Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Preparations for summer

I have started already the preparations for the long kayak trip during the summer. Interviewing the persons, who have been doing long sea kayaking trips, writing the list of the items to take with me, ordering and buying missing gear, testing critical equipments, checking every item and preparing these for the 3 months trip.

It's going to be a real physical and mental challenge for me. The longest hiking trips I have done so far have been 1 month. I just need to split the route into shorter manageable legs. 2 months at Swedish coastline and 1 month at Finnish coastline. Most probably I have to paddle Swedish coastline alone, but hopefully will get company for the Finnish coast. The Swedish coast needs to be split into west coast (from Norwegian border to Malmö), southern east coast (from Malmö to Stockholm) and northern east cost (from Stockholm to Haparanda). This will be further divided into 9 smaller units (9 separate maps covering the whole Swedish coastline). Thus I can follow how the trip is proceeding by looking the number of the map currently in use.

On this trip there will be different challenges than in my Latin America trip. No need to worry about earthquakes, landslides, volcano eruptions, traffic accidents, tropical diseases, dangerous animals, guerillas, robberies, thefts, murders, etc...

Now I need to check the weather forecast and try to avoid strong winds, storms, high waves, cruise ships, boats, ferries, strong currents, tides, slippery rocks, hypothermia, etc...

Hmmm, maybe I should stay at home...

2 comments:

  1. I see - This is why I brought all those maps from Stockholm. This has been a great blog! Let's go for a beer some day - would be nice to hear more stories from your journey.

    Sami

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  2. Hi Smi,

    And thanks for the maps you brought from Stockholm. Now I'm cutting them into smaller manageable pieces and protecting them from the water by self-adhesive transparent film (kontaktimuovi) :)

    Well, and your suggestion to go for a b sounds great!

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