A final word from Jeff and Harry

by jeff ~ May 17, 2011

Well here we are, sitting in the Cliff House Hotel, Ardmore, feeling rested and semi recovered from our race around Ireland. We apologise for the lack of information, but the last three or four days became a massive obstacle for us all of a sudden. The weather Gods did not smile on us for this expedition, but because of this, it makes the achievement of having completed our, aim so much more satisfying.

Harry and I were sat in Kilkeel just north of the border with the Republic when it occurred to us that we may not make it back to Ardmore in time for our families who were arriving to welcome us home, always a gamble when the wind is around.

I said to Harry,

‘We just need to do the maths mate and then see if we can dig deep enough to pull it off’

To which he replied,

‘Well its about 340km from Kilkeel back to Ardmore and our families arrive on Sunday, to meet us at the finishing post’.

We set out from Kilkeel knowing we had to put in maximum effort and this was hard to envisage as the whole trip so far had been about maximum effort, how could we dig deeper?

We arrived in Bray, Harry had to help me out of my kayak and into my bag, low blood sugar levels and hypothermia causing problems as we crossed Dublin Bay, we thought this leg into Bray was going to be our longest day at about 120km but this was soon to be topped. We had 230 km left to do.

Out of the next 54 hours and 15 minutes of paddling we had only four very short breaks, once when we met with Vaughan to pick up our dry suits and some Red Bull drinks to help keep us awake-30 minutes of time wasted off the water but a valuable investment.  In Rosslare we had too much tide against us to be able to paddle through the channel so we pulled our kayaks onto the granite blocks and waited, 45 minutes later a steward was telling us to get lost as we shouldn’t be there and there was a ship coming in. We made it through the channel and entered the south coast. We then stopped at Kilmore Quay, we were so drained by the wind and tide now that a coffee and cake beckoned us. Our final short stop was on the beach at Ballyteige Bay, northeast of Keeragh Islands where we slept in turns for the next 60 minutes in case we didn’t wake up. We now had 82 km left to go. We were both feeling more exhausted than we had ever felt before and felt we had to look at a contingcy plan, we started to discuss options, looking over Harry’s shoulder I saw the white caps on the water start to diminish, the wind was dropping and the tide was turning and running South west of the Keeragh Islands,

‘Harry, we’re going home’ I said.

Thing’s for once looked in our favour, we launched and before long were off Hook Head, we paddled into the night and we started to move in towards shore, we hit strong tidal flow beneath the cliffs to the East of Ballyvoyle Head, here we also started to encounter serious problems mentally,  ’

Harry paddled over to me and said he couldn’t focus anymore, he had a Penguin on a bicycle bothering him, I told him not to worry stay close beside me but don’t interrupt me, I was trying to negotiate surfing my sea kayak through a bus shelter of old folks and kids, not quite understanding why my bow was able part the tarmac, we were both hallucinating!

Looking back it was funny, in reality it was probably our most dangerous time on the whole journey because nothing now was for real, including the football fields to our left, where I said to Harry we could land if the Penguin didn’nt leave him alone. At first light the hallucinations left with the sun, but the coastguard now appeared, no one had heard anything from us and we were 7 hours overdue, Vaughan had triggered a search in case we were in trouble. Harry convinced the Coastguard we were fine and we continued on towards Ardmore Head, neither Harry nor I had any idea how long we had been in the boats for by now and everything seemed surreal, the slog now to Ardmore seeemed to take for ever, more hallucinations returned in the last few miles but as we hit the last stretch to the slipway, these were pierced by the sudden intervention of bag pipes playing and people cheering. We were home.

We have had an amazing journey and we will be continuing on with this blog for several days for those that are interested. We will be doing short revues on the equipment we chose to use for this unique challenge and Vaughan, who as you know will be making a DVD of the whole adventure, he will get a small trailer to wet your appetites together over the next few days.

Finally we have some massive thank you’s to say

Firstly to our sponsors and all the people we met and who assissted us in some way on the journey- Thank you.

Secondly to our families, Kathryn, Sally (my Mum), Betty (Harry’s Mum) and Harold, especially Harold, for tending to all of our’s and the ladies needs and standing vigil for the time we were out of contact. They say when respecting a person you should look to the parents, I am not sure what you did with Harry in his formative years, but you bred into him a quality I have seen in few men, he was the perfect paddling partner and is made of strong stuff.  Thank you.

Thirdly to Vaughan, you’ve followed us around the Emerald Isle, a 1000 mile adventure of your own no doubt, cheers for doing what you did for us over the last few days to make things happen and for supporting our families when they arrived in Ardmore, it started as an un-supported trip, but this changed on the day we arrived in Bally when you had to help Harry get me into my sleeping bag and then through to the end day, good to have you around mate. Thank you

Fourthly to my wife, Lizzie, you helped us out from day one, obtaining sponsorship, food etc, supported and developed my training programme and also updated the blog daily from short indecipherable emails sent from my I phone in the wee hours you managed to update and keep people informed, Thank you, I love you very much and yes I will get my beard trimmed before I get home. Thank you

Finally Adrian, from the Cliff House Hotel, you are a star, with no prompting at all you made us welcome, even though we were complete strangers and hosted us at the beginning of our trip, you didn’t know if we would succeed or not, but you dangled a very strong carrot our way in offering to host us at the end.
At the end you not only hosted us, but also recieved our families in and treated them like royalty, a really big Thank you to both you and your amazing staff.

I am sure I will have forgotten someone, please excuse me if thats the case, I will remember and make amends………

Jeff and Harry

P.S. I did forget, a very big thank you to Karel our weather man, Karel has been supporting sea kayak expeditions world wide for several years now, so we were very happy when he agreed to support us. You were rarely the bearer of good news Karel and we are sorry you couldn’t get through to us the last day or two. Your information regarding that small weather window when we were on the South coast of Donegal Bay allowed us to move, if we hadn’t our time would most certainly have been in excess of 25 days. Thank you