Thursday, December 26, 2019

Paddling to Christmas Lunch


As veterans of opting out, it never occurs to us to do anything except opt out of the various and increasingly common commercial holidays that punctuate the year. This year, however, I was trying to visit my Mum in Sydney, but that trip was put off by the extensive and overwhelming bush-fires ravaging the coast and the consequent highway closures.

Summer 2019

We were, however, invited to lunch at a friends house in Nelligen. What better way to opt out than paddle to our lunch engagement. In Monty Python fashion, we would be paddling against the tidal current in both directions so weren't sure how long the 18 km one way trip would take.

Tollgate Islands on the horizon

Accordingly, we allowed ample time, and left our local beach right on 8 am. The Tollgate Islands looked interesting in the morning light as we paddled past Snapper Island northwest to the bridge over the Clyde River. About 50 minutes to the bridge.

Snapper Island

Upstream of the bridge there are lots of oyster farms, easy to paddle past on the high tide and then a couple of small islands, unimaginatively named Big Island and Little Island. The shortest distance to Nelligen is to west of both. The river between Batemans Bay and Nelligen is generally fairly quiet and it was so today. Pleasant paddling upstream past swans and eagles. At 11.00 am we pulled up to the steps near our friends house and had a swim in the clear cool water before going along to lunch.

Black Swan

And then the journey back. We got away at 4.00 pm with the standard summer northeasterly blowing. The way the river winds downstream we were able to sail quite a bit but the last 3 or 4 kilometres was into a steady headwind and I started to feel tired. We got out for a brief leg stretch at the bridge, and then it was a steady paddle out the channel until we got to the end of the breakwater and our sails helped a little bit.

Fire Red Sun

Our local beach had a bit of a shore dump, pretty normal with a summer northeasterly, and we were glad to arrive. The return journey was perhaps 15 minutes longer than paddling up. A bit over 6 hours paddling, I think we earned Christmas lunch.

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