Although I had an aviation RT licence for the radio for my plane, I didn’t have one for my handheld VHF waterproof marine radio for sailing and kayaking and the aviation licence didn’t cover it so it was time to go on a course in a North Berwick church. I parked in North Berwick and a woman parked beside me and then started to go on about the parking problem in North Berwick – as far as the eye could see were empty places in a car park a short distance from the High Street so I wasn’t too sure what the problem was.

The VHF instructor had just returned from Antarctica and there were three others on the course – a diver who had been off St Abbs the previous day; a geologist from British Geological Survey, just back from Antarctica too, and who was going on a purporse built ship to map a white ribbon of unsurveyed land off the British coast; and a taxi driver from Kelso who had bought a boat suffering from osmosis and wanted to learn to sail so he could winter it in the med.

The radios were all wired together and we bartered cockscrews for Golf November Tango (G’n'T) and we learned nuggets of information such as that all calls are made first on the distress channel 16 – what! – then changed to another channel to free up the distress channel. Fortunately with digital radios it is possible to make a call to a ship without going through the distress channel first. In addition Maydays come down to pressing a button and all your details including position from onboard GPS are sent out digitally – provided you haven’t sunk more than 35 nautical miles from the nearest station. The EPIRB rescue beacon used to operate on the aviation distress frequency of 121 decimal 5 MegaHertz – and that used to narrow down your location to 500 square miles of ocean! Now GPS gives it in metres… thankfully.

Lunch was in the North Berwick Fry fish and chip restaurant which had a flast screen telly with subtitles talking about breast enlargement as 40 Indian women were chatting about finding a husband.

We all sat our test in different rooms each with stained glass looking down upon us and over coffee we were all told we had passed and went through the questions we got way wrong!

I had dinner arranged later so had some time to kill so went for ice cream in Gullane and picked up some lovely cake from the German bakery there, drove along the coast to Edinburgh then down to meet Gordon making a greenhouse with Mike, who carves erotic phalluses (according to the local newspaper – he calls them mushrooms)

Because we stayed in Edinburgh I took the chance to get sailing gloves and a fog horn (testing it at 0530 every morning at the moment) from Port Edgar Chandelry and wandered around the modern art galleries (John Bellany’s paintings of Scottish fishing ports and Damian Hirst’s formaldehyded ewe) behind two hand holding men, I assumed they were an exhibit, when I stumbled across the Dean Cemetery – as there was a granite pyramid peeking over the cemetry wall just where I had parked my car.

The pyramid was only one of the delights in the graveyard though – exxotic monuments with birds standing on rams heads on top of winged lions, sleeping lions with owls watching over them and a monunment to John Irving from the Franklin Expedition (where they turned cannibal) with carved depiction of Erebus and Terror the two ships lost with all hands in the search for the North West Passage (where is Global Warning when you really need it). Delightful place to wander around on a very sunny day.

I got back home to find that I had scored 90% in my first celestial navigation exam so was very chuffed and celebrated with a chilled beer.

News stories tend to drift across us in a ‘who cares’ sort of way – the Berlin Wall didn’t because it was such a seachange that it was obviously going to change the world and it was great to see attractive women dancing on the wall. What is happening in Iran just now, in the blue corner is the recently ‘re-elected’ incumbent government and in the green corner is the opposition who seriously believe the election was rigged, is more buttock clenching because things are being fought for – this is freedom wrought from real oppression – Berlin kind of wanted freedom anyway with the guards deliberately missing escaping east Berliners – these bastards don’t. Eight dead and countless injured from beatings with horrific pictures and video of the police doing the beatings with sticks – and the press confined to their hotels with no information coming out.

Or so the bastards thought.

Twitter unbelievably comes to the fore – simple under 140 character messages become resistance encryptions to release real stories about what is going on which every new agency is listening to. The US foreign office has even asked Twitter’s ISP to delay its outage for essential maintenance to allow this communication to continue. This is almost a World War II type of operation with a 21st century spin – cyber warfare is real.

There are real people risking real lives in Iran twittering information to a global audience (I see 1200 messages waiting in a minute on twitter on #iranelection” – this is a 21st century phenomenon – like the documentary ‘Death in Yugoslavia’ this is a media driven war or a cyberwar over a protest on a suspect election.

The Irananian secret service are seeking out the Iranian twitterers so everyone is setting their twitter position to Teheran and their time to GMT +3.5 to protect them. And they are blocking proxy servers allowing them to twitter in the first place so tens of thousands of people, like me, are opening up Iranian IP addresses to allow oppressed protesters the chance to speak to the world.

Without twitter I wouldnt have seen the shocking Boston Globe photographs and not had a sense of how important this world event was and how horrific it can turn into. This is such an electronic warfare with photoshopped pictures of government rallies with figures duplicated to make it look large! Fake sites are asking for name/address/mobile and email address of supporters are set up to gather list of supporters to silence them. Cyber attacks (DDOS) on the Iranian government websites are soaking up Iranian bandwidth for the supporters as well as the government.

Long live freedom, having read Persepolis recently it was so depressing to see the first few chapters recreated in the news – hopefully the 21st century technology will change the later chapters. Obama did point out that the opposition policies are not far removed from the current government, although Holocaust denial doesn’t seem to be amongst them.

Green marks the colour of the revolution – people colour their twitter icons green, Iranian football playes wear green bracelets and people got excited when the BBC’s page went green (it does that depending on one of 4 colours – ironically it means Comedy on the BBC site).

What will happen if it is found out that the current government have been democratically elected after all (assuming the recount takes place and is shown in their favour) where will democracy supporters stand then?

The guardian reports -
Readers: Please keep in mind that Twitter is not reliable and that the Guardian is for the most part unable to verify the authenticity of these feeds. We are doing our best to maintain our standard, stringent journalistic practices, but since the Iranian government has banned foreign journalists from covering the protests, it is difficult.

Live tweeting

Our Orkney flight was cancelled due to weather, low cloud, so we all decided to go hill walking in Assynt and I would build my kayak up and paddle to the Summer Isles.

B&B in Ullapool and welcoming pints to celebrate not being killed by the deer running across the dusk painted roads, we parted the next day – Kim and Co off to clamber up Ben Dearg and me to Achiltibuie.

Achiltibuie has a nice grassy green near the pier and near the beach and opposite the summer isles. I parked there, got the backpack out and started to lay out the component parts. Building the K1 is rather like assembling a tent except there is also a lot of leverage involved. The aluminium struts shake free and assemble together – plastic sheets are used to hold everything in place and the skin fits over. So far so good.

The other parts of the skeleton are then added in and leveraged into place using a couple of the other component parts acting as a lever. That is when the sweat starts to flow – even in Assynt. People pass and wave and stop to ask what you are doing too but don;t offer to help, possibly seeing the sweat puts them off. Bird watchers were also keeping a close eye on the mad fellow with the red thing slowly assembling.

It is quite satisfying once the whole thing is assembled and starts to look like a kayak, the rudder, cockpit edges, seasock and easy access lids all get done and I now have something to take on a maiden voyage. My 4 piece paddle assembled I climbed into my dry suit forgetting that my son normally zips me up. I manage to gesticulate to a bird watcher and he comes along to help, but is worried that it doesn’t seem to be zipping up right and looks like it will burst, so I de-drysuit and am standing there in a pair of knickers fiddling with the zip. We have it working and he helps zip me up, saying he will dine out on this tonight.

I lift the kayak to the beach and stand deep in the water with the boat checking for leaks. It seems stable, and the tide is going in the right direction bringing me back into shore if anything goes wrong so I brave it. Bringing it back into the shallows I clamber in and push off.

It has a nice feel as you can feel the waves under you – it is quite high in the water as it is designed for long expeditions and weighed down with more than just Mike. This made paddling more difficult and the rudder wasn’t working quite well due to my assembly of the pedals. I did however make it across to the first island and back (I had intended on the classic circumnavigation of the summer islands through the arch) – since I was on my own I wanted to turn back as soon as I didn’t feel comfortable – although it was slightly choppy it wasn’t anything to worry about and the K1 was performing well.

When I got back close to the beach I decided to do some capsize and self rescue practice – that was when I decided it was actually more difficult to get back into the K1 – even with my rope acting as a ladder to clamber in – especially with it being high in the water with me out of it and the rudder got in the way of clambering in the back as I found out on first attempt.

It was getting late so I clambered back to the grass, disassembled (not without a few swear words) and packed it up – that still left the de-drysuiting again and fortunately a passing women unzipped me (in full sight of her husband at all times) and I drove back via the Summer Isles Hotel for a great view and almost got caught speeding on the way back to Ullapool on that fabulous road.

We dined in Scotland’s only Motel (well only one in Ullappol anyway) which is also holding a beer festival later in the year. Yummy beer and seafood and it was back to the B&B across a football field and bridge (which I promptly tripped coming off it and fell headlong only to recover by running as fast as I could to keep upright, which amused everyone else who was wondering what on earth was happening).

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After Gordon Browns course on Skye and the Berwickshire Canoe Club pool sessions in Kelso and Ollie Jay’s adventure around Lindisfarne – I was desperate for more opportunities and found the Berwick Kayak Club based in Eyemouth.

With Ali learning to drive this was a good chance for both of us to go along to the training sessions in the Eyemouth Army Cadet Centre, with Ali driving and a great excuse to eat fish and chips. The cadet centre gave Bob a chance to lecture us on techniques and navigation (which was a great reminder as I was doing Day Skipper navigation at the time), to roll around on a swiss ball holding a broom and to watch canoeing videos in the red light of the heat lamps (not too sure what they thought we were doing with our women kayakers as the red lights went out there was the oohs and aaahs of the exercising.

The fun really started with Bob’s river trips – first from Norham down the Tweed to East Ord, where we were waltzing down the river in small kayaks until Bob pointed out that we can lower our skegs. Kim flew over us that day and took a piccie at 2,000 feet showing how invisible we were on the river in blue boats and even me with my bright yellow dry suit was hidden under my blue tilly hat. We had swans taking off over us and overall a wonderful time on the river. On stopping for lunch I almost ended up going down the fast water part but frantic thrashing of the paddle and being hauled in by the others saved the day. I had of course also forgotten to bring any lunch – Ali was getting used to the chaos that is a day out with Mike.

Moving on it was over the weir time – first Coldstream where we launched down the river bank under the water and bobbed up – that was when someone noticed that I was heading down the river with the back of my dry suit wide open – the ladies in an open canoe helpfully zipped me up. The weir saw Lizzie overturn and float down the river, Ali was next over the weir followed by a franticly thrashing of paddles the Yellow M was over and still upright. A gentle paddle downstream and then it was Milne Graden weir where everyone managed to get over fine and I got stuck on it, Bob came under and pulled me over his boat – we were a water circus act. Paddling down towards Norham we saw the damage caused by floods with trees jammed up against an island from them being swept down from the Till. At Norham Bridge a Kingfisher flew in front of us.

A trip down the Till from Ford bridge (which I almost hit) to Etal (where I almost went over the weir backwards) on a gorgeous day was delightful in an open canoe – over the weir at Heatherslaw and we were all still upright to punting down the river with a 6 foot kevlar pole in my bright yellow dry suit waving to the tourists on the Heatherslaw Railway. going over the weirs standing up balancing was fun and the while canoe experience was a lot of fun and relaxing although ard work with the wind pushing me sideways into trees. Flood damage could be seen with a hay bale up a tree.

My sailing meant I missed a lot of the other outings – however I made the rescue training in Eyemouth Harbour – where Ali found out his wetsuit didn’t really protect him from the cold. The doc was practising his low brace which failed and he ended up having to be rescued by our close knit team of trainees.

Berwick pool session with Ollie saw Helen from the river trips practicing rolling. She was allocated to rescue me as I went over and waited and waited – and had to bale out. Helen was a whitewater gal and wasn’t used to a sea kayaking and found herself stuck in the corner with its longer tail, desperately trying to turn it to rescue me. That was a good session although the pool didn’t turn on the wave machine which would have been fun in a kayak.

Finally my Feathercraft K1 arrived – a folding kayak from Canada via the Knoydart dealer in Cumbria. The low pound made it more painful than if I had just gone for it a year ago but hey Sybil, my crystal ball, didn’t point this out. Kim assembled it for me as I was busy with a project and noting all the problems in assembly. She was exhausted after 2 hours but had a complete kayak built – which we then had to disassemble as we were taking it up to Assynt that afternoon. The story continues there…

We awoke surrounded by yachts all numbered with guys peeing off the back of their boats and the smell of bcaon drifting across the water. We headed off looking forward to our sail back and had some wind and tacked through a narrow gap between two islands to a snall bay with turqiouse water and a stone marked with ‘No Water for cats leave here’ and various bits of graffiti on other rocks.

We snorkelled around the bay which was very cold and returned to lie in the sun over lunch emptying our provisions finally with mustard on bread and the never ending Croatian version of Parma Ham.

The sail back to Kremik Marina was abandoned with absolutely no wind so it was a long motor back, more emptying of the holding tanks and a final parking into our bay. Clean up the boat, leave the skipper to tidy up the paper work as we abandoned ship for the nearest bar. It wasn;t going to be an option to hang around the marina with the HSBC flotilla (not too sure if they had actaully left the marina as they seemed to be in the same position with G&Ts when we left) so we grabbed a bus to Primosten for a night on the town

A weeks sailing had taken its toll and we all slumbed in front of our lasagnes in a harbour front bar, back to the Hungarian waitress foa beer and then a walk along the shore before we almost al fell asleep so headed back to the boat for an early rise to fly back.

The morning of leaving consisted of making ourselves presentable to get on a plane so it was standing in a queue for the loo with a line of cabins farting and plopping in some bizarre musical sequence as shaving and showering continued in parallel.

Presentable we were on the bus back to the airport chatting with sailors telling tales of tall ship races and why Turkey was cheaper to sail in. We had to remove our batteries from checked baggage (they keep changing the rules!) and I managed to get through security with my swiss knife card due to enormous confusion with our metal hiped skipper and Andy’s leg baggage and metal leg.

With guilt I managed to get a jar of bath salts to take back to the wife, although she did have a few days in the Lake District walking with her mum arranged as recipricol recompense for 7 days sailing in Croatia…

Gatwick have decided to sole the DVT problem by having one toilet at one the end of the airport’s cathedral to duty free – you follow the sign, clamber up the stairs or join the queue for the single lift, wander through all the restaurants for what seems like a hike before finding it. I should have brought my gps along with me.