“Where are you going?” Doug was
screaming at me as I hurtled across the waves in front of me, leaning
way out to the side on my paddle blade desperately trying to keep my
kayak right side up as the wind, gusting into the 30 knot range
threatened to capsize my kayak. “I'm just hanging on” I screamed
back. I was finding communicating just as difficult as kayak sailing
in the raunchy conditions.
We were on our usual 23 km kayak
sailing route from Machans Beach in the south to Ellis Beach in the
north and the wind was blowing a steady 23 knots with gusts up to 32
knots. We had already had one minor adventure when Doug capsized as
he was deploying his sail and his paddle, held only loosely in one
hand, had wound up under the gunnel and tipped him over. It took me
much longer than I had hoped (although it was still probably only a
couple of minutes) to get my kayak pointed back into the wind (best
to pull-up the rudder to enable a sharper turn) and rafted up along
side his kayak so he could climb back in and bail out.
An old photo, our camera has gone in for repairs,
and I couldn't have taken a picture if I tried
Using a bit more caution, we stayed
rafted up and deployed just one sail at first. After a while, we
decided to deploy my sail as well and sail/paddle independently.
After all, the whole point of the exercise was to gain more
experience with our Pacific Action sails in stronger winds. We covered ground relatively quickly up
to Yorkeys Knob and stayed well off-shore as variable water depths
and small cliffs can make for some confused sea conditions closer in
to Yorkeys Knob.
Somewhere between Yorkeys Knob and
Taylor Point I began having increasing difficulty controlling my
kayak. I was surfing wildly down the following sea broaching first
to right and then to left. Usually, I find the sail keeps the bow
pointed into the wind, but, with a much stronger wind blowing, I was
having difficulty travelling in anything resembling a straight line,
and a few times, I could swear, I virtually sailed in 180 degree arc.
Another oldie
The problem with kayak sailing, at
least at my level of experience, is that once the sail is up in a
strong wind, it is desperately hard to pull it down. We both have
fairly tippy kayaks and with the strong gusty wind and building seas,
I needed both hands on the paddle to brace and avoid a capsize. No
matter how out of control I felt, I couldn't get the sail down, all I
could do was lean out on a good brace and hang on.
After my eighth near capsize in as many
minutes, I shouted at Doug to raft up. This procedure took another
10 minutes as, try as he might, Doug could not slow down (he also
could not pull his sail in) and I was having a hard time catching him
and pulling along side. Eventually, yelling “on your left” I
managed to ease in beside him using some strong back paddling strokes
and grabbed on to his cockpit cowling.
We quickly pulled in both sails and sat
panting for a time getting pushed around by the building seas but now
in no real danger of a capsize. At this point we were probably about
2 or 3 km off-shore and I thought if we paddled in a bit, we might
get some shelter from the wind and building sea behind Taylor Point.
We separated and paddled shoreward, getting blown well past Taylor
Point but coming closer to shore near the south end of Palm Beach. I
had only one almost capsize when I got caught by a bigger wave during
a moment of inattention. It was somewhat disconcerting to hear the
crashing of the waves breaking behind me as I paddled shoreward, but,
I felt reasonably confident that I could keep the kayak running
straight and any waves I did broach on, I could handle by bracing
over the break.
Last old photo
Once we had got closer inshore, we
decided to deploy one sail and stay rafted up and sail to Double
Island. This worked really well. We made good time, were much more
stable than when we sailed solo, and managed to stay on course
without great difficulty. The only difficult part was hanging on
tightly when the wind threatened to blow us apart. As we came into
the shelter of the reef between Haycock and Double Island, we pulled
down Doug's sail and struggled to paddle the kayaks into shore
against the wind. Standing on dry land was a bit of a relief except
we found ourselves getting dive bombed by a couple of Plovers that
must have had a nest in the vicinity.
We decided to sail into shore to the
north of Buchan Point using only one sail and staying rafted up. As
we thought we would get pushed quite far north, we aimed our kayaks
to the SW and thus had the wind blowing across our port side as we
headed towards shore. We deployed Doug's sail and stayed rafted up.
Doug had to lean way over to keep his kayak upright and I developed a
technique where I hung on straight armed to his cockpit and also
leaned my boat way up wind.
The sailing was much easier when we
pointed the boat towards Ellis Beach. I'm not sure if this was
because we were getting some shelter from Double Island and Buchan
Point, or if we had been in a bit of a wind tunnel as we crossed from
Double Island to the mainland, or if it was just a factor of sailing
down wind rather than cross wind. In any case, we sailed quite
easily up to Ellis Beach where we pulled in Doug's sail and rode the
waves into the beach.
After we had pulled the boats up on to
the beach (closed due to strong winds) we said “Wow, that was fun.”
It seems that kayak sailing, like climbing, also involves that
strange mental warp where you forget all about how much you were
scared and struggling and remember only how great the experience was.
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