Sea Kayaking The Murramarang Coast

Three days, five to six women (one had to leave after day two), three days paddling along the south coast of NSW, and, to give context to the numbers, days 6 to 8 of my hard things project. A couple of months ago I decided I would work towards my Sea Guide qualification with Paddle Australia. Among the eye-watering essentials – the risk matrix makes a comeback – there are practical requirements including leading six open water sea kayak trips (day or overnight). Our group was all experienced paddlers, so they don’t really need leading, but they were willing to allow me to practice on them, and, in any group it is good to have someone acting at least as coordinator if not leader. Leaderless groups don’t really exist. Someone is calling the shots even if by subterfuge.

The weather was challenging and plans had to be updated and changed. We left Kioloa just after 9:30 am on Saturday departing from a busy beach and full car park. The weather was hot, sunny and above all humid. A northeasterly wind picked up as soon as we turned past O’Hara Head and, based on forecasts, we expected this wind would quickly build to 15 to 20 knots. Fifteen knots is fun sailing for most people, 20 knots is engaging sailing for strong and confident kayakers, but can be anxiety provoking for paddlers less practiced in such conditions, and rescues start to become challenging. Our group planned to be off the water before the wind ticked above 15 knots. We were pretty much on target with this although the landing proved a bit more difficult than planned due to a very steep beach, soft sand, large surging waves and heavy boats. Everyone managed really well, although getting the loaded boats out of the surge zone was heavy work.

It was a hot and humid afternoon and evening. There was lots of swimming and exploring some deep caves. Some went for a walk, and I walked north to get a weather forecast for the next day, returning dripping with sweat. That night, the air was still and damp with humidity while the sound of the surging waves was deafening.

The next day, with spectacularly good timing, we launched from the beach – much easier than the day before as the seas had dropped – just as rain started. It was a grey but calm paddle south for a beach break where we could get an updated forecast. The forecast had changed again with rain and thunderstorms forecast. We decided to lap around the Tollgate Islands and then repair to our house near the beach as an alternative to sitting out in the rain the rest of the day. One of our paddlers had to leave to go to work the next day and another paddler went home but came back the next day. Four of us descended on Doug and we enjoyed a convivial evening. It rained steadily but there were no thunderstorms.

The final day we planned to paddle all the way back to our vehicles at Kioloa. There was some disagreement in the forecast models but only in terms of wind strength, not direction. Inshore, we could expect winds from the south at anywhere from 15 to 25 knots. If we got the upper end of the forecast we would have challenging conditions indeed.

We had fairly steady rain over the entire 30 kilometres and I was happy to have worn my warmest kayak top which I usually only wear on cold winter days, in addition to a beanie and a paddle jacket. The first 22 kilometres of the 30 kilometre paddle featured only light winds, no more than 10 knots, so just enough to make paddling feel easy and fast. We did have some bumpy conditions, most notably passing Point Upright where rebound is common on even the calmest days.

Over the final eight kilometres the wind was steadily increasing and reached about (my estimate) 15 or 16 knots. The seas built rapidly and we started to surf down waves and have larger wind waves cresting behind us. In an out of character move (I am not an authoritarian at heart) I called sails down about five kilometres from Kioloa. Ruby’s sail was very poorly mounted and had tilted so far to leeward that her whole kayak was canted over, steering appeared difficult and I thought if the sail tipped any further over, Ruby herself might capsize. While the sail makes travel faster, rescuing a capsized paddler takes away any speed advantage. Ruby was travelling much slower than the rest of us as most of the wind was spilling out of her sail and the remainder of the group simply could not go slow enough to keep her in sight with our sails up. A tough call for a person who believes adults should be self-determining but the correct one in the circumstance.

Immediately, the sails were down our speed dropped. I admit to thinking, lets get the “puck off the water” before conditions worsen. In these situations, I generally increase my power output to get the thing done - there really is safety in speed - but in this instance I pulled the throttle back and thought “patience grasshopper.” It was a relieved practice trip leader who pulled into the calm waters behind O’Hara Head and landed at the now deserted car park and beach.

Does Data Matter: Sunshine Bay to Kioloa By Sea Kayak

Yesterday, I paddled from my home bay to Kioloa with a great group of female paddlers. Conditions were mixed. We started with light (under 10 knot) tail winds and cloudy skies, paddled a short middle section (after a quick beach break) under calm conditions and light rain, and finished the last 8 to 9 kilometres with increasingly brisk winds (up to about 17 knots), rapidly building seas and full-on rain. As we paddled around the final headland into sheltered water, I admit to a great deal of relief. Our group may have begun the process of “having an epic” had conditions deteriorated any further.

The local automated weather collection sites (Moruya airport and Ulladulla lighthouse) recorded winds for the appropriate period (9:00 am to 1:30 pm) as SW to S, around 13 knots with gusts to 20 knots. The Bureau of Meterology (BOM) reports from automated stations (both Moruya airport and Ulladulla are automated) provide average wind speed in knots over 10 minutes and maximum wind gust, also in knots, recorded over 3 seconds. By 2:30 pm, thankfully we were off the water, the Ulladulla station was reporting wind speeds around 20 knots with gusts closer to 30 knots. The Moruya station, meanwhile, recorded consistently lower winds than Ulladulla . Although wind speed is a ratio level measure; for the sea kayaker, the difference between 5 and 10 knots of wind is radically different to the difference between 15 and 20 knots of wind, or 20 and 25 knots of wind.

Of course, afterwards, there was some discussion of wind speeds with some women thinking we had 20 to 25 knots of wind, and some others – notably me – thinking we had closer to about 17 knots maximum. You would think this would be an easy conundrum to solve but an accurate wind speed, in the absence of a hand held anenometer is actually not completely simple. Both nearby automated stations indicated we paddled with about 13 knots of wind but the vigorous seas and widespread “whitehorses” indicate that wind speeds were higher than that but not above 20 knots. At 25 knots, I have had my kayak blown sideways across the water with me in it and have felt like I might lose my paddle. Those are good benchmarks of strong winds for me.

The question, of course, is does precision and accuracy matter in this instance (remember one can be precise without being accurate)? Like most things in life, I think “it depends.” If you want to know that you can paddle safely in 20 to 25 knots of wind, accuracy matters. However, if your goal is personal challenge then both accuracy and precision are irrelevant. Most of us recognise the “adventure zone” of appropriate challenge, where it does not really matter if the wind was 10 knots or 50 knots. Challenge is individual. If conditions were difficult for you and you perservered, good on you, you’ve just started your own Hard Things project.

Mostly, I don’t see a problem in being wrong, unless you both over-estimated conditions and are using those overstated conditions to inform future paddling decisions. That could end in a Really Hard Things project and might be the kind of fun that isn’t really fun.

Without The Socials Or The News

Brendan Leonard is another one of those quirky writers, like Andy Kirkpatrick or Marc Twight, whose writing I almost always enjoy. This short article, about IRL¹, is a good subsidiary read for todays Hard Thing which is no “socials” or news media. My only real “social” is Twitter, which is either a place of “isms” – sexism, racism, ableism, sizeism, ageism, and misinformation or the last bastion of free speech, depending which side of the political spectrum you fall under. Lefties will claim the former, libertarians the latter. Note that this simplistic division implies we have reached the end of times where there is no middle ground.

Anyway, todays Hard Thing was no socials or news. Like most people I have an ambivalent relationship with news. I feel like I should keep up in case there is something I should or could do, but also realize that despite what the “socials” say about “one man changing the world” most world, country, state, and even local events are outside my sphere of influence, therefore knowing about these events has literally no upside. Am I trying to live in a bubble? Yes, but lets admit almost all of us are, and I am not convinced that we are not the happier and healthier for it. The modern world is no place to live if you want health and happiness.

As to the socials, I quit the Metaverse a decade ago thinking the fake world with fake people doing fake things was toxic to human health. Tik-Tok/Snapchat – what else is there? - I never joined as I have always assumed these sites would be akin to the Metaverse, only worse. That leaves Twitter, which is actually my source for most news because, as far as I can tell the legacy/mainstream media/fourth estate (whatever term you want to use), has become so corrupt, pathetic and manipulative that it is not worth using for bum paper.

If you think todays hard challenge is really easy, you should try it. Most of us are either hopelessly addicted to scrolling (doom or otherwise) or prey to the dopamine drenched validation we get when people like our posts.

Weirdly, as I think I have a mild news and Twitter addiction, todays challenge was probably the easiest so far. Perhaps I am not quite as enslaved as I thought. Today’s picture is the pile of garbage I picked up on my six kilometre walk today. I was thinking, as I picked up trash, that it would be really interesting to see all the garbage I have picked up in the last few years all stacked up in one pile. I bet it would be a really big pile. You may notice, that every item in that trash bag (also picked up along the way) is actually a wrapper or container from some kind of junk food or drink. Every single item. Imagine if we stopped producing junk food on good farm land and packaging junk food into plastic, cans, and waxed paper coverings. Can’t stop capitalism though can we, or at least that what the capitalists want you to believe.

1In real life

High Gravity

Only four days into my “Hard Things” project and I am fatigued! Tomorrow’s hard thing will have to be a mental task. Today’s hard thing was 20 minutes on my climbing wall. That probably does not seem hard, but it’s an overhanging wall, it was very hot today and I am weak and old. It was also strength training day, which added to how hard todays Hard Thing task felt.  I got through it but it was definitely a grind not a sprint.  

Kayak Surfing The Batemans Bay Bar

For day three of my hard things project I went kayak surfing in the Batemans Bay bar and did 10 sweep rolls. Despite having spent actual hours upside down in my boat (not all in one go, obviously) I still really dislike rolling and have to force myself to practice. Probably, this is some kind of survival instinct that is hard to completely train out.

A friend of mine had a terrible experience in Batemans Bay bar when she capsized, failed her roll and then got cycled repeatedly as the tide pulled her out and the waves pushed her back in again. This went on for a long time – out with the tide, in with the waves while trying to keep hold of kayak and paddle. Nasty. Another couple of kayak friends had the same experience but in Tuross Bar which is generally a whole other level of nasty than the bar at Batemans Bay (usually avoidable, but not always).

I have done the swim of shame many times most notably at the bar on the Tomago River. When the tide is running out, it is a heck of a swim in and although I’ve never feared for my life, the experience ranks up there in unpleasantness with stepping in fresh dog shit in your best shoes on your way to your mothers funeral.

So, surfing at the bar, which can be quite fun, is also in my mind, a suitable hard thing. After we finished surfing I manned up and did 10 sweep rolls. All were successful, although I did resort to pawlatta rolls when I tipped back over on two of the ten. However, if you don’t have to bail out, swim for the beach or do a reenter and roll, I call those successes, even if those rolls are a bit subpar on style. Coming home, the wind was up and conditions were lively, although, after yesterdays 30 kilometre trail walk I was not.

30 Kilometres and a 24 Hour Fast

The adage in strength training is that its the last two to three reps as the muscle fibres reach exhaustion where the big gains lie. Physiology backs this up: in order to pull into play all muscle fibres, particulary type 2a and 2b, all muscle fibres must reach near-exhaustion state. This is a good analogy for doing hard things. In order to really experience discomfort, you have to be near the end of your tolerance.

Yesterday, I started the 60 Days project. Day one was fasting from dinner the previous night until dinner the next night. I’ve done this before - fasting is good for cellular clean-up and metabolic flexibility - but not for many years and I am out of practice. Around about 2:00 pm, I looked at the clock and thought: “Wow, only four hours to go.” Those are the longest four hours, and the last hour, as dinner is being prepared the very longest. But, of course, I made it, although I would find it difficult to repeat this pattern frequently. Some do however, notably hard man Jocko Willink and even rock climber/guidebook author Alan Watts.

Today’s hard thing was 30 kilometres on foot on trails. Things went pretty well until kilometre 25 or 26 after which I had that low grade nagging discomfort everywhere and a desire to get done. Again, the bulk of the event was easy, only the last few kilometres required some mettle.

Do Hard Things: A Pilot Project

I am just back from a quick Sydney trip to visit my Mum. Simple as that is, driving north, visiting, driving south, that speedy trip does qualify as a hard thing; at least it is for me. Eight hours in a car, then another six to eight hours over a day and a half visiting my Mum in a care facility and I have not even included living in Sydney normie land for a day or two. The whole situation is way more stressful than paddling across Bass Strait, pioneering a new ski traverse through avalanche terrain in the Purcell Mountains, or putting up new rock routes. Tired but wired describes how I feel. Weirdly tired given I get insufficient exercise, but strung out on stress hormones from crowds and traffic and an altogether foreign environment over which I have no control. Huge kudos, however, to my brother and his wife who put up with a creature from the latest conspiracy theory who drops in and out at odd intervals.

But the whole experience, together with the book I am currently reading - Do Hard Things by Steve Magness - got me thinking about how easy it is in the modern world to let slide a regular practice of doing hard things. Accordingly, I came back from Sydney thinking it would be interesting to try an experiment where I did one hard thing every day for 60 days. Why 60 days, well, I turn 60 this year, 60 is a pretty solid number, and twice 30 which is, in conventional parlance, the amount of time it takes to develop a habit (although anyone that has tried to replace a bad habit with a good habit knows that 30 days does not a habit make).

Keeping such a series going is not my forte. In fact, I pretty much suck at keeping series or streaks going, so I don’t feel entirely confident that I will make 60, let alone a consecutive series of 60 hard things, but, according to conventional parlance (again!), if you don’t start you will never finish, so I can at least try.

This is not a book review, but I am not super excited by the book Do Hard Things. I follow Magness on Twitter and my first impression is that Magness is one of those guys who quotes sociology/psychology studies to construct a narrative. I don’t oppose narratives. Anyone with any nounce should understand that humans understand things through stories, a trait that is likely explained by evoloutionary biology. But, the new trend to quote studies that have never been repeated or that leave most variance unexplained bothers me. The very best sociology/psychology studies in the world explain at most 30% of the variance in human behavior (a fact I am not going to bother bolstering with a study; accept that statement or not, I don’t care) which leaves 70% unexplained. Then there is the ubiquitious bias whereby only positive studies are printed and the lack of replication of most research. When taken together, these narrative stories might be interesting and even helpful but they are far from proven.

If I had to sum up the book, which is popular, it might be to say: “here is a book which claims you can do hard things without doing hard things.” That is not a completely legitimate critique of the book which does include strategies to help people do hard things. The strategies are not new or surprising and I suspect, people who are successful at doing hard things – like Candice Burt for example who is currently on a multi-month (!) ultra-marathon streak – have worked these strategies out for themselves even if they can not state them as eloquently (or with so much supporting data). Essentially the book could be summed up in one sentence: “do hard things but make hard things easy to do.” Certainly, any hard things I have done in my life, have been achieved by using this overarching organisational system although the actual mechanics might vary based on the hard task at hand.

A more interesting but also more challenging read comes from the nonprophet space, an ever shifting place populated by some people who are really good at doing hard things. I always wish I wrote as incisively as Twight, but I don’t, although I frequently recognise myself in his writings. This sentence describes perfectly my current heuristic: “It sucks to admit that this natural reaction that keeps me safe from “candida diets,” magnetic healing, or the trend of wearing a gas mask to train “at altitude” sometimes closes me off to practices that I might benefit from.” Heuristics can be useful but also have their limits.

Backyard Adventures: Durras Lake

May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks. J. R. R. Tolkein. The Hobbit.

Tolkein’s classic book, The Hobbit, must be the ultimate story of adventuring from your front door. Unsuspecting hobbit meets reknowned wizard and embarks on a dangerous and daring quest to save the world from destruction. I must have read the book four or five times as a child and just thinking about Tolkien’s wonderful prose and poems makes me want to dip back into its magical pages again.

Grown-ups, however, can also have adventures from home. Those adventures may not be as audacious and daring as Bilbo Baggins’ adventures but that does not decrease their legitamcy. Having an adventure from home requires turning your head a little onto one side and viewing the world around you in a slightly different way. Perhaps you could catch the bus to a random stop a dozen kilometres away and trace a line across the map finding your way home, or, you could paddle north or south and land on a tiny beach accessible only at low tide, or thread your way through rock islets and find new caves. No matter where you live, an adventure is right outside your front door.

One of the local adventures I had been planning for some time had been to paddle north from our local bay to Durras where we would cross the sometimes open, sometimes closed bar at the terminus of Durras Lake, and meander up the lake to a wooded campsite far from anyone. The last time we paddled into Durras Lake from home was November 2020, so I had probably had this little adventure from home on the agenda ever since!

There was little swell or chop heading north and we both began to think the bar/surf entry would be easy. And, indeed it was, even with an outrunning current. In fact, the toughest part of the trip was paddling up the narrow arm of the creek to reach the main Durras Lake as the water was so shallow it was hard to take a proper paddle stroke. After a lunch break, we paddled up one arm of the lake and found a nice campsite shaded by she-oaks and big spotted gums. Of course, the entire lake needed to be paddled, this was an adventure after all, so after the all important (for me at least) tea break, we launched the kayaks again and paddled up to the northern end of the lake. Fish were constantly jumping, large rays swam by under the boat, and near the northwestern end of the lake, a large bevy of black swans rested.

That night, I followed an old forestry track through the woods and was surprised to hear the constant sussuration of the surf on the beach. How could such a small swell sound so loud? When I got back to our camp site and we checked the wave buoy data, that distant murmur made a lot of sense. Inexplicably, the wave height had popped up to three metres maximum with a 12 second period. Conditions like that would make exiting the bar next day interesting.

Sea kayaking, as someone once said, is the new mountaineering. On long ski traverses, when storms moved in, we would lay confined to tents listening to the wind blow occasionally crawling out into the tempest to dig out the tents. All night (or day if we were confined by weather) we would listen to the wind and snow and worry about avalanche conditions. On sea kayak trips, it is the sound of the surf booming on the beach that causes worry. Will we get off next day? The parallel is not quite the same as surf on a beach can sound very loud on a quiet night even when that surf is small. That knowledge, however, seldom stops the brain worrying.

The night, however, was far from quiet. As usual in the Australian bush, the forest was alive with creatures, bats, birds, marsupials, macropods; eery cries, grunts and squawks puncuated the night until the early morning hours when there was a semi-silent hour before the dawn birds began their song. So many other living creatures of which we are largely unaware.

Next morning, we discovered our breakfast (cooked eggs) smelt disgusting and had clearly gone off, so we made do with black coffee out of our large plastic jugs. Paddling back down the lake was easy and, as we neared the boat ramp, we picked up the outgoing current (maybe the lake is just constantly running out) and slipped easily down to the bar. I got out of my boat and had a look, but Doug was content with looking from the water. A bit messier than the day before, but an easy exit again riding the current out past the reef; paddling south under a beating sun, stopping at Judges Beach for a swim and tea, and finally, in a blustery summer northeasterly wind catching waves back home to our local bay and the end of another backyard adventure.

All photos (bar one) DB. 

Seeing Red: Summer Paddle Days

The blog has really been languishing for the last few months. I’m doing stuff, I just don’t get around to writing that stuff up. Most of the stuff has been normal sort of stuff – rock climbing at nearby crags, paddling around the local area, walking the new bits of the headland track, lifting weights. After a cool spring and early summer, we have been catapulted into regular summer with hot weather and strong northerlies so there is more paddling on the agenda and much less rock climbing.

In a fit of craziness - it’s often good to commit to things without thinking about them too much - I signed up to be assessed as a Sea Guide under Paddle Australia. In general, I’m an over-analyser and can take weeks to decide on a shade of off-white to paint the house trim. Clearly that level of analysis – dithering by another name – is not a good use of our precious time on earth so without giving the Sea Guide thing much thought, I put my name down.

So far, I’ve done the quiz – which is open book so if you get much less than 95% you have serious problems - and the assignment. Ironically, the assignment took me less time than the wretched assignment for Sea Skills but my assessor said “there’s a lot of red on that assignment” so apparently I did not do very well. “There’s a lot of red on that assignment” is a statement reminiscent of real estate agents in Australia who answer all questions, particularly those about price, obliquely with statements like “there will be a 7 in front of the number,” as if they are entertaining an audience with ESP and mind reading and not trying to sell a house.

I don’t know what all the red on my assignment is about because I have not met with my assessor yet. Apparently, there is so much red on my assignment that we need to sit down in person to discuss all the red. There might be tears. It’s lucky I’ve developed a thick skin over the course of life as, despite what the self-help gurus want you to think, negative feedback can be tough to take, particularly when there is a “lot of red.” There are a ton of things I am not very good at but one thing I am good at is finishing what I started and not quitting so I expect I’ll get through all the red just like I’ve got through everything else.

A friend of mine recently told me I was a “Doubting Thomas” which I had to look up on Wikapedia as my Sunday school days are about five decades ago. Apparently, the very first “Doubting Thomas” was one of the apostles - coincidentally called Thomas - who did not believe that Jesus had “risen from the dead” after being crucified until he – Thomas - had seen Jesus alive and even touched the crucifixion wounds. I don’t know about you, but doubt in that instance seems pretty legitimate to me. Anyone who believed some random had got up, pushed aside a ton weight of rock in front the cave he’d been entombed in for three days after being hung on a cross and stabbed in the side, and casually strolled down to the local cafe for a flat white is just a wee bit too credulous. In my life, that level of credulity could get you killed.

In between thinking about all the red and wondering if I should have a little more faith and a little less skepticism (probably no), I have been working on my sea guide skills which is actually a bit difficult without a group of unsuspecting punters given to random capsizes to drag around the Tollgate Islands and plonk back into their boats. But, my surf skills could improve as could some of my strokes and my combat roll.

Last Sunday, we did some surfing off Barlings Beach which was better than I thought it would be and again on Wednesday we drove down to Moruya Heads and went out surfing Moruya Bar in very friendly conditions. On Monday, I paddled solo down to Mossy Point to meet some friends who were going for a half day paddle. I don’t really need more long distance training for Sea Guide but it was too nice a day to stay home and too short a distance to bother with loading the boat on the car – I’ll do just about anything to avoid that - so I paddled the 17 or 18 kilometres down the coast to meet them. Apart from long paddles up the Clyde River, that is probably the longest distance I have paddled solo and I could see the appeal.

The weather was great with only light winds and a long rolling swell. In the afternoon, I had the usual clapotis but nothing at all sketchy and it was pleasant out on the water by myself with scarcely even any power boats around. In fact, it was all so nice, so chill, just an enjoyable day out in the best company – my own – that I forgot all about the red, and Thomas, and whether the legacy media are legitimately reporting on all the things they want you to worry about without a skerrick of actual evidence and decided that for this year at least, it’s unlikely that the world will end or that we’ll all be struck down by a “novel” virus.

Coastal Headlands Walking Track

First off, Coastal Headlands Walking Track is a helluva mouthful and clearly council needs some savvy IGen native to come up with a moniker that is at once concise and descriptive. Curious about the state of the track in the southern section, I took the local bus south from a stop on Beach Road, close to the north end of the track, to Malua Bay. The southern terminus of the track is Mackenzies Beach but there is no bus stop there so one either gets off at Malua Bay or Rosedale. As it was high tide and getting from Rosedale to MacKenzies Beach is tricky at high tide, I chose Malua Bay.

The southern section of the track has had no work done as yet apart from a new bit of pavement at Mosquito Bay. This does make the track hard to follow if you are not familiar with the area and there is one spot where there is no track at all. However, if you are good at finding tracks, you will find a footpad at the southeast end of Malua Bay that leads up onto the headland and shortly the track improves and leads pleasantly around to Pretty Point Bay. From there, the final bit of track to Mackenzies Beach is reasonable but at one spot a walker will find themselves pressed against a fence for a short distance.

North of Malua Bay, work needs to be done as the current track runs out in dense bush behind houses on Tallawang Avenue. There are, however, two legal access routes between houses on Tallawang Avenue so this section can be walked on Tallawang Avenue until the track is complete. There is a similar issue just south of Garden Bay but currently, the track is passable although a bit squeezed against fences. New steps will eventually be built down to Garden Bay.

Garden Bay to Mosquito Bay is good but it is easy to miss the small track that leads down to the southeastern end of the rock platform at Mosquito Bay. North of Mosquito Bay walkers will most likely use Baringa Crescent as access to the track but tide and agility permitting there is a route along the shore. The rest of the track is in good condition and easily followed by the average walker although a couple of areas will be better once some steps and slope stability works have been undertaken.

At the far northern end, where the new lookout precinct is – the lookout area is so expanded that calling it a precinct seems appropriate – the steps up from Caseys Beach are complete and the track around the final headland is in good shape.

Finished, the track will be about 17 kilometres with plenty of facilities along the route – drinking water, toilets, cafes, bus stops – and will be a great half day out. Walking the full length yesterday I noted that the track did feel a bit hilly, up a headland, down to a beach, up a headland, repeat, but that will make it a good conditioning walk. With multiple bus stops along the route, one way walks will be easy, cheap and convenient. How great is that?