Re-Creating Original St Kilda Crossing

Forty seven years after Anne and Hamish Gow made the first crossing to St Kilda by sea kayak, a team from the Stornoway Canoe Club plan to re-create the orginal crossing for a TV programme.

A local boat builder will build a replica double kayak, assisted by Duncan Winning, who is advising on original design plans.

The clothing has to look authentic and, at the same time, be safe. Reed Chillcheater are tackling that end of things.

It won't be a husband and wife team in the double kayak, it'll be two women.  Dolina Swanson and Christine Stewart hope they'll be the first all female double crew to cross to St Kilda.

No doubt the TV programme will use Hamish's original cine footage which also features in Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown Volume 2 and, more extenstively, in Hamish's Kayaking Films.

The original footage had been drawn to my attention by Mike Sullivan, who is coordinating this project.  Mike also features in our DVD - he's one of the Stornoway club playing on Loch Seaforth in the last coaching session (he does a pop-out in his son's kayak).

The attempted crossing will be filmed by MacTV for the BBC Alba programme 'Trusadh', in which Mike and (I think!) one of the other paddlers featured earlier this year.  Here's their Facebook page.