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Canoeing Ireland's recent come-and-try kayak day for potential Special Olympians was a success all round, according to organisers.
Hoping to emulate the success of kayakers at the recent Special Olympics Summer Games in Athens, newcomers at the Irish Canoe Union Training Centre at Strawberry Beds were kitted out with paddles, kayaks, helmets, wetsuits and flotation devices before getting to know their kayaks, learning how to paddle and playing some on-water games.
The organisers added: "By the time the athletes were ready to go home they were all tired but asking when the next session would be!"
The Special Olympics website has some photos of the day are available HERE.

Canoeing Ireland's recent come-and-try kayak day for potential Special Olympians was a success all round, according to organisers.

Hoping to emulate the success of kayakers at the recent Special Olympics Summer Games in Athens, newcomers at the Irish Canoe Union Training Centre at Strawberry Beds were kitted out with paddles, kayaks, helmets, wetsuits and flotation devices before getting to know their kayaks, learning how to paddle and playing some on-water games.

The organisers added: "By the time the athletes were ready to go home they were all tired but asking when the next session would be!"

The Special Olympics website has some photos of the day available HERE.

Published in Kayaking

There was big news yesterday from the ISAF events committee meeting in Athens. The conference blog reports A 'packed session' heard the Events Committee's recommendation on the provisional Olympic events and equipment for 2016. 

The Events Committee recommends:

- Board or kite-board for men and women - equipment evaluation
- One person dinghy men - Laser Standard
- One person dinghy women - Laser Radial
- Two person dinghy (skiff) men - 49er
- Two person dinghy (skiff) women - equipment evaluation
- Second one person dinghy men - Finn
- Two person mixed multihull - equipment evaluation
- Two person mixed dinghy with spinnaker - 470
- Women's keelboat - Elliott 6m

In so doing the committee's voting recommends taking out the men's keelboat. The second one person dinghy for women was the other option not to be selected.

The Committee's recommendations are of course just that. They will go to the ISAF Council for consideration this weekend. After Council vote they are then subject to confirmation at the ISAF Mid-Year meeting in May 2011.

Published in World Sailing

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.