Beach party

A spring time paddling trip

By Erik Plankton

May 18^th, 2016

surprise summer

After a cold and wet april the weather suddenly turned sunny and the temperature rose to the twenties. It was time to head out to the sea and enjoy all of it. The best thing about early season paddling is that there aren’t much people around and with a bit of luck you can have the beach all to yourself for a couple of days. After a coffee at the Gumbo Kiosk I packed the boat and headed out. After a while the sun began to set, so I stopped paddling, leaned back and cracked open a cold one. I set camp on the island Furuholmen and enjoyed the calm night and lights glowing from the Vuosaari port.

perfect morning

The weather was stunning. I walked around the island before making breakfast.

It was time for the all important coffee. Had a nice bagel too. Some critter had poached a goose egg for breakfast. I left the tent as a basecamp and headed west towards the Vuosaari harbour to check out some ships. Found a couple of nice shallow passages that were fun to paddle barely avoiding the rocks.

trash

It was five days after the May Day celebration mayhem and unfortunately I saw quite a few helium balloons floating in the sea. Managed to recover three of them. Started to wonder how safe the materials actually are, because the glitter paint washed of and messed up my hands, drysuit and boat. Totally unnecessary garbage. Ironically there was also a plastic-save-the-oceans-bullshit campaign junk disc from Panasonic floating around. So maybe fuck them too. Gave it to my dog - let’s hope it’s not too toxic.

open

Did a leg on more open water south of Mölandet island with a brisk breeze propelling me forward with minimal effort.

lunch time

Explored some smaller islands and stopped on Östholmen for lunch. The new vegetarian meal from Real Turmat was really good and I would recommend this to a friend.

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Private beach party

After lunch and some more unsuccessful fishing I headed back to camp. I read a book and lounged in my awesome Helinox Tactical chair until the sun went down. Otherwise perfect, but next time I won’t forget the sunscreen.