Icebreaker clothing is a natural all wool clothing line for both men and women that combines outstanding design and functionality. I first saw it at a trade show in Canberra and the look and feel of the Icebreaker product, and the total philosophy just grabbed me and I knew we had to have it. We have been stocking Icebreaker clothing for about 2 seasons now, and I am still so stoked by the brand. Paddlecraft really backs all the products that are stocked, and my retail strategy – if you can call it that (!), is to personally connect with the item, or it doesn’t come in the door.

Icebreaker has that on all levels – the way it supports paddling by keeping you warm when it’s cold & wet and keeping you cool when it’s hot; it’s also lightweight and doesn’t retain any odor; and the design ethos is so compelling from the website, branding through to the actual design of the product. I also just “get” it – not synthetic, sustainable, not itchy, easy to care for, great properties when wet, and all JUST because it’s fine merino wool. In some ways the explanations get too complex when you read all about the Icebreaker brand. I suspect that it is because there are a lot of petroleum based suppliers and manufacturers that have been threatened by this New Zealand wool product and they have had to really justify in the media what is common sense to most people.

We want to share it with more than just paddlers. I have been told that the biggest users are people that aren’t into massive physical activity, but regular fit people travelling, walking, golfing – even babies! Doesn’t it make sense? Children and 100% natural fibers. Long distance flights and wrinkle free, self temperature adjusting clothes. Carry-on luggage with lightweight clothing. The list goes on.

Still to be totally honest, the Icebreaker apparel does come at a certain cost, so you really have to understand the value of it. But if you are trying to limit your product consumption, an Icebreaker shirt that costs $100, that you can easily wear 4 times with out washing and takes up ¼ the space to store can be translated in usage to a $25 value and less. (Women have been practicing this advanced mathematics for centuries!!) So to ease the financial worry, we are offering free postage to anywhere in Australia of all our Icebreaker apparel and 10% off the listed retail price! Let me know how you like it!

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I just couldn’t resist posting these pictures to help raise more support for the fundraising and for fun paddles that are coming up in the next months! It just makes you realise what a beautiful city Sydney is with just amazing waterways, and what wonderful paddling oppurtunities there are waiting if we just go out and get into it!

Here’s the start point at Blues Point park.

In the paddle zone!

Oh what a beautiful morning! Oh what a beautiful day!

There are 3 great paddles coming up quickly!! The first February event is the very popular Pittwater Discovery Tour at on Saturday, 13th February, launching at 9:30. Depending on the weather, wind conditions and tides, we will be choosing from many great spots to visit – Clareville Beach, Mc Carr’s Creek, Lovett Bay and many others! Bookings are essential and tours are kept to minimum numbers. (We had an outstanding response to our January tour and even booked a 2nd tour that month. So if this date doesn’t work for you, please give us a call and we will let you know if there are any other paddlers interested in other dates!) Visit our Pittwater Discovery Tour page at www.paddlecraft.com.au/shop/pittwater-discovery-tour/ for more information.

Registration is also open for the Bridge to Beach 11km Paddle, on Sunday 7th March, which runs in tandem to the Bridge to Beach swim. This is an amazing paddle that starts at the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and travels up to Manly with hundreds of paddlers paddling all manner of craft including sea kayaks and surf skis. It combines distance with truly epic sights only found in the Sydney Harbour and coastline. Register at www.bridgetobeach.com.au and if you need a kayak, please book way ahead as we will require advance booking for this paddle!

It is also not too early to also start training for the3rd annual Kayak for Kids, a fundraising paddling event benefitting Lifestart on Sydney Harbour on Sunday, 28 March 2010. This event has been dubbed the “City2Surf on water” and can be completed by paddlers bringing their own boat or by teams relaying the distance on 3-persons sit-on-tops. The overall 17.5m paddle starts at Blues Point and goes to Clontarf, but can be broken into (4) 4.5 km stages. You can go to www.kayakforkids.com.au for more information about the event and to enter, www.lifestart.org.au to learn about Lifestart’s programs, and Everyday Hero to raise fundraise online!

So there is really no reason why you’re not out there paddling – for fun, for fundraising and for fitness!

Happy New Year’s to everyone! Hope you have had a fun filled and happy holiday. We are kicking off the New Year at Paddlecraft with our first 2010 Pittwater Discovery Tour at 9:00 on Saturday, 9th January. Depending on the weather, wind conditions and tides, we will be choosing from many great spots to visit – Clareville Beach, Mc Carr’s Creek, Lovett Bay and many others!

Pittwater area has a long and varied history, with an area known for its lawlessness with escaped convicts and smuggled rum runners at the beginning of the 1800’s. But earlier settlers cleared land and built homes in Elvina Bay, Lovett’s Bay and McCarr’s Creek in the mid and late 1880’s. Fans of Salvation Creek by Susan Duncan are enthralled to see the house, Tarrangaua, built for the iconic Australian poet Dorothy Mackellar. Now with the western bank of land located within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, the area is protected from further homes, however many people still enjoy the secluded lifestyle in the many existing houses.

The Pittwater foreshore area is world famous for its idyllic lifestyle and forested outlook and kayaking Pittwater is a tremendous way to experience firsthand the still pristine ecological waterways, that are a jewel within the Northern Beaches community. Bookings are essential and tours are kept to minimum numbers. Visit our Pittwater Discovery Tour page link found on the home page.

Thank you to all our customers for your great support this year. We had a wonderful Christmas season and saw many repeat customers, as well as, recommendations from people we have helped. In the spirit of Boxing Day, we are prepare to make the big decision of purchasing a kayak for you or a loved one even easier!!
But first, a word on the true meaning of Boxing Day! In our car trip to the rellies on Christmas Eve, many suggestions were made from the back seat but none were on the mark. My research shows that Boxing Day dates back to the mid 1800’s in England and was a day of generosity to thank the community for all their effort throughout the years. The maids, drivers and other service workers were thanked with gifts of food, money, clothing, and other goods and were placed into boxes for easier transportation. So there you go!

For our Wilderness customers, on all our stocked Wilderness System kayaks, we are offering a free Swell aluminum fixed shaft paddle, a RRP value of $79. Or upgrade to a Swell Fiberglass Paddle for just $70 and a Swell Carbon Paddle for $160. For customers that are interested in just PFD’s or paddles, we are offering 20% of all our personal flotation jackets and with a purchase of any split fiberglass or carbon , receive a free paddle bag, a retail value of $79!!

For our Feel Free Customers, we have been advised that all stock has been distributed by the Australian supplier and nothing is left! Unfortunately, the new stock will not be available until mid January. We are very lucky to have a few models in stock, so don’t miss out on the the few remaining left. Call and inquire on stock models and colours.

Paddlecraft’s website is still undergoing changes and I have been asked by my website designer to let you know! She still takes great care to adjust all the details of the site and is greatly pained that we are still missing two icons on the Sales page. (Huh? Icons? The average bear wouldn’t even notice it!)

But Tania Buffin is a wonderful designer and was great to work with, and if you are in need of graphic design services, she can be reached at savage@elastik.com.au. But I would not have this website and the beauty and ease of the navigation without the website master, Arthur Case at http://www.stduio-automatique.com (…Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…!)

We have had beautiful, HOT weather in Bayview and the weekends have been massive. We are fully stocked and I am escaping dealing with the carnage wrecked on the shop this weekend by typing this blog. I am still struck by how quiet the week days are here, even when I wake up to the same beautiful weather. It just shows how NETTELed people’s lives have become. (Not Enough Time To Enjoy Life!)

There is no denying that Christmas is really right around the corner – less than 4 weeks to go! We have some great Chrissy presents in the shop and available to be posted out as well. (I haven’t yet figured out how to ship kayaks out economically but I always try and sometimes have achieved some unorthodox successes!) But just getting out on the water is an amazing experience and that can be a really unique present for anyone. A gift voucher for as little as $35 will get you 2 hours in a single kayak or double the fun at $50 for 2 hours on a double kayak. Happy Paddling!

What a great success our Paddle for Breast Cancer Research was – and tons of fun too! We had about 3 dozen paddlers participating, and all our hire kayaks were used free of charge and we collected over $3000, far exceeding our expectations. The weather held out for us as well, with a nice calm start and the clouds coming in just when we finished.

The feeling among the paddlers was really special, as there were many different ages and groups, and the whole beauty of the paddling experience reminded us all, how lucky we are to have each other and to be able to enjoy life in such a beautiful setting.

We paddled up and around Scotland Island and staggered the launch to accommodate all manners of paddle craft and the conversations floated between groups, as people introduced each other and spoke on all manners of topics.

Afterwards, we all joined in for a group photo and coffee at the marina café. It was such a wonderful experience that we will certainly hold the event next year again and will raise our expectations to beat this year’s fundraising amount. Hope to see you there!

We are at the same great location, Bayview Marina Anchorage, with best of all, the same great view and access to Pittwater, but just in a bigger shop! For those of you that may not have visited us yet, we are supremely lucky to be sitting on the foreshore of one of the most majestic waterways of Sydney, Pittwater which is bordered by a National Forest, Kuringai Chase National Park and the Northern Beaches Peninsula. We only moved right next store into an adjacent shop, which allowed us to really showcase all the amazing products and kayak lines we have sourced from the recent shows.

We now have a 15m long wall filled top to bottom with kayaks which means we can stock about 2 dozen different models. The new spring line of Icebreaker, a really innovative line of NZ merino wool outerwear, is featured in the front windows, and all of the gadgets that I just fell in love with, like the portable Apollo lantern with LED lighting and the nifty waterproof telephone bags, you can actually find. But my personal favorite is the wall paddle display – no more paddle avalanches while trying to look at the goods!

The shop still needs all the appropriate signage, and the new look of the space is inspired by our great website which we have just gotten up and running. (Many thanks to Tan & Arthur!) We are hard to miss, once you find out about us and head up here. Just past the tennis courts on Pittwater Road, from Mona Vale towards Church Point, the road gets a bit curvy and then we are the second marina on the right, with all the hire kayaks sitting outside the shop. So if you are interested in dropping into the Pittwater journey and want to hire kayaks, or are interested in paddling gear, come around and meet Chili (my dog) and I soon!

Proudly supporting the National Breast Cancer Foundation, we are hosting a fundraising paddle on October 24th, in sponsorship of October Breast Cancer Month. Launching at 7:30am, this all weather Pittwater paddling event will be open to all paddlers on either their own craft or Paddlecraft will provide a hire kayak free of charge! We are hoping for the usual gorgeous spring morning weather we have been enjoying lately on our Saturday morning group paddles, but we will paddle in any weather! We are still getting responses from our regulars, as well as, other keen paddlers and are really looking forwards to seeing a floating regatta of pink ribboned festooned kayaks floating around Pittwater.

Paddlers are encouraged to raise money by collecting sponsorship donations for their paddle – sponsorship forms available at Paddlecraft’s Bayview Marina shop or email us at info@paddlecraft.com.au. Participating paddlers needing a hire kayak will be required to book ahead and to submit sponsorship funds prior to the event start. Launching from the Bayview Marina, the paddle will include a 6km paddle around Scotland Island, but paddlers are free to add more distance to their paddle. Also, at the Bayview Kiosk, all profits from coffee sales will be donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. So, please get your kayak in the water and just start paddling – for October Breast Cancer Month!