Stinging Sixty

Sunrise is a small slice of joy that happens every day. Free for everyone to enjoy, no screen, no money, no special accoutrements required, just roll out of bed and enjoy a few minutes of uninterrupted wonder before the routine part of the day begins. Glorious.

Perhaps, even better when you finally crack over the 60 kilometre in a day mark, and start to feel that this big kayak trip ahead is something you can actually do.

Apart from a particularly nasty blue bottle sting, the day unfolded extremely well. The calmest sea conditions we have had in many weeks with only normal rebound and clapotis. No wind to speak of until we were about 10 kilometres into the return journey, and then, a delightful tailwind.

The only mark on the whole trip was when a blue bottle wrapped itself around my hand almost 20 kilometres from the end. I could not get the damn thing off, the tentacles were so sticky, and, I managed to wrap some of them around my mouth – don’t ask me how – before Doug came over and picked the last remnants off.

I’ve had blue bottle stings before but this one was particularly nasty and painful. Luckily, I had my sail up as it was hard to paddle very well with my hand burning and throbbing. Hours later, the ache had spread up to my shoulder. Turns out, the thing to do for blue bottle stings is soak the affected part in as hot a water as you can tolerate. When I finally did this about eight hours after the sting, I did get relief, and drugged up I went to bed at 7.00 pm and slept like someone who had paddled 60 kilometres and been stung by a nasty sea creature.

Almost 90

The final tally for our two long back to back paddling days was 89 km. ALL the obsessives out there can appreciate how frustrating it is to get home, all the kayak gear washed and hung out to dry, kayak away, having a late coffee (decaf, of course) and finding that you are 1 kilometre shy of 90. Curses.

Doug wanted to do our second long day paddle up the Clyde River instead of on the ocean. I kind-of disagreed. It is much easier paddling on the river than on the ocean, particularly when we can go upstream with the incoming tide and downstream with the outgoing tide. There is no clapotis, rebound, lumpy sea, oncoming swell, so each paddle stroke is so much easier than paddling on the ocean. You don’t get shaken around, there is no sea-sickness, and, if you want to land, within constraints of the tide, you can land anywhere.

But, I was tired from the day before and did not have the energy to motivate both of us to go back out, fight the northerly current for a half a day, and bounce around with incipient sea sickness. So, we went up the river.

This is one of the reasons why, if you want to be great at something you must surround yourself with great people. It is possible to go it alone, but on days when you are mentally or physically fatigued – perhaps both – the great friend is the one who gets you out there to do what needs to be done.

A lifetime of observation has taught me that great people make different choices to average folk. Average folk hang with other average folk. These people don’t want to be challenged by hanging with better people. Physically and mentally they can ride along on past performance or being about the same as their friends, or maybe just a bit better. That is a very comfortable place to hang out.

Great people, however, strive to hang with people whose skill, fitness, knowledge exceeds theirs. This may mean that every trip is an uncomfortable battle with few real successes. But, if the challenge is in the journey and the growth, then that is success.

Training and Fuelling

Paddling towards Burrewarra Point, a familiar looking paddler and kayak suddenly appears on the horizon. Splashalot has paddled up from Shelley Beach at Moruya Heads to meet us as we paddle south from our home bay, also heading for Shelley Beach, but, unlike Splashalot, Shelley Beach will be our half-way point only.

So far, we have been setting a reasonable pace considering we are caught in a northerly current and a southerly wind. At Burrewarra Point, however, the wind has eased and the rest of the day we paddle over glassy wind conditions with a long rolling swell. The sun slants across the water in quicksilver conditions which makes my queasiness just that little bit worse.

Around the point of Burrewarra, Doug eats half his breakfast while Splashalot and I try to stretch completely while still in the confined space of our kayaks. South from Burrewarra to Moruya Heads is a long, slow grind. I am getting tired, more tired than I should be which I later realise is from not eating, and, we are in a strong northerly current from the Moruya River which is spreading a brown stain of water across the ocean. It is confronting to think about how much soil has been washed out to sea since the 2019/2020 bushfires.

At Moruya Heads, the bar looks surprisingly ugly. The sand bars shift around the bar continually and more so than ever when we keep getting heavy downpours of rain. The swell is almost due easterly and the period is gradually increasing. Under these conditions, the channel, which runs along the breakwater, frequently closes out, and it looks as if it closing out today. Splashalot, however, knows the exact line to take in to land at Shelley Beach without getting collected and we follow him in, paddling hard to make headway against a strong outgoing tide.

It has been nice having company for a quarter of our paddle, but, after a short stretch and food break – unfortunately I am unable to face eating my lunch – Doug and I paddle back out for the return journey. A couple walking the beach stop to chat and then watch us paddle out; they are confronted by the big waves breaking and I am determined to get out without providing them with any free entertainment.

Once out through the heads, the brown stain of freshwater from the Moruya River has been pushed north by the current all the way to Broulee Island and our pace, despite gathering fatigue is good, the current really helps.

At Burrewarra Point, we bounce around in clapotis as usual and I am suddenly so tired. We duck into Guerilla Bay and manage to – just – scrape across the gap between Jimmies Island and the mainland as the tide is very low. Landing on a tiny bit of sand, we get out of the boats, and I drink some tea and eat some food. I try to avoid eating packaged food and too many carbohydrates focusing instead on protein and vegetables but I cannot face the cold chicken thigh I brought and so I eat half a square of dark chocolate and half a protein bar.

Another 10 kilometres to go and the food has helped a lot. Our pace picks up and we are cruising near normal speed, and I am singing to myself half remembered songs to pass the time. A total of 46 kilometres and an honest effort as some of our other long days we have had good wind assist on the way back.

At home, I am pleasantly surprised to find I am not overly fatigued, just stiff from sitting in a kayak for a long time. After some food and stretching, I even have the energy to walk through the forest path behind our house for a couple of kilometres before darkness falls.

A note on training and “fuelling”¹: First, fuelling. Dietitians, nutritionists and endurance athletes obsess endlessly about “fuelling” for long days, short days, and recovery days. Every day, in fact. However, even a cursory glance around your local area should be enough to convince you – for many of us a simple glance in the mirror is enough – that most of society is, in fact, over-fuelled/over-fed. This does not mean we have no nutritional deficiencies, but as a whole, in the developed world, we have a surplus of fuel. So I don’t really believe in eating extra, beyond hunger, or changing my nutritional habits to “fuel” activity.

However, after multiple days testing the hypothesis of “eat meat and vegetables when hungry” combined with long and tiring paddle days during which I am queasy with mild sea sickness that destroys my appetite, even I have to admit that I need some kind of food to avoid getting overly fatigued. In my mind, this is very different to consciously shovelling down a ridicously high amount of poor quality calories. In fact, a mere 100 or 300 calories somewhere in the midst of an 8 hour day appears to be enough to improve my energy and facilitate “recovery.” It just turns out that I can no longer tolerate those calories being derived from a hunk of protein. Thus far, I have used a low sugar chocolate or a low carbohydrate protein bar, but I would prefer to eat home-made food (that way I control the ingredients and can avoid industrial seed oils and lashings of weirdly named chemicals). Once our new oven goes into our new kitchen, I will make some home-made energy bars to take.

Which brings me to training, usually not that complicated, but made more challenging by a kitchen renovation which has consumed vast quantities of our time and energy along with cluttering up our house and putting our oven and cook-top out of action. Instead of nicely spaced training days, long paddle days, shorter more intense paddle days, supplementary strength and mobility work, we have had to jam paddles in where they fit the kitchen schedule, and come home from long paddle days and work on the kitchen. Not ideal, but, in the real world nothing is ideal.

Our peak distance so far is 46 kilometres, importantly (at least in my mind) with no wind assist and half against the current. Ideally, I would like to peak with at least one 65 to 70 kilometres day. A big part of training, besides fatigue and injury proofing tendons and muscles, is the mental aspect. It helps to know that you can do what you have to do ahead of time. Especially given that the long days on this trip are crossings between distant islands with nothing to look at but the sea.

I admit that when I think about a 70 kilometre day I shudder a bit in horror. The number is so daunting, almost 30 kilometres longer than our current longest day. However, I try to think that a long crossing is like climbing a mountain, done one paddle stroke or one step at a time.

1Your mileage may vary

Kilometres Paddled

The difficulty of training for a kayak trip that has mandatory long crossings between landing spots is that you start to focus almost exclusively on kilometres paddled during training days. Each training day, you try to go further than the last, hopefully faster than the last. Training, of course, does not work like that, particularly training on the ocean where currents, wind and swell make all the difference in how fast you can cover kilometres. All of that does not even factor in that some days you are just a bit more tired than others. Watching the kilometres tick over on a tracking device can be a soul sapping experience.

A couple of days ago, we did 37 kilometres, a few shy of our previous longest day, but we had no wind, and it was hot and muggy at sea. To make a change and practice managing my incipient sea sickness, we paddled out to sea looking for the Batemans Bay wave buoy. We had very little confidence in finding the buoy. The last published location is from a decade ago and the buoy moves around in storms.

As expected, there was no sign of the buoy, so we paddled west towards the coast, circled Wasp Island, took a second run around the Tollgate Islands, and as fatigue and cramp from sitting in a small boat for so long descended paddled back to shore.

Hold Some Tight, Let The Others Go

 “What is it that you would do if you were able to overcome the things you see as limitations or the things you’re afraid of? What would you do?” Michelle Kuipers, mother of Marc-Andre LeClerc.

There are people in your life who will lift you up and make you a better person than you were before and there are people who are so jealous and envious that you dare to pursue your dreams that they want to drag you down. Nurture the former, and cut loose the latter.

More Paddling

 After a lovely social paddle around the Bay, the next two training paddles were, of course, anything but lovely or social. The summer northerlies are here, which means the training paddles go north early, return south with the wind. The first day we did 42 km, leaving at 7 am meant that we only did the last 5 to 8 kilometres into any significant wind; and, as the big trip will, hopefully, involve sailing, we put the sails up to come home. Normally, I don’t use the sail on day trips as that just seems a bit too weak and wimpy, but, sailing in a strong wind and lumpy seas requires practice as well, so this training cycle we are using the sails. They sure do make the long paddle days easier.

Splashalot wanted a paddle on Sunday so we did the same thing again but left an hour later and did 10 kilometres less. Splashalot is not training for a big trip so he stuck with his usual “no sail” strategy but, as usual, he exceeded my speed sail-less. I was glad to hear, when we landed on the beach that he had actually been working to stay ahead as he always looks relaxed and cruisy.

After that I had a hiatus to visit my Mum in Sydney where the – what has become normal – madness prevailed. Three vaccinations, negative tests before and after, and yet we all still are wearing a mask and social distancing. It is almost as if the authorities don’t think any of this palaver actually works. Despite about 99% of the Australian population being virus free, the authorities are saying we should assume that everyone we come in contact with is infectious. Apparently, basic mathematics is not part of the curriculum for epidemiologists anymore.

Finally, a short, supposedly easy paddle today, which turned into the usual lumpy mess as the wind and seas from Cyclone Seth makes it way south.