weeks. Down side is no kayaking 
Take care all.
Tony
Just loaded all my gear and will be fishing tomorrow. A big boat and kayak tournament. Good buddy Jim talked me into it, so will be paddling and fishing the canals at 5 am tomorrow. After first light, we will go out into West Galveston bay off of Tiki Island. Should find a few honey holes, will probably fish near North Deer Island as well.
I’ll let ya’ll know how we did.
Tony
Had a great time as usual with Kurt and Anton, got to paddle in rain and wind.. Always fun! No lightning in it or we would have called it quits. On Saturday, I tried a roll, and it was one of those were EVERTHING went wrong. Oh well, that’s what practice is for. On Monday, Anton and I went out again and played around with half filled boats. Anton has pretty much got the self rescue down, he can get back in while in the deep. Gets a little water in the boat, but it is still quite manageable for him. He added more and more until he found out where the secondary stability went away. Nice thing to know.
Here’s a picture of Anton loading his Sea Tour on my element.
Tony
I went kayaking with Kurt Maurer yesterday, always a fun and learning experience.
I’ve been trying to get my roll down and to build a bit more confidence. While playing in the shallows, working on the hip snap, Kurt said “that hip snap was pretty weak” so I did another and promptly went all the way over. I guess that one was strong enough.. Now to find a happy middle ground.
After going to deeper water, I nailed 3 more rolls. On the last one, my paddle was not set for the sweep and I noticed it was starting to dive. I stopped the attempt and got the paddle in the right position and ended up with a very nice sweep, snap, layback and recovery.
Information I learned / had reinforced, was: (more…)
After merciless prodding and cajoling from Kurt Maurer, I finally got more padding and a better seat in the Sea Ranger. Ya see, Kurt has very tender knees and other body parts so I had to put a little padding in to ease the pain. (I figured he would get calloused up a bit and it would be a non-issue… not the case.) Also in the works was extending the seat a bit for more support ahead of the sit bones. This latter mod was for me to keep my legs from going to sleep. I sanded down the front edge of the seat with my bench sander to make it square then used some contact adhesive to stick a ~6 inch extension on it. After that was stuck, I shaped it a bit. Things turned out pretty good. Kurt and I are tentatively scheduled to paddle again on Thursday so will see then if any more mods are needed. Here’s ya a picture of the seat, and as usual, you can click on it for more shots..
Tony Olsen
Sorry about being so late on this trip report, but I have been paddling and working other projects.
On August 12th, seven of us set out from Sea Wolf park for a 12 to 13 mile circumnavigation of Pelican Island. Of the 7 kayaks, 3 were strip built wood kayaks and of the 7 paddles used, 4 were Greenland style.
Our launch site was the slippery rocky Northwest side of the park. At about 9 A.M. we headed North to the old concrete ship, the ‘Selma‘. After looking that over for a while, (more…)