First paddle in Norway

It was cold. It was dark. I was using a borrowed boat and blades. I was paddling with someone that I had never met before. I didn't care; it felt great to be back in a boat for my first paddle of the year. The last two months may have been my longest time without getting in a boat in the last twenty years!

Embarrassingly, I managed to snap the borrowed paddles after about fifteen minutes. The shaft sheared through on the first hard paddle stroke and left me paddling C1-style for the rest of the evening. As a result, we only covered about 9km or so but it was a very pleasant little trip.

The coastline near Grimstad is a maze of channels between islands of a wide range of sizes:
We set off from Holvika; you can see the two jetties to the south of Groos on the bottom left of the map. I was paddling with Espen from Black Hawk (http://www.black-hawk.no/) :

There was still a bit of daylight left as we paddled off but it soon got dark:I plan to join Grimstad PadleKlubb (http://www.grimstad-padleklubb.no/) on Sunday. My thanks go to Espen for the company and the loan of the kit.