...people who don't pay attention
often get stuck... in... the... doldrums. Norton Juster.
There's been very little wind lately
around Cairns which makes for nice lazy - if a little too steamy -
paddles on the ocean, stinking hot sweaty hikes, and greasy
bouldering down on the Esplanade, but not much in the way of
challenge in the sea kayaks.
Glassy conditions
All that changed today as a surface
trough brought increasing southeasterly winds which, when I last
checked, had got up to about 16 knots at Cairns airport. Doug and I
have been waiting for some winds, not just to relieve the sticky
humidity, but to get out and play with the kayaks in some waves, and
to try our new kayak sails.
Kayak sailing on the Coral Sea
There's no real surf around Cairns.
The Great Barrier Reef protects the coastline from true ocean swells,
but, when the wind gets up around 12 or 15 knots you can get some
locally generated wind chop. Not as good as long regular swells, but
better than nothing. So far, the best place we have found for a
breaking wave is near Yorkeys Knob, where an off-shore sandbar
generates some small spilling waves.
Baby waves at Yorkeys Knob
We tried surfing a couple of weeks ago
at Yorkeys Knob but the forecast wind didn't eventuate and the waves
were too small and unreliable to do much with. A month or so before
that, I had my first capsize when we paddled from Yorkeys Knob up to
Ellis Beach. Despite a lot of (futile) trying, my eskimo roll is not
any more reliable now than it was then, so if I happen to capsize
again – always a possibility – I'll likely be pumping the boat
out again. Or swimming to shore. Either way, I'll be out of the
doldrums.
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