Kokatat continues to support Northern Lights Expeditions, a project seeking to establish links between children of isolated indigenous communities of the Arctic and children of the U.K., as they are preparing for phase two of its three-part service project. Kokatat has provided the team with the necessary products for this expedition, such as the GORE-TEX® Expedition Dry Suit and Ronin Pro PFD.

Northern Lights explorers Richard Smith and Craig Mathieson founded the project to help develop the children’s confidence and self-reliance through what Smith and Mathieson have coined “inspiration of exploration.” The participating schools are developing online projects exchanging ideas and media through projects covering areas of global warming, song, dance, and social cultural comparisons.

During July and August 2009 Smith and Mathieson kayaked between remote Inuit settlements of Eastern Greenland forging links with Scottish schools and delivering donated laptops to assist with connecting children from different cultures. Since returning to Scotland, the team has toured the Scottish schools, training the children and teachers how to develop and participate in online projects to exchange ideas about global warming and socio-cultural comparisons. A BBC Radio 4 documentary about Northern Lights is currently in production and set to broadcast in the coming year.

In August 2010, the team will travel back to Greenland with the teachers to make introductions to the Greenlandic schools and to ensure that all required health and safety assessments are in place prior to the exchange visit of the pupils. During the winter, pupils from schools in Scotland and the French Alps will participate in a mini-expedition by dog sled across the sea ice of the South Eastern coast of Greenland.

Northern Lights intends to expand the program to involve other indigenous communities from Arctic countries in the future, making first contact again by kayak.

Below is an update from Conor, who is currently on the third leg of his journey, on how he packed for a 5 month sea kayak expedition:

“There are many routines that I have per day that help me do everything from ensuring I don’t forget gear to helping me maintain a disciplined camp site including food storage that is as bombproof as possible. Packing the boat for instance has changed in only a few ways since the very beginning of the trip which makes it quicker to load and easier for me to know if something is different and figure out why. This blog will describe a few of the routines so you can get a picture of what kayak camping is about in order to explore the amazing wilderness of Alaska and BC.

How can you possibly bring items like a laptop, an electric shaver, a SLR camera, and hundreds of zip locked bags of food on a kayaking trip over 5 months? There are so many issues to deal with, especially having emergency gear reachable from the cockpit, managing the corrosive effects of salt water, the potential flooding of the cockpit or some hatches, the magnetic deviation that metallic objects such as tent poles can have on my navigational compass. Once a 30 mile paddle became a 40 mile paddle in one day because of a compass that was deviated due to tent poles in the hatch beneath it so that lesson is still with me. All of these little factors come into play when sorting dry bags, packing the boat, and so on.

Here is how I pack each hatch:
Rear hatch: Tent, Rain Fly, Ground cloth, poles, stakes, tennis shoes, sleeping bag, 1st bear can, Kokatat dry suit, and rope for hanging.
Day hatch: Cooking Mess Kit, SLR Camera, Books, Pelican Case with Sat and Cell Phones, Flare gun, headlamp, bear spray, first aid bag, and repair kit.
Cockpit: 10L Dromedary bag for water, rope for bowline and tying up on shore, and a Gatorade bottle for peeing (tied down with elastic to the seat).
Front hatch: 20L bag with Surplus food, Coat, clothes, notebook, electronics (MP3 player, spare batteries, etc), 2nd bear can, water filter, spare fuel, toiletry bag, rain pants, Nalgene water bottle, dirty clothes bag, Noah’s Tarp, and fuel bottle. No strongly magnetic objects in this hatch to limit magnetic deviation of compass. To be safe, metal objects should be farther than 3-4 times their longest dimension from the compass. Test to be sure by bringing objects close to the compass and then removing.
Deck: Rear side with 2 dry bags with lunch and snacks in one and sleeping pad/duct tape/mosquito head net in the other, and my Crocs attached with carabineer. Front side has spare paddle, and deck bag with chart case, bilge pump, float, maps, camera with pelican case, suntan lotion, and air horn.
Ronin Pro PFD: 1.5l water bag and tube, VH-F radio, strobe light, SPOT device, ACR PLB for back-up, emergency blanket, Laser Flare, Cliff Bar, swabby in zip lock to clean camera lens and glasses, knife, whistle, signaling mirror, and two Orion flares. My baseball cap is attached to the PFD so I don’t lose it in the wind.
Water filtration: This one is easy but essential to prevent guardia or other protozoa. Boiling water would be far too fuel expensive for this long of a trip, so I much prefer filling up in towns, filtering from streams, or getting water straight from the glaciers. I have two 10L dromedary bags, a Nalgene, and the 1.5L bag, so a total of 22.5 liters which can last me two weeks if need be. But I normally just fill the one 10L bag and that lasts me 2-3 days. BC and SE Alaska have water streams abundant and most charts indicate the major flows. And near the glaciers, water filtration isn’t even necessary because I was at the source. Any other time, I used my ceramic MSR filter, as seen in the picture.
Food storage: So you need a food storage system to prevent bears/raccoon et al. from getting to food and toiletries. I use bear canisters and hanging bags between trees. Normally I only have to hang stuff when I have surplus at the beginning of each leg of the trip, after that everything fits in the bear cans. Recently I was lazy and left the bags in the kayak hatch and before I fell asleep, I heard a thump on the kayak, followed by silence. The next morning I saw that the fuel bottles which were in the cockpit had fallen all over the place and there were some scratches near the hatch…probably a black bear in the area – I saw scat nearby. I’ll stick to hanging the bags. Using a 2 to 1 rope tension system is very handy to hoist food bags high above the reach of bears without shredding your hands on rope. It essentially reduces the weight lifted by the person in half. Grizzlies especially can stand to 9 feet and reach very high. Black bear have been known to climb trees, so the idea here is to suspend the food between two trees and have the bags around 20 feet high.

There are many more routines that I’ll eventually write up, but now it’s time for me to get packed up for leg 4 because Kim is arriving soon and it’s time to paddle!” – Conor Flannery

Team Kokatat athlete Anthony Yap is one member of this five-country, eight-athlete collective. Led by Yap and fellow Australian paddler Lachie Carracher, this trip is the fourth consecutive year a group has explored the Kimberley in an effort to educate the public on the exploitation happening to the one of the world’s oldest, largely untapped regions.

After a nearly 4,000 kilometer drive northwest from Melbourne, the team will board a chartered aircraft to the upper reaches of the Fitzroy. Once on the water, the expedition will be made all the more challenging by the Fitzroy’s peak monsoonal flows.

To maximize safety in these demanding conditions, the team wisely chose Kokatat’s Ronin Pro as their life jacket for the duration of the trip. Advantages of the Ronin Pro include a trimmed-down profile and unique internal harness, which provides a comfortable secure fit, full spinal protection and improved side protection. Kokatat worked with representatives of Underwriters Labratories (UL), the United States Coast Guard (USCG), swiftwater rescue professionals, fire departments, recreational user groups, and other manufacturers to help update the standards of Type 5 rescue certification.

Working closely with Australian Conservation Foundation advisers to draw attention to the environmental issues that are facing the area, the team’s experiences will be documented in a feature film to be produced in March 2010. The film will showcase the area and the team’s exploration of one of the world’s most inhospitable environments. Additional information available at www.kayakthekimberley.com

The long awaited UL/US Coast Guard approved Ronin Pro life jackets are now shipping out of the factory to dealers around the country! The Ronin Pro is the life jacket of choice for our team paddlers, sponsored expeditions, and the factory crew.

The Ronin Pro was launched in 2007 for the Canadian market, followed by the European market in 2008.

The Ronin Pro offers a trimmed-down profile and unique internal harness, which provides a comfortable secure it, full spinal protection and improved side protection. Innovations such as reinforced adjustable, thermal molded foam padded shoulders with non-slip Hypalon® grip panels, an integrated sleeve for a cowtail or small tow tether, clip-on accessories, and superlative construction methods set a new standard in life vest design. The shoulders and quick release harness system meet or exceed the strength & release requirements of the United States Coast Guard for swiftwater towing and/or rescue. The Ronin Pro is made with GAIA® PVC-free foam.