Kayak Diving Index (Main Index)

Kayak diving is probably the most under-rated sport in the UK. It's cheap, hassle-free, and much more convenient than lugging around a huge and thirsty dive boat. We have just the right kind of coastline for pottering around in the zone between an unsatisfying shore-dive and a stressful trip out to the deep and stormy water to justify the use of a powered boat.

A kayak can take you several miles along a coastline to places where there is no easy access from land for divers and where you can enjoy a sensible, easy dive that is fun and which you have never done before. If it's scary and you don't want to dive, you don't need to, because it's a two-for-one, and you're probably getting enough adventure with the paddling. When the weather gets really bad, you can leave your kit behind and go surfing, because that's what these boats were originally designed for.

There's only one thing wrong with kayak diving in the UK -- not enough people are doing it, so there's no one to go out with. Please join in if you can by getting some hard plastic sit-on-top kayaks (not the inflatable kind), some paddles, an anchor, and call us out on a trip some day.

Photos, trips and rants in chronological order. Smaller weekends get blogged on freesteel/kayak-diving.

• Kayak diving April 2002. My first two weeks with my own two boats.
• Pembroke Kayak Diving Nuts June 2003. With some trials in Anglesey. UK underwater piccies, but no story because nothing went badly wrong.
• Diving Kayaks Win Lleyn August 2003. Out again with my camera with pretty pictures.
• A Marine Identification Course Ireland July 2004. The pictures are pretty, but the words got out of control during the ramble.
• Kayak Dive Ireland July 2004. I've always wanted to do that.
• North Wales Weekends 2004/5. Mostly for the pictures from several short trips.
• St Abb's October 2005. We took the canoes on and used them on one afternoon, and to surf when the weather got real bad.
• Plymouth July 2006 Ten days with dive kayaking and some near perfect weather.
• Skye June 2007 Same again but up north with not quite such perfect weather.
• St Abbs and Eyemouth July 2007 Finally got good weather and did everything.
• Llandudno-kayakdiving video (WMV) (120Mb 3.30 minutes) Or see the Youtube version
• Freesteel blog/kayak-diving Since 2006

External links

Please support the Wikiscuba.

• Kayak Diving dot com. Mark Theobald's original website. Not updated much now, but this is where I learnt how to do it.
• Kayak Diver Very detailed set of instructions how to do it all. Has interesting recommendations against Ocean Kayaks, which is the kind most people have bought up till now.
• Top Kayaker/articles Contains some kayak diving articles, but also lots of other stuff you can do with your sit on top kayak as well.
• BSAC's Dive Magazine - a place where I have posted a small buddy ad. How I wish I could link to a full article explaining the joys of kayak diving in the UK, but they haven't published one yet! How is anyone ever going to find out? (To be fair, their search engine comes up with this article about the new Sevylor inflatable dive-yak product, but it's not the same as telling people about kayak diving in general off of real kayaks.)
• Wikiscuba [Kayak Diving] One of the places where I'm feeding out propaganda.
• Wikipedia / Kayak_diving Someone else has added that uninformed and designed-to-put-you-off safety concerns.
• Kayak Fishing - Popular in the UK, and nearly the same sport if you forget the bit about the fish not being in the water: www.kayakfishinguk.net, www.anglersafloat.co.uk, and www.kayak-fishing.co.uk.

julian@goatchurch.org.uk.
2008-10-03 ... Julian Todd.