Planning, training, and a bit of relaxing!!

So we're staying with James family at the moment getting the final things sorted before we fly out on Sunday! Its great to be enjoyng good food, a nice bed and some relaxing time before the mission starts on sunday, where we will be living in a tent eating porridge and rice everyday!!

We're making sure we have everything sorted in terms of kit and plans. We've had to post a huge box of our kit to New Zealand already, as it turned out the airline was guna charge us over a 1000pounds to take it all on! We've been doing as much research into the areas we will be paddling, and have made tonnes of notes on everything that may be useful!!

We have been to visit our sponsors Reed Chillcheater, and they have been very kind and provided us wiyth even more clothing/gear to keep us comfortable and warm on our epedition! We have always been impressed at how warm and dry Reed Chillcheater equipment keeps us on the sea, and it is our number one choice of gear to wear on our long expedition around New Zealand's South Island. The different clothings Reed have given us give us a number of options of what to wear, as the conditions can be extremely variable from freezing cold gale force winds to super hot calm days! Can't wait! Thanks Reed Chillcheater!!!

As well as planning, weve managed to get out in our new boats oni the sea in the surf! Its been great getting used to paddling the new boats. We are very impressed with the performance with them, the manuoverbility and handing are fantastic and they were great to move about coming through the surf ... something we will do a LOT of on the west coast of New Zealand! As well as surfing waves and having fun, we've been sensibly practicing timing the sets, and coming in to and out of the beach in the safest way possible. We imagined the waves were huge 15foot boat destroying dumpers .... this made it more realistic and scary!!

Check out the video below of some lovely surf action at Westward Ho!