We met some years ago, we see each other in the beaches, we paddle together and we share meals, talks, projections and discussions. Step by step we have been creating hopes and projects around this sport that has taken part of our live: The Sea Kayak. For this reasons, some years ago a group of friends decided to create a club: The Pagaia Club de Caiac Cap de Creus with the objective of promoting and divulgating this activity.

We are not the pioneers of Sea Kayak in the Costa Brava. In the sixties people of Portbou made handmade kayaks and people of the zone went to pick mussels, paddling with friends or going to Cervera parties with brother's Basco canoes. In those days, the canoes were boats made of wood and canvas, but they were not fragile. In 1948 Paul Fidrmuc published “Una piragua en la Costa Brava” that was the bestseller of the year. In this book, this German wrote his experiences navigating in our coast. Do you imagine?

This year in the conferences that we have organized, different people has talk about their experiences: Javier Knörr in Greenland, Xavier Kirchner in his trip from el Garraf to Menorca, our friends of the Trip Club IAEDEN navigating in the coast of Norway, Carme Adell through the Baltic Sea or the Association ACTLC and their projects in Vietnam.

All of them had different motivations, the kayaks were different, but the essence is the same: discovering, travelling, sharing moments of peace and relaxing, the contact with nature and navigating in the most intimate corners in complete integration with the sea… These are also the motivations that are moving our club, improving the techniques and modalities and spreading this old ancestral activity.

From the first step, our club has participated in Sea Kayak competitions, as competitors and organizers, and this has given us many successes and satisfaction moments.

Now we are in front of our biggest challenge: organizing the first Sea Kayak International Symposium in Spain that will have the security of practising this sport as its first subject, having the support of the Catalan Federation of Canoeing. We assume this challenge with excitement and with the free dedication of the members of our club that believe in this sport an all of its possibilities.

We hope that this first Sea Kayak International Symposium will be a success and that it will be another step for the consolidation of our club that it is already a reference in Catalonia and that aspires to be also a reference in an international level.

Long live Pagaia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pau Calero i Figueras.
President of the Pagaia Club de Caiac Cap de Creus.