North Sea storms

The weekend before last there was big storm in the North Sea whipping up some good waves. I hit the beach in Ijmuiden with Nick and his kite surfing gear. This beach is the closest to Amsterdam and very popular amongst wind powered surfers.

Naturally I was the only kayaker there and there was even only a couple of board surfers. But it was quite funny surfing between speeding windsurfers and kitesurfers flying over head!

But the wind was fierce and on shore so I can count the number of decent rides I had on one hand. I even opted to walk miles up the beach and along the sheltered sea defence wall to aid paddling out. The waves were big but not very steep and proved difficult to catch. You had to really be in the right spot at the right time but I caught some good air and enjoyed getting the cobwebs wet inside my boat.

I don't take any photos but I wasn't the only one kayaker out on the coast during those storms. Martina has a blog entry about her trashings and Casper made it out on Monday when the wind had died down.

The photo is from Caspers session taken by Patrick of fotodolkens fame.