It might seem as if the Sunday paddles have fallen off, but it is not so. I did miss one Sunday when the last east coast low (ECL) moved through. The forecast was for 100 mm of rain and we got 185 mm in our rain gauge at the house. Not many people are going out in that kind of rain. The Sunday after, a friend of mine who lives a bit north organised the Sunday paddle. That was a nice break for me as I had been out in the kayak three days out of the last four. One was a quick afternoon lap with Nick to "catch the bigger conditions" after the ECL, and the other was a two day trip up the coast camping at one of our favourite hidden beaches.
But back to the Sunday paddles. The crew was small, just four of us, the gale warning issued by the Bureau of Meteorology may have had something to do with that. Inshore, I thought we might be lucky to get only 15 knot winds, and, as the winds were southwesterly (off-shore) we could hug the coast south of the Bay and get some shelter.
Doug and I left from our home beach which has been much improved by a new dump of sand courtesy of recent weather conditions and paddled three kilometres south to meet Mike and Nick. The coastline along this section is mostly rocky with short, steep cliffs up to about 30 metres high. There are few places to scramble safely up these cliffs as they are not really made of solid rock, more dirt glued together and practically vertical.
At the last headland before a couple of sand beaches I saw vegetation waving wildly half way up a very steep slope and a figure in red struggling to climb up. The figure was below a particularly desperate piece of cliff and appeared to be trying to move upward where the terrain got even worse. I watched for a while wondering what to do, call for help, wait for the body to roll down, try and get out of my kayak (difficult), pretend this was normal behaviour and there was nothing to see? Like a train wreck, it was strangely fascinating.
After watching for a while with no upward or downward progress being made by the person, I paddled after Doug. He said he would go back and check on the man while I went ahead to meet Nick and Mike. Every rock climber has been in this position before at a popular crag - unless of course YOU are the random doing weird shit. The problem with saying "Hey man, that's some weird shit you are doing which could get you and/or your belayer killed," is that inevitably the random would rather save face and bluster, potentially dying, than stop doing weird shit. A strange human behavioural quirk that must surely reduce the gene pool.
By the time Mike and Nick were ready to go, Doug had returned. Apparently, after trying to struggle upwards for over half an hour but not moving at all, the person, encouraged by Doug had come down. Showing remarkable restraint Doug did not say "Hey random, that's some weird shit you are doing," merely communicating that there was no passage above.
And so, we went paddling. Close into shore we were relatively sheltered from the wind although conditions started to pick up after about 10 km. We stopped at a very small, but sheltered beach on a prominent headland and managed a surprisingly orderly split into two groups.
Doug and Mike had an extended lunch, while Nick and I tacked on an extra 5 or 6 kilometres by paddling south and circumnavigating diminutive Jimmies Island. When we got back, Mike and Doug were ready to leave.
It was a blustery downwind run back with the wind edging up towards 20 knots. When we were within half an hour of where we had met Mike and Nick we came upon another unusual sight. Four large lads stuffed, literally, into a tiny row-boat. Despite the cold winter wind, half of them were shirtless, and the little dinghy had perhaps a few centimetres of freeboard. Weaving around the dinghy, and almost half submerged, was another large lad sitting on a plastic sit on top kayak. They were merely 20 metres from where the wind was coming over the cliffs and hitting the water, and, should the wind catch the dinghy, they would be blown out to sea at a great rate of knots, that is, if the dinghy did not sink first.
Nick and Mike, being old men of the sea, felt justified in having a bit of chat about "gale warnings," and "off-shore winds," and the lads nodded politely, as you do to stuffy old shirts and carried on fishing. It certainly had been a strange paddle day.
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