Group control on the Clyde...

 Coming out of Carrick Cove...

...all the kayak sailors were now shipshape, Kayak Skippy's boom was now rigged in a more efficient, Northern Hemisphere orientation.

 At first our intention was to hug the coast below Culzean Castle...

...but we succumbed to the temptation of heading well offshore where the wind...

 ...was both stronger and steadier.

The kayak sailors drew steadily ahead...

..leaving Jim (in the sail-less Taran) and I in their wakes. I stayed with Jim by "tacking" downwind (broad reaching on alternate tacks) behind him.

Conventional sea kayakers will by now be horrified by our group control... all I can say in our defence is: "Kayak Skippy, Kayak Skippy, Kayak Skippy, this is Kayak Sula" and... we all knew where we were going... the pub at Dunure!

Watching the birdie at Turnberry.

As we set off the wind was blowing at an average of 12 knots gusting to 22.5 knots. The METAR from Prestwick Airport showed the wind averaged 10 to 13 knots all day. Generally Dunure is about 1 windforce greater than Prestwick. 

The latest member of our team to get a Flat Earth sail is Mike.

He looked ever so pleased with his new sail as we headed out from the shelter of...

... Turnberry Point with its famous golf course and lighthouse. Phil was also looking pleased till he noticed that he had put his boom on upside down!

 Still it was an excuse to take a detour past the reefs of Barwin Point and land at Carrick Cove.

Jim in the Taran was catching plenty waves but was already finding it hot work keeping up with the sails. Still, he was getting in training for some sea kayak races later in the year.

 Mike was still beaming about his new found toy as...

...we took a break on the sands while Phil fixed his boom.

How do you get your boat to the water?

As the youngster in our little team, Jim casually slung his kayak on his shoulder and made his way stylishly down the Maidens beach...

 ...David (who has seen a few more pints of Guinness than Jim) uses a trolley but he would have made more rapid progress, if he had sheeted his sail in.

Phil says you really can't beat a trolley at Spring low water.

As for me, I am no longer in that invincible state of the first flush of youth so trollies are a necessity, my knees just ache watching Jim!

PS James from Australia has sent me photos of a very interesting alternative to strap on trolleys. See his comment below.

Thanks James. :o)

Adobe Lightroom 4 review

Being a photo blogger, I often get asked if my photos are "Photoshopped". Well, when I started digital photography I did use Photoshop on a Windows PC. However, when I got a DSLR that produced RAW files, I found I ended up doubling my file storage, as I would have the original RAW file and an equally large edited .psd file from Photoshop. Also Photoshop is not good at cataloguing or viewing files and I never really got along with the Adobe Bridge file manager viewer that works with Photoshop. So I moved to Lightroom 2 as it is a file manager, viewer editor and printer; all in one. As you edit a RAW file, it just saves a small "recipe" of your changes alongside the RAW file so is much more efficient in terms of file storage space. It is also very fast at browsing files and finding catalogued files.

People also ask if I need to heavily edit the photo files you see on this site. The answer is no and I find that Lightroom has more than enough tools to do the job. So I happily upgraded to Lightroom 3, when it came out.

Mostly I just straighten the horizon, sometimes I crop into 16:9 widescreen format like here, to cut out excess sky and sea from landscapes. Also, I use an HD projector at my sea kayaking talks and it uses 1920x1080 pixels. When I am exporting resized photos for the web or slide shows, Lightroom is very good because it will allow batch resizing to the longest edge, if you want portrait and landscape shots to be the same area, or to a fixed edge e.g. vertical edge. This is great if I am preparing a mixed group of landscapes and portrait shots for projection, I will just resize them all to 1080 pixels on the vertical edge to get best results.

Lightroom also has a built in database of the common faults (eg vignetting, barrel/pin cushion distortion) of a wide range of lenses. It has a tool that when ticked will automatically "correct" a photo using the lens data in the EXIF header. I use this a lot with my Canon L lenses.

Other edits I do will usually involve exposure corrections. Either the overall exposure or more commonly recovering detail in the shadows and highlights. Lastly, in landscapes, especially if in blueish hazy conditions, I will sometimes either boost the clarity control or reduce the blue luminance to improve distant detail.

Lightroom 4 has just been released and I am pleased to say that in addition to a price cut, the RAW conversion engine has been updated and the editing controls for shadow and highlight are now more intuitive to use and certainly on the few comparisons I have made with Lightroom 3, the algorithm used seems to produce better results. These are probably the two most useful tools in Lightroom and I am pleased to see improvement. Lightroom 4 allows you to choose whether to convert any of your previously edited Lightroom 3 work to the new RAW conversion engine. You can still work with the old version and tools in Lightroom 4 but if you convert to the new expect to have to make some adjustments.

A major reason I upgraded to Lightroom 4 was the inclusion of reverse geo-tagging. Most of my cameras don't have a built in GPS and the one that does takes so long to get a fix that I have generally taken the photo and switched the camera off before it knows where it is. Previous versions of Lightroom have been unable to import my navigation GPS's gpx file and to tag the photo files with their position in the files' EXIF metadata. I used a separate program called GPicSync to do this but that freeware program took ages to open all the RAW files, so I only used it with small .jpg files I had exported.

Now Lightroom 4 has an extra map screen which allows you to import your GPS unit's .gpx file and very quickly autotag all (or selected) photos with their position. You do need to ensure that the camera is set to the right time so that it is correctly synchronised with the GPS unit's time (which the GPS will get from the satellites). If you forget to do this there is a handy time zone offset slider that will also allow you to compensate if your camera is a few minutes late or fast. This is a great addition to Lightroom, which has speeded my workflow.

All in all, Lightroom 4 has some welcome major improvements, which have made it a worthwhile upgrade for me. If you are not using Lightroom and are still using Photoshop or similar, then do yourself a favour, get yourself a copy of Lightroom 4 now! It is a really excellent program that will greatly enhance your workflow, when you get back from a photo shoot. You will end up with more time to compose and take photos rather than fiddling with them afterwards!

Lightroom 4 is available for Windows PCs and Macs for £103.88 (Upgrade £59.09) free trial available.

Note for Mac users.
Since 1984, I have been ambidextrous, using primarily PCs for home use but using both PCs and Macs at work. Before I retired, I was able to compare Lightroom 3 and Aperture on a well specified Mac Pro (with a Quad-Core processor) using my Canon 5D mk2 RAW files. I found Lightroom 3 to be faster at file handling and previewing and it also has a much more powerful set of editing tools. Lightroom and Aperture use different RAW conversion engines. On my Canon files, the Lightroom converted RAW files look a littler flatter and more natural than the Aperture converted files that look brighter and more contrasty. Some people prefer one over the other. Both programs allow you to adjust the end result anyway but I found that the Lightroom tools work better on my photos. (I found Aperture was less easy to tone down, than Lightroom was to brighten up.)

Given Lightroom's range of effective tools, I think Aperture users would end up using Photoshop much more than Mac Lightroom users. (I hardly use Photoshop since I started using Lightroom.) Aperture also handles the files a different way, wrapping everything into a single database file. Aperture maintains a separate catalogue from the files. I guess that most people brought up on Macs would prefer the Aperture approach but ambidextrous and recent PC converts to Mac probably prefer the greater file control of Lightroom and might not like committing all their photos to a single large file on a (mortal) hard disk's allocation mapping table. (I am still smarting from how little control I have over photo handling in my iPad2, so perhaps I have a slightly jaundiced view of this.) Making the right choice, first time, is important because after you have used one or the other program for any length of time, you will have a lot of cataloguing and editing that you will not be able to transfer. It's a bit like camera systems, once you have bought into Canon or Nikon...

Anyway I recommend that Mac users should also try Lightroom 4 for themselves, it is a great program and it is available as a free trial download for Macs.

Rough water Handling by Doug Cooper review.

Doug Cooper is head of Paddlesport at Glenmore Lodge in Scotland and is a renowned BCU level 5 sea kayak coach. I bought and enjoyed his previous book, Sea Kayak Handling, so I expected this to be a good book. What I was not expecting was just how good a book this would prove to be. It is remarkable how  much insightful information has been condensed into such a compact and clear volume.

However, this is no easy, cover to cover, bed time reading. The cover clearly identifies this as a practical manual and just as you wouldn't read all the chapters in the Haynes Honda CB500 Four '71-'75 manual to take the cylinder head off, so it is with Doug's new book. It is an ideal manual to support your learning of how to handle a particular set of conditions, which strokes to use, how and why. I much prefer this type of problem orientated approach, presented with solutions rather than the alternative: a blow by blow account of how to do each stroke that then leaves you to sort out when to use it.

There is a useful introductory chapter on how to best use this book. The main chapters cover: High Winds, Moving Water, Surf, Tide Races, Rock Hopping, Open Crossings and Rolling but there are two excellent supplementary chapters on Physical and Psychological Considerations. These are vital areas to safe performance at high level, which are often ignored or glossed over in other books.

I like the overall tone of this book a lot. Repeatedly the author talks of "to gradually build your skills", "build up gradually to those more committing environments" "set yourself appropriate goals". All too often, rough water rescue reports are examples where over enthusiasm "to push themselves" has led to trouble for those who are not experienced enough to realize that the conditions were well beyond their experience.

As each chapter unfolds, techniques to handle a variety of conditions are clearly  broken down into a set of bullet points and illustrated by very clear, though small photographs. I was delighted to see that most useful of "saviour" strokes, the bracing stern rudder, gets an early mention.

There are a number of guest "Coaches top tip" boxes placed at relevant positions in the text. Each of these is an excellent addition to the text and they also act as a reminder of the respect in which Doug Cooper is held among his fellow coaches. (I particularly enjoyed the Howard Jeffs photo (with a crab) a reminder of a 2006 sea kayaking trip based on an old trawler.) Only Fiona Whitehead's tip had little relevance to me but others may find it rather more helpful!

A very minor semantic criticism might come in the surfing section. Doug describes a turn at the top of the wave as a top turn. Surfers, kayak surfers and windsurfers might disagree. A true top turn comes after carving backup the wave face (nose first), following a bottom turn and that would be a fine trick in a sea kayak!

In the book Doug is careful to identify situations where you might be learning techniques in remote and potentially dangerous situations. He refers the reader to other texts such as Gordon Brown's Sea Kayak and Franco Ferrero's Sea Kayak Navigation for advice about safe journeying.

The chapter on physical considerations contains some excellent dietary and training advice and  Doug moves even higher in my estimation as he is clearly enjoying a pint of Guinness in one photo! The chapter on psychological considerations addresses that fine line between self confidence and overconfidence, which can be particularly difficult to get right in the learning stages.

A significant part of the success of this book must be due to the high quality photographs (many by Lara Tipper), which, despite their small size, clearly illustrate the techniques. The photos were all taken in good lighting conditions, which must have been a challenge in itself, given most are of Scottish locations.

In conclusion this is a remarkable book which will help lead the progression of rough water handling skills of intermediate and advanced paddlers. It is not presented in a gung-ho, bravado fashion that might encourage foolhardy emulation before a kayaker is truly ready. Rather it emphasises building up experience, setting appropriate goals and taking advantage of coaching when necessary. The techniques are clearly illustrated and presented in the context of a rough water situation where their correct use will help get the paddler safely through the problem. This is a stunning book which I expect to refer to and learn from for years to come. Buy it!

Finally, although I bought Doug's first book, this one was sent to me as a review copy by the publishers, Pesda Press. They needn't have bothered, I was going to buy it anyway.

Dodging Autumn on an autumn day.

It had turned into a glorious autumn day as we left the east coast of Bute and sailed back across the Firth of Clyde channel...

 ...dodging ships like this tanker (MV Autumn 13.8 knots)...

 ...until we rounded the north end of the Great Cumbrae Island and dodged the Calmac ferry, MV Loch Shira...

 ...on our way back to Largs marina.

Before we landed on the sands below the slipway...

 ...we had to dodge our way through several racing fleets of 420s, Lasers, Toppers and Optimists.

Our rigs attracted a fair bit of attention from the sailors yet 130 years ago kayak sailing rigs were a common sight on the Clyde.

Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn.

From Kilchattan Bay we went round Kerrytonlia Point to the east coast of Bute. The view stretched away to the East Kyle and the mountains of Cowal beyond.

After a while we stopped at the north end of Kerrylamont Bay. We spent time talking to a gentleman who had retired to this lovely spot. Sadly his wife had died shortly after their arrival on Bute but he found solace walking through the island's varied landscape.

Mature beech trees lined the shore...

...and extended far to the north, hinting at the presence of a great estate. We added a plastic helmet to a cairn that had been built below the high watermark. It's existence would be transitory as its foundations would be undermined by the first autumn gale.

We paddled on until we came to this pier and boathouse. This was our cue to paddle a little way offshore...

...and there above the trees, we could just see the Gothic roof tops of Mount Stewart, the ancestral home of the Stuarts of Bute. It replaced their previous residence, which was destroyed by fire in 1877. Successive Marquesses of Bute worked on the house but it was only finally completed in the late 20th century. It is probably one of the finest Gothic mansions in Britain. It is now a popular wedding venue for the great and the good due to the privacy provided by the 300 acres of gardens, woodland and mile long drive.

The gardens were laid out by the 2nd Earl and developed by the 3rd Earl who went on to be one of the founders of Kew Gardens in London. He was also British prime minister in 1762. The 2nd Marquess built the Bute Docks in Cardiff in 1839. The 5th Marquess was a keen ornithologist and bought St Kilda after the evacuation of its population in 1930. He gifted the islands to the National Trust for Scotland in 1939. The current 7th Marquess won the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1988 and has recently completed the interior of the chapel (you can see the spire above the trees). The Bute family tree makes interesting reading.

So what of the headline "Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn."? Roughly translated that is "I'll put a stone on your cairn".