Vietnam, Ile Du Brandon , November 21st 2006.

In the morning the sky was clear of clouds and had been washed clean of haze. A perfect day to go kayaking and taking pictures. It is just too bad that my camera decided not to focus on every other picture I took. I tried out the Greenland paddle and although it was still too heavy and too large around the loom, I was reasonably happy paddling with it. I took a spare paddle with me on our first four hour kayak trip in case I had to switch back but never had to do that. We paddled under the south side Ile Du Brandon in the morning. From the name you can see that we used a chart made by the Imperialist French. Not only were the French imperialists but they were only so-so chart makers. According to the chart there are several major islands out here and we would be going around several of them in the coming days. But from the water the islands looked more like local concentrations of karsks. Again I had not had time to look at good maps before going on this trip. But when I looked at satellite pictures on Google Maps later I found that the impression I got from a kayak was closer to the reality. The islands shown as solid blobs of land on the French Imperialists’ map are actually lace filigrees of karsks barely touching each other. There are channels between many of them and hidden lagoons “inland” on each “island”.

After our morning paddle around Ile Du Brandon we returned to the Junk. Before getting out of the kayak for lunch I demonstrated a few Greenland rolls for the non-BASK passengers. While we ate lunch and had a siesta the boat motored a few miles away to another island, Ile Des Arenes. We circumnavigated this smaller island in a few hours late in the afternoon and returned back in time for happy hour and dinner. Rather than make Doug Hamilton start all over again with a second paddle, I offered to let him use “mine” the next day. He spent some time planning it down thinner and lighter in the evening until it got too dark to work. There was distant lightning flashing in the sky again but we didn’t have a local squall like the evening before.