Equipment

Nigel Foster, left and Geoff Hunter cooking over a fire in SE Iceland 15th June 1977.

Note the rock on the pan lid to stop it blowing away in the wind.

Photo by Elias Jonsson who had searched the shore in his Jeep to find them

Kayaks

The Vyneck, designed by Nigel Foster and Keith Robinson for this type of expedition. The colors; yellow deck with red/orange hull, were chosen for visibility. Each kayak had a bulkhead behind the seat and another in the front positioned to double as a foot-brace. The hatch rims were fiber-glass molded from the rim of a plastic bucket. The lids were made from waterproof nylon glued onto a plywood disk and secured with bungee around the hatch rim.

Henderson sponsored us with a Henderson Chimp hand pump, with full set of spare parts.

Geoff paddling his Vyneck

Paddles;

Lendal asymmetric Pacemaster paddles, which had wooden blades and fiberglass shafts, courtesy of Alistair Wilson of Lendal, Scotland. We had one Pacemaster paddle each. Nigel's was right hand control, 212 cm long. Nigel's spare was a one-piece wooden Mark Gee slalom paddle, 210 cm. carried strapped to the rear deck.

image by Heidar Baldursson

Paddling clothing

Paddling jacket; by Wild Water of England, made of fuzzy rubber. Each featured a hood, but no watertight seals.

PFD. "Wild Water" of England tailored PFDs to Nigel and Geoff's specifications, gusseting the pockets to allow more cargo space. Unfortunately they were not finished in time before we left. Geoff's now wife Jean went to considerable trouble and expense to ship the PFDs to Iceland, but they never reached us.

Geoff wore wet-suit trousers. Nigel wore fleece, a one-piece fleece body-suit that he purchased from Government Surplus. The fly zipper broke on the first day. Both wore Damart thermal undergarments, compliments of Damart

Sprayskirt; neoprene, incorporating a vest.

Tent

We used the rain-sheet of a Vango Force Ten tent with nylon valances sewn around the bottom so it could be pitched on a beach and held down with rocks.

Tent rain-sheet in Iceland, shown right in England with bivvi bag, Karrimat and sleeping bag.

Bivvi bag

We did not take the inner tent; just a large homemade waterproof red nylon bivvi bag that could serve dual purpose as a groundsheet, or to sleep in should the tent fail.

Sleeping mat

We each slept on a yellow insulated foam pad, called a Karrimat, and made by Karrimor, It is visible in the tent picture under the sleeping bag.

Sleeping bag: Ultimate 30 winks, which contained fibers rather than down. We thought that should the sleeping bag get wet, man-made fibers would dry more quickly than down. We did get our sleeping bags wet and they dried completely in front of a driftwood fire, albeit a huge one.

Cooking

A petrol 1/4 pint (gasoline) stove by Optimus, burning automobile fuel... the only readability available fuel available. Unfortunately the gasoline gradually dissolved the plastic container in which we carried fuel. When the fuel burned it left a black tarry residue in the stove pipes and the wick inside, gradually choking the flame. Despite Geoff's inclination to throw the stove as far out into the ocean as he could, we coaxed it along until, about half-way around Iceland, we finally realized what was causing the problem. Even so, the stove never did burn well after that. Iceland does catch a lot of driftwood so it was often possible to cook on a driftwood fire. We cooked in a set of Teflon-coated cooking pots with a steamer.

modern version of the stove.

Food

We planned to buy supplies when we needed them. It was not always possible to get to a village before supplies ran out in bad weather, and it was often not easy to find food in small quantities that we could fit into the kayaks. The rumors that we occasionally resorted to seagull curries were not far from the truth.

We left England carrying enough dried food for the uninhabited south coast sand beach section of the trip where we would not be able to replenish supplies. But our journey from England to Iceland necessitated a four-day layover in the Faeroe Islands waiting for the Iceland ferry. There while we stored our kayaks and supplies in a warehouse on the dock, rats chewed into our supplies, scuppering our plan!

Film

Bell and Howell loaned Geoff a Super-8 cine camera. We took still images using Ecta-chrome film. I lost most of mine in the mail when I sent a package home; the wrapper arrived torn open with the film canisters gone. I have very few images from the trip.

Tupperware

Watertight boxes sponsored by Tupperware were used to carry film, books and other items that needed to be kept dry and not squashed in the kayaks. Home-made waterproof nylon dry-bags with polythene inner linings were used for most everything else.

Safety

We carried a Mayday radiotelephone... which was heavy and bulky. When we tested it in Iceland, we discovered the signal would not reach from one side of the harbor to the other. We also carried mini-flares.