The Seven Kingdoms: Isle of Man Sea Kayak Festival takes place annually in September.
Timed to coincide with the Autumnal Equinox (the largest spring tides of the year) to create opportunity for real learning in a really FUN environment!
Typical format: Festival Weekend plus optional 4 day training course.
Sea Kayak Festival enjoys epic conditions
The Seven Kingdoms: Isle of Man Sea Kayak Festival takes place every September, and is a truly international event. Timed for the Autumnal Equinox, largest tides
of the year, the world-class training environment attracts international coaches and
students, who travel to explore
the island’s Tidal Races and Overfalls.
Created by Keirron Tastagh in 2003, (and became effective promotion
prior to launching Adventurous Experiences the following year) the Festival showcased the Isle of Man as a consistently high-quality training venue for Sea
Kayaking, through an exciting, challenging and friendly Isle of Man event.
Keirron explained how the event has
developed from a stand-alone weekend offering experiences in advanced water
conditions, and leadership training courses, to being an integral part of the Sea
Kayaking calendar, enjoying its 14th year of sustainable growth.
“It has been sponsored by Sea Kayaking UK and supported by IoM Steam
Packet since the outset. This ongoing support has also played
a key part in establishing Adventurous Experiences in a worldwide network of
training centres, who deliver British Canoeing; Personal Performance,
Leadership and Coaching Awards.”
Symposium literally means ‘meeting and
drinking’ and traditional symposiums are typically based around this ethos of
social and mass paddling experiences.
When Adventurous
Experiences was established in 2004, as an Adventure Sports Centre, its core
offer was activity driven high quality sea kayaking tuition and trips. The
business delivered real adventure and individualised coaching in a group
environment, and this meshed well with the Symposium model as an ‘annual
celebration of sea kayaking’.
As permanent educational programs
through paddlesport were established, the symposium also developed to meet the
increasing demand for quality education, and professional coaching with low
ratios. The Island provides the required conditions to run British Canoeing Moderate Water and Advanced
Water leadership training and assessment courses.
Local paddlers and Adventure Club
members have the opportunity to receive training from visiting coaches, bringing
in knowledge and also providing external verification for British Canoeing
awards, ran locally.
“The great benefit of this
continuous learning network” says Keirron “is that I get to travel to other
other symposiums as a guest coach, fulfilling this role to their local
kayakers. This has included Israel, United States, Scandinavia, and the UK. International
coaches also bring their students over to us to train, and many of them sign up
to a full week on the water.”
Keirron continues;
“We have developed
world-class professional risk management education through outdoor training and
experiences in the Isle of Man, a perspective that runs through all activities
and programs we run. We got a lot of complements from our visitors on the
standard of personal performance and decision making skills of our members of
the Adventure Club and the Junior Paddlesport programs. In addition, the Island
is unique in the numbers of juniors coming into the sport of Sea Kayaking.”
The annual
Festival is a major part of the 7 Kingdoms Events offer each September.
Participants
sign up to skills development classes with professional coaches in:
advanced water skills, moving water skills, incident avoidance &
management, adapting skills for conditions, navigation on land & sea.
The
festival style International Training Weekend offers a range of training either
side of the Saturday evening meal and social, at the Bay Hotel in Port Erin.
More
information on the Festival and other Seven Kingdoms events at:
Catch you on the water soon!
Keirron & the Team
The International SKUK Dealers Meet at Anglesey after the Festival : )
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