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"Thank you sincerely for the work your Team has covered at Ohaupo and Karapiro Schools. I wish to congratulate you on Theo and Nick - I am impressed with their professionalism, their caring and supportive attitude to students, and their work ethic. They were fantastic. What I appreciated especially today is their ability to involve a wide range of students who have all different kinds of abilities and confidences with riding. The actual highlight for me was to see the individual attention that was given to a novice rider and the encouragement and support she was given. Really, really impressive. From my observations the two days have been a huge success thanks to the calibre of your two keen men."

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New 2010 Bike Fleet have arrived!!!

So that only means one thing, 2009's Scott's are going out the door at great pre-xmas at bargain prices! Contact Kris@bigfootadventures.co.nz and state your preferred size (Adult S, M, L or Kids Bike for under 10's ). Or ask for our TradeMe sellers name. (Photo Coming...)

Staff Profile: Riki "Get Down!" Brown 

Riki has recently finished a co-operative work experience with Bigfoot. The co-op experience was for the duration of 2009 which was his final year of the Bachelor of Sport and Recreation (with an outdoor major) at AUT. During his co-op Riki has spent over 350 hours working with us on a range of different jobs. During this co-op Riki also spent over 400 hours working on his academic research project. The aim of this project was to identify why secondary schools use whitewater kayaking in their outdoor education programmes. Riki’s coop time with us has been a very positive one from which both parties benefited. His plans for 2010 are to stick around and continue to work with Bigfoot for which both Bigfoot and Riki are looking forward to. Congratulations on completing your degree and all the best for the future!

From the Adventures of Jake Candy & Mathew St.Martin...

 

14/08/2009  Final Story: "Mission Accomplished!!!"

“Where the hell is Battles?”  Jake said as he looked at me in disbelief. It took an eternity to sink in, but we had just stranded ourselves on the South West side of Stewart Island, over a hundred kilometres from civilization and with no means of communication. 
The trip never really should have happened. I had just won a scholarship through Adventure Philosophy to build a double sea-kayak and circumnavigate Stewart Island. The celebrations were enthusiastic, but very short. Now that we had won the scholarship it immediately sunk in that this trip not only had to happen, but the kayak had to be built. Neither of us had built more than a sand castle before but full of self belief we started work.
As February turned to March and March into April frustrations mounted. Weeks of team friction left us without a single piece of the boat in place. By this point we had barely managed to design and lay out the frame, so as deadlines passed the situation became more urgent and frustrating by day. As I flopped from cancelation of the trip to compromise and compromise to replacement the leave date for the expedition was just 6 weeks away... a far cry from the 6 months I had started with. One night, frustrated and exhausted, I decided to give it one last push and made the one decision that would still make the plan possible; I would ask one of my closest friends, Jake Candy, to take on a near impossible project. To my amazement, it took Jake only a few moments to decide. We had had a few drinks, but after the proposal he stood up and shook my hand. That next night we would begin a seemingly impossible mission.
With nothing more than passion, enthusiasm and a bit of curiosity we stood staring at nearly six meters of ‘vertebrae’ sitting in the middle of a platform at the North Shore Events Centre; now what? So as both of us neared the end of our semester facing full time school, exams and 20 hour per week jobs we gave every remaining piece of ourselves to the kayak that would befittingly be named "Battles".
For the next 5 weeks Jake and I averaged 3 hours sleep a night. When we weren’t applying panels of wood or fibreglass we were looking at maps or trying to gain sponsorship. And when we weren’t studying for exams or worrying about assignments we were running across town to get more epoxy or figuring out how the heck to create the shape of the hatch cover lips. Somehow we threw together a 6 and a half metre double sea kayak and secured a deal with Canoe and Kayak for the seats, rudder and all the trimmings. With one training session around Kawau Island under our belts and a 20 minute test run of Battles at Milford Beach - which did nothing more than let us know that the boat didn’t leak, the rudder we installed actually worked and the seats were in awful positions - we loaded up the van and left for Stewart Island. Now on Stewart Island we did the last bit of research that would tell us if we had made it this far for naught... we checked the weather. With 40 knot easterlies the coast was a mess and we immediately knew that if it was going to happen it would have to be counter clockwise.  We left Halfmoon Bay the next morning, July 1st, hoping that the ranges would provide us with enough protection to calm the easteries and get us safely down the west coast.


The first day went well and the build-up to the heavy easterlies kept us moving with relative ease around the North Cape. We woke to freezing temperatures the second day and began our trek down to the west coast. We got as far as West Ruggedy Beach when we realized that the 40 knot winds had in fact reached their potential, and were swinging up from the south. Unable to hire a mountain radio, we only had a VHF radio and poor reception. As we stood on the beach watching Battles get spun sideways by windgusts from the south we radioed out to a fishing boat to hear conditions coming from the south. With their advice that “it could go at any second” we decided to call it a day.  Decision made, it took us nearly 2 hours to reach the only shelter that the beach would offer; the northeast side of a small rock pitch at the dead center of West Reggedy. At camp we found our cooker not working,  and in our rush to leave  we had forgotten the back-up. From now on we would eat and drink only cold goods, unless we could find enough dry driftwood to start a fire. Wet wood and biting wind led to a momentary lapse of reason; we decided put the cooker fuel to use and get the fire started with purpose. A massive meth infused fireball sent us running around the beach stomping and putting out flames on our drybags and the borrowed, $1200 MSR tent. After patching up the head sized hole in the tent with duct tape, we went to bed defeated and humble.
We woke to better weather but were advised by radio to stay put. As the day wore on I couldn’t take my mind off what looked like favourable conditions to at least make a little progress. Ruggedy was a cursed beach and I wanted to move on. Jake saw me squirming for action. “You want to go out there don’t you?” he asked. It wasn’t  long before we had Battles packed up and were headed down the coast making up for lost time. Staying outside the break and inside the point, where the wind was catching after its relief from the mountains, we were good to go. The next day we had to clear the longest open expanse without shelter that we would see on the trip, Mason Bay.  After the long struggle down Mason, which kept us at least a kilometer off shore to avoid the 6-8 footers breaking off shore, we camped out on the porch of a private hut and spent our first night free from sand.


The following day was the lead-up to the crux of the trip. We knew we would have to get as far down the West Coast as possible to get in good position to round South Cape, but without radio contact we were left to guess what was around every corner. A casual day leading down, we passed seal covered islands, but turning in to the “sheltered’ harbours of the south west we had to turn up into the wind to find our home for the night at Easy Harbour.  That short 2 kilometers at the end of the day pushed me as close to my limit as I have ever been.  We nearly hit empty when we got hit with 40 knot head winds. As we grunted and swore our way closer to our beach we passed the 3rd fishing boat we had seen on the trip, but this one was different. It looked more like a pirate ship than a fishing boat, and more importantly it held the crew that would later save the entire expedition. 
Exhausted, and well after the sun had dropped below the mountains, we pulled Battles up the beach of a small inlet completely sheltered from the wind. Struck by the beauty around us, we took a moment to appreciate the days hard work and enjoy its reward. We felt a calm sense of relief and began stretching away the days wears. Jake snapped up from a stretch with disbelief etched on this face. “Where the hell is Battles?” He turned around to face the now pitch black beach and I followed him slowly to where Battles had sat just moments before. We had done the dumbest thing you can do as a kayaker... we actually lost our boat. Not just that, but we were on Stewart Island; an island with a population of just under 400 people, all of them on the exact opposite side of the island. And we had no radio. Without thinking, I stripped off my clothes and ran into the water. I waded into the still, ice-cold inlet with a headtorch hoping to get a view around the cliffs. The water was still and glassy so we knew it couldn’t have gone far. The further I waded in the more I realized that there was no-way I would get deep enough to turn the corner. The cliffs surrounding the beach were rocky and the bush on top was thick and dense so there was no way to get up and have a look. Defeated and frustrated, we knew that if the sun was out we would be able to see Battles slowly floating away. But with no clue to the direction, and in an area known for sharks and sea lions, we were stuck.
Falling asleep that night was difficult to say the least.  Losing our boat was one thing, but losing all of the gear, the GPS, video camera, paddles and pogies was another. People had entrusted us with their gear and now in addition to the $1200 tent we had just tripled the bill. At 4am I finally had enough and got up and paced the beach waiting for the sun to come up.  Dawn finally came around 7 and I climbed up a for a look. The pirate ship! After an hour of screaming at the top of my lungs over their idling motor, I was on board telling them our mishap and hoping they would take us over 100k back to Halfmoon Bay. I wondered aloud if there was any thance that our boat could have been caught somewhere in the channel on the way out. Headache, the captain of the Tamarack, motored straight over to a small cove a few hundred metres before the inlet let out to the ocean. Sticking just inches above the water was the bow of Battles. “You are the luckiest man in the world,” Headache said to me over the roar of the motor. Lucky was right; not only had we found the boat, but floating just above was all the gear, still in its waterproof bag.  As we pulled the boat ashore the look on Jakes face was priceless. The rudder had snapped to the side and bailing out the water took at least two hours, but we were in heaven. Now all we had to worry about was South Cape.


We left the next morning with a vague weather report and our fingers crossed. With a bad weather forecast from the pirates, we paddled out of easy harbour prepared for the worst. We had come too far to not give it a shot. We knew we didn’t have a radio, a fishing boat for support or a spot to land if we screwed up. Without a break we paddled for 9 hours straight. The swell around the cape had calmed to 2-3 metres and we had just enough life left in us to complete the one thing that we were afraid would hold us back the entire trip; the South Cape. We slept well that night and took a rest day to gather our strength. We had overcome the loss of the cooker, the tent and Battles and though we knew the East still had some headwinds and 3 metre swell in store for us we were confident and determined. 
10 Days after leaving Halfmoon Bay we could now see the entrance to it once again. As we paddled our last stretch a fisherman who had warned us of poor conditions just one week prior motored up to our kayak and handed us two bottles of beer and two cracked open fresh oysters. “You carzy kids have done a good job” he said.

 

01/07/2009  1st Story: "Brief Intro"

A few months ago Mat and I submitted an application for a scholarship through Adventure Philosophy for funding of an expedition. The expedition in question is for two of us to build our own double sea kayak and use this to circumnavigate Stewart Island this July. A few months back we were informed that we had won the 2,000NZD scholarship to build our own kayak and circumnavigate the island. We have spent the past few months building this kayak and foresee completion within the next month, leaving two weeks for training before the expedition. In order for this to take place we need all of the help that we can get with the completion of this boat. From you we are asking for any supplies that could be used during the cold tempratures of this trip. In return we would be happy to place your company’s name logo on our boat which will gain exposure within the publicity that has already, and will undoubtedly lead up to and follow the completion of this expedition. We have already scheduled interviews with NZ Kayak Magazine and have had articles in Debate: AUT’s Newspaper, North Shore Times and several others that are anxiously waiting follow-up. We were also featured at the Auckland International Boat Show and will be presenting the results of the expedition, our future expeditionary goals and our sponsors, next year. This expedition will be world firsts for youngest unsupported team, first in self-built double sea-kayak and one of the few to do the trip in the dead of winter.

Mat St.Martin
Following a few years of self-discovery and travel I finally decided to pursue my dream career of becoming an instructor in the outdoors. I am currently studying to become a sea-kayaking instructor in hopes of not only leading in the outdoors, but also validating my expeditionary goals and refining the skills I’ve learned in the past. Currently I am a rock climbing instructor, mountain bike mechanic and full time student doing part-time work with several outdoor companies in the greater Auckland area. I recently completed a 300km kayak of the east coast which was a main consideration for the Adventure Philosophy Scholarship.

Jake Candy
I began university 3 years ago and am currently six weeks off completing a Bachelor in Sport and Recreation Majoring in Outdoor Education. I contract to various outdoor companies as an independent outdoor instructor and also manage a rock climbing facility during the evenings within the greater Auckland area. I am passionate about rock climbing, mountain biking, sea kayaking, snowboarding and surfing. I have recently gained my NZOIA Flat Water 1 qualification and have many logged hours sea-kayaking.