Los Angeles Times: 06

Joan Petit

Eamon Sweeney

"Thanks specially to Pat for his calm reassurance and confidence-building on the water. I have rarely seen an instructor in any field achieve so much with so light a touch."

Gemma Wright,

"Every time I think of that kayak a smile comes on my face and words like brilliant, tranquil and special come out. Thanks again for an awesome experience."

CoAction, West Cork,
 

"On behalf of our organization I would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much for your help and support for our summer camp.

Our Camp this year was a great success. The children received great benefit from it and really enjoyed themselves. This was only possible due to people like yourself who gave their time, skills and premises so generously. Your kindness is very much appreciated."

Email from Scott and Melissa Ware U.S.A., 22nd jan,. Subject: "thanks for the memories, fastnet light, and jellyfish
 

Dear Jim and Maria,
Let me begin with a reintroduction since we haven't seen you or communicated since last June. We are Melissa and Scott Ware and we spent a wonderful weekend enjoying you hospitality last June. We truly do thank you for the memories of meals and conversation at Maria's Schoolhouse, a night of phosphorescent fantasia, two days of corkbobbing with other excited kayakers along the everchanging coastline, and a special trip with a fascinating group of Irish folk to Fastnet Light."

To Jim / Maria / Norma / Kieron / Jammer.

As you may have guessed Katie and I have had a wonderful few days in the Union hall area which really provided a very welcome change of scene from the big smoke that really is London at the moment. The sea-kayaking was simply great / wonderful / fantastic and hopefully serves as a �taster� for the future. Please include us on any details of courses( Level 3 sounds about right? ) & trips( Mexico / Croatia etc ) that are up-coming, just so we can see what�s going on and perhaps we could be tempted.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that was involved with making our trip so worthwhile. We both thought that the tuition and supervision was excellent at all times, but what really counted was that we were accommodated in every way possible. This is so important when a big effort has been made to fly over and time is as limited as it was. Katie really enjoyed the double Kayak on the last day when Kieron guided us through some of the caves and coves from Reen Pier. All in all a great time.

Lastly a big thank-you.

Article From Evening Standard, 17th September .

Blazing Paddles

Phosphorescence makes for a brilliant light show kayaking by night in Ireland, says Jasper Winn.

Sea Kayaking is a bit like skinny-dipping. In a less is more kind of way. Breast stroking a few lengths of a penthouse pool with sub-aqua lighting and David Hockney-Polaroid ripples should be more exciting than stripping down to your Calvins and beyond to take a splash off a remote beach. But it just ain't. And, in the same way, though watching flunkies polishing the small change on a teak-decked gin-palace while you sip a daiquiri is pretty good, it doesn't get you close to the rewards of strapping yourself into what is essentially a prosthetic fish made out of primary-coloured polyethylene, hefting a paddle with a fair amount of vigour and heading out into the waves.

Though you might think the only advantage that paddling has over rowing lies in being able to see where you're not getting to very fast rather than looking back at where you're barely pulling away from, kayaking's magic comes from being in touch with nature. Literally. And totally.

In a kayak you feel the power of the sea soughing under your buttocks and can lick the salt water off your lips. Seals (which, apparently, have erotic dreams of strawberry-red, plastic-skinned, slinkily proportioned lovers) pop up beside your craft in ecstasies of lust. Herons and otters barely notice as you slip past. And paddling a kayak is the closes you'll get to a sea-going salmon short of buttering a slice of brown bread and opening a tin of John West.

With so many of the joys of sea-kayaking vested in the visual - distant islands turning the horizon into profit and loss graphs, storms of gannets precipitating like hailstones out of a blue sky, foamy waves rolling straight out of a Japanese woodcut - it seems just a touch Irish to head out at night. But 14 of us, some experienced paddle-plyers, some kayak virgins, slot ourselves into a flotilla of craft at dusk on a West Cork beach to set off for a nocturnal paddle.

We are on Lough Hyne, Europe's only inland marine lake: an expanse of salt water plunging to 50 meters and joined to the Atlantic by an umbilical channel of rapids. Through some combination of prehistoric warm periods, ice ages and migrations, much of the lough's marine life is Lusitanian. Which basically means that there are various very chilly fish and bivalves under us who wish to hell their forbears had stayed down south on the Iberian Peninsula. Leaning over, we can see globular pink sea urchins like albino hedgehogs. There's a scattered Sevres dinner service of scallops across the sands. Purple, violet and ochre seaweeds undulate with the slow, hypnotic animation of a lava lamp.

Or, rather, we could see all this, and more, if it weren't dark. Jim Kennedy, our leader and a past Irish and British sprint and marathon kayak champion, gathers us for the safety talk. "Right, number off so we have a way of keeping track of you." Vague shadows call out numbers, the voices muffled by the slopping of waves against the kayak hulls. "Now, Pat and I have radios, GPS, maps and lights, and if we're not all back in the pub by midnight the rescue service'll come looking." Then he mentions "the word": the reason we're all out here. "We're going to go in under the shore where it's dark and deep, and that's where we'll get phosphorescence." Paddlers stare out into the gloom expectantly.

Bioluminescence is the raison d'etre for this night trip. The west coast of Ireland has some of the most vigorous phyto-plankton in the world; give them the right conditions - a warm, dark night and a catalyst such as a dipping canoe paddle, say - and they'll jiggle around like Rio Carnival dancers, igniting the sea into a watery Northern Lights. Phosphorescence-lit is pretty much the way that Leary, Kesey and Huxley promised we'd experience the natural world if we'd only take drugs. But we were going to reach Nirvana through aerobic exercise and, as Jim puts it, "Zenning out".

We paddle for half an hour across the lough. My night vision takes in the dark shadows of the land and the lighter dark of the sky, while my hearing, nasal passages and touch strain to make sense, some kind of sense, of every fish splash, shore tang and cold spray of water into my face.

In the lough's most southerly corner Jim herds us together. "You're going to head off alone at five-minute intervals along the shore. Take it easy, enjoy it and we'll round you all up in an hour or so." I'm the last to set off, gliding forward into the dark shadow thrown on to the deep waters by the high, steep shoreline above. Watching for phosphorescence is like waiting for middle-age spread. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And then suddenly it's all around you.

A faint glimmering from the tip of my paddle vortexes off into the depths. Then a fiery Plimsoll line roils around the kayak's hull. There is a flaring of cold, blue flame on the bow wave. Ripples run away to the shore and gently napalm the rocks and wrack. Smack the paddle on the surface and there is an explosion of liquid fire bright enough to read a newspaper by. But it's gone faster than you can skim, eve, the news content of The Sun. Fingers touched to the surface leave five dabs of light for a nanosecond.

And that's where the magic lies. The flarings of phosphorescence are as fleeting and insubstantial as my career prospects. For one micro-moment they are there and fill my life. Then there is darkness and emptiness. And I am scrabbling to do whatever is necessary to get them back again.

I poke and stroke and slap the water. Dig my paddle blade in deep and shovel gouts out in sparkling cascades. All along the half-mile of shoreline other paddlers are doing the same, their every movement bringing fleeting Milky Ways and doomed constellations into being. Their kayak waterlines shimmer faintly like distant city lights seen from the horizon. We are hypnotized hydro-arsonists, playing like children.

Back on shore and numbered off, we are all dreamy. The van headlights, as we load up the kayaks, are too aggressive, any talking above a whisper, too loud. Then, suddenly, there is the rubber snapping and suction "plocking" of a dry-suit being peeled off, a streak of sea-urchin pink, a smattering of splashes and a bigger "splosh". A ghostly eruption of liquid flames and embers delineates a body. Skinny-dipping just got even better.

BREAKING THE WAVES

Article by Pol O Conghaile, Ireland of the Welcomes.

I am having second thoughts. Upside down in a swimming pool, wedged into a tough chunk of polyethylene, air bubbles are spraying from my nose. Chasing each other towards the surface, they explode in small circles of foam. My instinct is to bolt, kick free and suck air. But I can't. Jim Kennedy's legs and torso are beside me, his head lost in the land of the living. He's spent three hours working the Eskimo Rolling Clinic; he won't take no for an answer. So one more, exhausted, I begin rocking my hips. I flick my body, stroke the paddle outwards. Physics turn turtle. Eyes close instinctively as I roll towards the surface. Everything surges, and for a nanosecond, the world is white.

The thoughts going through my head are confused, rapt, many. They begin with our arrival, two days prior to this watery purgatory, at Maria's Schoolhouse. Half a mile outside Union Hall, Co. Cork, and dating from 1885, we'd heard about this place before, mainly through word-of-mouth. There's something about it, people said - charm, charisma, a certain je ne sais quoi. Greeted by an open fire and homely glass of red wine, I remember idly noticing kayaks stacked in the driveway outside. The following morning Amanda O'Regan, the manager, introduced herself with freshly baked strawberry muffins, too hot to hold. Outside the bay window, West Cork unfurled beneath a belly of mist.

"Is it a lodge, a guesthouse or a small hotel?" Maria Hoare, owner of the Schoolhouse, puzzled over the question of where exactly we were staying. "We bandied this around for ten years. Jean Kennedy-Smith (a former US Ambassador to Ireland) stayed here once, and the following morning she sat down to breakfast with someone who had just paid ��8 for a dormitory bed. In the end, I suppose, it's just simply accommodation." Its provenance is as bold as the decor: In 1987, as I gather, floorboards gave way under the weight of an unfortunate headmaster, the last class passed out, and the building was condemned. Maria bought it in 1991, spent two years restoring it with her brother, and put together a beguiling blend of comfort and quirkiness.

Impoverished and terrified, she opened for business just as David Puttnam began shooting The War of the Buttons in Union Hall. God was smiling, and Maria got the contract to put up the teenage cast and their chaperones. At the time Jim Kennedy, a former British and Irish sprint and marathon kayaking champion, was running his sea-kayaking business out of nearby Castletownbere. The pair met at a Donovan concert, fell in love, and by 1995, Jim had ensconced Atlantic Sea Kayaking in the schoolhouse. Hand in hand is a good description of the couple as it is their symbiotic labours of love. "In the first few years the schoolhouse tended to feed Jim's business," as Maria puts it. "But in the last couple it has gone the other way. It's a nice, complementary working relationship."

Our first paddle is set for Lough Hyne: Europe's only inland marine lake. Fifty metres deep in places and replete with its own little eco-village, lough and sea kayaking quickly bring out the best in each other. Gliding through the choppy waves, a certain enchantment derives from the fact that your body is so close to the water, and in no time at all you can taste the salt from your lips. Leaning from your boats, we can see sea urchins, sponges, coral and kelp. The folklore is equally fertile. Paddling leisurely, Jim points out St Brigid's Well, where the saint's knees are said to have left impressions in the rock. On another small island, the shell of Cloghan Castle is home to the old folk-tale of the king who had donkey's ears.

Via a thin conduit of rapids, we are bumpily delivered from Lough Hyne into Barlogue Creek and thereafter, the Atlantic Ocean. The coastline here is heavily exposed and peppered with sea caves, some burrowing up to 100 metres into the rock. Leaking adrenalin by the gallon, we back into one such cavern, jagged sandstone teeth closing around us in gothic, swelling, delight. The water shifts grumpily beneath us, every noise sounds thunderous. I don't have butterflies in my stomach, so much as a murder of jackdaws. It is only afterwards, cork-bobbing in the open swell, that fear becomes a high, and you laugh once again at the wild beauty of this place.

It may sound dangerous, but Jim's reputation as a master of his craft has travelled far. A day before coming to Lough Hyne we had shared a few drinks in Portmagee, Co. Kerry with Jim Guirey, a Radio Operator with Valentia Coast Guard. The pair used to row together, it transpired, and even though they haven't met in twenty years, they still do business on VHF. "You're in safe hands with Jim Kennedy," we were advised. Jim warms to news of this commendation from the west. "Prevention is better than a cure," he says, making a point of carrying compass, GPS, VHF radios and flares at all times. Given the changeable nature of south western weather and a programme that caters for "the very nervous up to the most advanced" of paddlers, that means more than just peace of mind.

It comes in handy by moonlight too, when Jim takes flotillas of craft onto Lough Hyne in search of phosphorescence. Launching the boats at dusk, searching for bio-luminescent phyto-plankton, the experience is one of Ireland's best-kept secrets and also available to the visually impaired and disabled. Sadly, this time weather forbids us an adventure, though I'm told these sub-aquatic Christmas lights tap strange parts of the soul. "Did Jim tell you about Trudy?" Maria asks on our return. "She was a visitor we had here, and we took her out on a moonlight paddle. She enjoyed it so much she started singing James Taylor songs. Well, Jim mentioned that they were some of his favourites too. 'Are they?' She said. 'I must tell him.' He was her son!"

Chilly but rejuvenated, we settle down to cook dinner. During the summer, Maria and Jim host live music by, amongst others, Sonny Condell and Maria-Doyle Kennedy, marrying tunes with a menu worked from as much organic local produce as possible. Everything here fits under the umbrella of a conscientious ethos: Jim will collect whatever rubbish kayakers find floating on the sea, for instance, and some years ago undertook a 200 mile "peach paddle" in support of the Good Friday Agreement. Tonight at the schoolhouse, we make pasta with sea spinach gathered along the strand at Rineen, accompanied by salad from wild garlic hugging the ditches near Ceim Hill.

It's not long before our meal works its quiet magic amongst us. Maria tells the story of how she was stung by a Portuguese Man-o'-War off the coast of Mexico. Maria and Jim's kids, Naoise (5) and Adam (2), dart and scuffle around the dining room. "Did you know killer whales can reach speeds of up to thirty-five kilometres an hour?" Naoise asks, before using his spoon and my apple and raspberry pie to demonstrate the science behind a tornado. "You never know who'll come in next," Maria says. "We once had an earth circus group from California. They performed on stilts out there in black tie and tutus."

It all seems slightly surreal, but then this is West Cork. Sheltered in a hidden corner of Glandore Harbour, Union Hall has drawn together a beguiling miscellaneous group of people. Sally Barnes, for instance, originally from Ayrshire, sources fish locally before oak-smoking it for restaurants and quality food stores countrywide. "When we started we had a tea chest with a hole in it" she remembers. At the opposite end of her work surface, Alan Murray is deftly slicing salmon doused in dill and pepper. Originally from Scotland's Isle of Arran, he plays guitar with Noel Redding, formerly of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. True to form, we soon find ourselves in De Barra's Folk Bar in Clonakilty, toe-tapping along to a band made up of an ex-pop star, a plumber, an Australian and a Scotsman who loves his fish. Jim relishes the diversity.

We've heard so many stories here in the last couple of days you wouldn't believe. There was the time Nick Cave added a verse to Ring of Fire just for Jim's daughter, Jessie. There was the Japanese man who navigated his way by kayak from Dublin to Union Hall, with the sole aid of a piece of paper bearing Jim's name. There are the Atlantic rollers crashing onto Long Strand near Rosscarbery, spraying salt particles as far inland as Castlefreke. Abandoned after the First World War, the derelict castle was ancestral home of one Lord Carbery who, as the legend goes, stood at the bottom of the stairs, shot out the eyes of the portrait of the first Lord Carbery, walked out the door and emigrated to Kenya!

The following day we launch the kayaks at Rineen, under the watchful eye of O'Donovan Castle. A favourite spot of Jim's, the water is calm and the wildlife pure. On nearby Rabbit Island, there is seal colony. Surrounding us in the scrub are otters, kingfishers, herons, cormorants and oyster-catchers. "Last September the sea was like glass. We were surrounded by around sixty dolphins, breathing and blowing around us." Colin Barnes, a local tour operator, has recently spotted dolphins bowsurfing in the wash of a humpback whale. When Jim and Pat McCarthy, a part-time instructor, gather our spraydecks, paddles and drysuits from the shed, four swallows fly out over their heads. Spring has arrived.

Earlier, underwater at the Clonakilty Park Leisure Centre, I am a mess of nose clips and goggles, red as a pepper, locked in a frenzied vortex of my own making. Images of a thriving fishing village are flashing through my mind - cod at the Ardagh House, plaice at Dinty's and, of course, enough of Sally Barnes's smoked salmon to turn you pink. The world is white and my muscles are throbbing when, just as suddenly, I am sitting upright, inhaling hugely. Damn it, I've just done my first Eskimo Roll!

"It's like learning to ride a bicycle," Jim smiles. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going straight back over for another one. Because it feels good to look at the world upside down once in a while.