Tuesday, March 10, 2020

The Sunday Paddles: Ulladulla Harbour to Sussex Inlet


Time again for the Sunday paddle, and, after a busy week, I was scratching my head for a good paddle that could accommodate a diverse group under conditions that could only be described as interesting - 15 to 20 knot southerly winds, two swells with a combined wind and wave height of up to 4 metres. In the end, my plan was for a relatively safe, but not without it's challenges, paddle south from Wimbie Beach, so paddling into a head wind in what would surely be lumpy seas.

Most sea kayakers don't seem to like paddling into the wind. However, I consider this an essential skill in a solid kayaking repertoire. Not being able, or willing to paddle into the wind seems to me the equivalent of refusing to skin uphill to ski downhill in the backcountry, or ride your mountain bike uphill so you can flow down single track. The hard graft is also an essential part of the experience and should be embraced. Resilience and strength is built by doing difficult things, not taking the easy way.

As it turned out, however, only two people signed up. One was, of course, Doug, who is up for anything I suggest, no matter how hare-brained, and the other was Rae, who in general, as long as it is kayaking related, is also up for anything.

Heading out of Ulladulla Harbour

With only three of us committed it seemed sensible to do a more interesting trip that involved a car shuttle. I don't like car shuttles - they eat up time and spew out carbon. Many times, however, they seem a necessary evil. But, if we were going to car shuttle, I wanted to find a car shuttle that allowed for a solid day paddling with minimal shuttling. I also wanted to run the trip out of Ulladulla as mostly Rae and Neil make the trip south to paddle and it seemed only fair to drive north occasionally.

And so the plan to paddle north from Ulladulla to Sussex Inlet and across St Georges Basin to Basin View was hatched. This plan should give a minimum of 40 kilometres of paddling (about 30 on the open ocean), an interesting bar crossing and a car shuttle of only 60 minutes. It seemed like a bargain too good to be true. The only problem was my somewhat piss-poor preparation.

St Georges Basin is a large lake with a narrow outlet channel that meanders six kilometres out to sea with an average width of around 150 metres. So a big body of water has to rush in and out a narrow passage with the tide change multiple times each day. Now, as any rookie knows, or at least should know, the change of tide at the ocean does not correspond to when the tidal stream into or out of the lake changes. So tide change at the coast may be 2.35 pm (as it was for us) but the water in the lake will continue to run out - often very swiftly - for hours after this.

Heading north under sail

Not only does this mean that paddling up the channel will be slow hard work as you fight a strong tidal current, it also means that any waves at the bar will stand up as the tide runs out against rising ocean water and swell. Finally, the other danger, perhaps the most significant, is that anyone who capsizes and comes out of their boat will be washed out to sea and into bigger waves with more dangerous conditions and not into the safety of the channel and away from the waves.

Rae had anticipated many of these things that I had not and she cautioned that we should not try to cross the bar until around 4.30 pm, about two hours after tide change. It turns out, this is an underestimation of how long the tide runs out and three or even four hours after low tide at the coast is likely a better benchmark,

Initially, I had said Doug and I would leave our place to head north at 7 am. I am an old mountaineer, not necessarily an old, bold mountaineer, but an old mountaineer in any event and mountaineers leave. Throw up your breakfast in the dark early, because mountain days are long and dangers frequently intensify with daytime heating. So, my knee jerk reaction to any trip is "leave early."

Heading north from Bendalong

So, we ended up leaving Ulladulla Harbour at 9.30 am, around about 3 or 4 hours too early to catch the tide right at Sussex Inlet bar thanks to a slightly faster travel speed (around 9 km an hour) and my not taking the time to work backwards to decide on the time to leave. What is inexplicable to me is that I know this stuff, and have done for years.

We had a good tail wind to push us north from Ulladulla Harbour although the sea was lumpy and bumpy. The swell was up, maybe three metres for the biggest waves but not as terrifyingly large as our last trip from Moruya to Ulladulla. We got to our lunch spot at Bendalong, which was busy with weekenders, at 11.30 am and way ahead of schedule.

While eating an early lunch, we began discussing the next stage of the journey. There were unknowns. None of us had actually paddled into Sussex Inlet bar and trying to gauge exactly what the bar was like from looking at historical images on Google Earth only convinced us we might find anything when we got there from a steep wall of breaking waves to a narrow passage that was at least deep enough to paddle. We were hoping that the little rock island off the point at the bar would at least reduce the intensity of some of the swell, and our plan was to wrap around this to the north before coming back south to find a passage through. Rae had got some information from Marine Rescue at Sussex Inlet, but they only cross the bar very sporadically and only one hour each side of high tide. Certainly, we had not seen any boats at all since leaving Ulladulla as conditions at sea were "interesting."

Doug passing Berrara

Crossing these bars is tricky, particularly in a big swell with confused seas. In a kayak, we have no hope of out-running any waves, and sit so low in the water that even getting a view of what is ahead can be impossible. If we could not get across the bar at Sussex Inlet, we would have a 10 kilometre paddle back into the wind and swell late in the day to confront. It would be doable, just.

So, it turns out we had a fair bit of time to kill. Rae wanted to leave at 3.30 pm, Doug wanted to leave at around 3 pm, and me, well, I don't do down-time well so I thought "why not leave now?" Luckily, sense prevailed and we ended up starting paddling again at 2.30 pm. We spent about 30 minutes surfing the little waves that were wrapping around the headland at Boat Harbour and Doug managed to capsize in a wave quite close to the rocks, but luckily rolled back up again before his boat ran onto the reef. About 3.00 pm we headed north.

It was a bumpy ride north. We tried to paddle in towards Berrara as none of us had ever managed to land there, but there are a lot of reefs off-shore and the waves were breaking a long way out. I almost got cleaned up by a big one when my sail cord slipped away from me and I was faffing around with my head down. A quick sprint paddle and I nipped over the back of the wave just before it broke. Sometimes I shudder to think how many times that happens.

Finally, around 4.15 pm, we arrived at the heads at Sussex Inlet and wrapped around the reefs and islands to the north and, as planned started heading back south. There was no clear way into the channel, the waves were closing out the entire passage and it seemed like the tide was still running out of St Georges Basin even though the tide had turned two hours ago.

Paddling in behind the reef towards Sussex Inlet

We spent some time paddling back and forth looking at potential routes in. There was one or two narrow escapes from breaking waves again as we tried to get in close enough to see without getting cleaned up. Doug and I would probably have tried to land on the beach, or at least get right into the swash zone and paddle south along shore, but Rae was keen to try towards the middle of the channel. I think this is actually where the waves were biggest and the big sets were coming through strongly.

Finally, after watching for a few minutes we decided to give it a go. In better conditions, that is, a smaller swell, I think you might be able to diagonal in from north to south, but we had no chance of that without getting caught by breaking waves so we attempted a more direct route in. At some point, Rae just took off, Doug started following, but then hesitated and tried to turn his long 580 Mirage around to head back out again as a bigger wave picked up. I was following Rae but hoping to come in on the back of a wave - what a laughably futile plan - when I saw Doug's boat spike up and crash down and he was over and soon out.

My boat immediately broached and I reflexively leaned hard into the wave. For a while, all I could see was breaking wave but when I did manage to look up, I saw with glee that I was hurtling in towards the beach. So Rae and I made it into the swash zone where there were lots of breaking waves but none really powerful and turned to see Doug arduously trying to swim/wade his boat in.

I felt quite powerless to help and dithered between trying to paddle back out and tow him in to landing quickly and swimming out to help. In the end, as he seemed to be making progress, albeit slowly towards shore, I did nothing but watch and worry. After a while, he got on his feet and was in less powerful waves and was finally able to turn his electric pump on and even get back in the boat.

Somewhere between Berrara and Sussex Inlet

We were all wet and a bit chilled so we paddled into the calmer water and edged into an eddy so Doug could bail out the remaining water from his boat. A hoard of gawkers came down to ask what on earth we were doing and where had we come from.

So now it was 5 pm, we had a 10 km paddle against the tide, were all chilled and there was still that hour long car shuttle. We did manage to sail a bit up Sussex Inlet even though the wind was sporadic in the passage and we definitely had a strong current to paddle against. Upon arriving at a boat ramp and picnic area we reassessed. We would be lucky to be back in Ulladulla before 10 pm at night, and, as Rae said, the interesting part of the trip was over, so, with little hesitation we called it a day and Neil, who was kindly assisting in the car shuttle, came to pick us up.

It had been a grand adventure. One of those trips where you dance along the fine line between adventure and epic, never knowing for sure if you will make it out the other side.

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