Updated my Look

Well I have learned how to customise this blog using a background designed by another. I also managed to work out how to include code for a flickr badge. Not bad for an old dog who is not all that into playing with code (hooray for cut and paste).

I thought that this tropical look would brighten my day up - its been constantly raining here for weeks now so I can guarantee that the water does not look blue and lovely now. Picture brown and filled with debris washed down the river. During the past week our outrigger paddling coach has fished out three large empty drums out of the inlet while we have been training.

We went for a big paddle again this morning - Tuki, our coach picked out 6 of us who he thought must not have worked hard enough during the week and sent us off on a paddle around Admiralty Island - about 18km. He took the remainder of the gang (12 paddlers in two canoes) for a lighter paddle and the idea was that they travelled around the island in the opposite direction to us - when they saw us they were to turn around quickly and it was our brief to try to catch them on the way home. We sneaked up on the other two boats and overtook one of them but the one that we would have liked to catch stayed about 50m ahead of us all the way home. I was wrecked at the end of that paddle.

I have now paddled around the island three times this year. Only three of us have done that - which while is not bad going - is exhausting!