Voyeurs Of Our Own Lives

 After many days of not fun paddling, which included pitch poling the kayak down a wave (stoked to get my very first combat roll), one of our friends organised a “social paddle,” on the day that summer weather arrived. Warm and sunny, only a light easterly, a low swell, and 12 friends out for a paddle around the Bay. It was glorious and my reward for many days of slogging into the wind in the past and in the future.

We had a lap around the Tollgate Islands, where it was bumpy as usual on the east side, as well as a cruise along the northern beaches and lunch on a quiet beach that was pretty much empty because it is about a 15 minute walk. Yes, that is the state of affairs in Australia, 10 to 15 minutes easy walk is, for most folks, a marathon effort.

On the way home, we were treated to viewing the latest atrocity in tourism, a high speed jet boat that whips around the Bay burning fossil fuels and scaring any wild life that might be around. Little penguins, seals, gannets, shearwaters, whales and dolphins are all frequent visitors to the waters of the Bay and I am sure that they also will enjoy being run over at high speed.

This type of tourism encapsulates – for me at least – so much of what is sad about the state of the modern world. We have become voyeurs of our own lives. Tourism has become so passive. Sit in this car and drive around, take this tour and have someone drive you around, even tours which require some physical effort, such as sea kayaking, are, to a large degree, passive as the tourist pays someone to guide them around and ensure their safety. While our world still contains great opportunity for adventure, the masses want adventure to be sterilised, sanitised, comfortable and safe. That is actually not adventure, which most dictionaries define as “an undertaking or enterprise of a hazardous nature.”

When Shackleton wrote “Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success” he was not advertising an “adrenaline fuelled adventure” where the “cabin is sealed and air conditioned so that thrill seekers are as comfortable as possible.” Surely, I am not the only one that sees the irony in advertising this as anything even remotely resembling adventure.  

More Not Fun

We don’t really celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, birthdays or Easter, Valentines Day or St Patricks Day, or any other “day” that is mostly about over-eating junk food and buying non-durable, unwanted consumer goods. But, we usually do something “fun” on our respective birthdays and Christmas day. This year, was different.

But, this year has been different on a number of fronts, marked primarily as the year that people lost their ability to think with any semblance of rationality and became brain-washed by the pervasive propaganda of fear. Oh, and how difficult it is now becoming to unravel the fear and dread.

In the theme of December, which has definitely been “it does not have to be fun, to be fun” we spent Christmas eve clearing the track into our local rock climbing area which overgrows as fast as the triffids over took the world in Wyndham’s classic “Day Of The Triffids.” It drizzled rain all day, the road was blocked by a fallen tree from the latest round of wind and rain, so we had to walk an extra six kilometres in, but, life is like that. If you want something enough, you have to work for it.

Otherwise, we have been paddling, mostly in really lumpy conditions. For some reason, I have started feeling really queasy and sea sick most days on the ocean which makes it tough to put in long hours in the kayak trying to cover distance. Still, if you want something enough…

Sometimes It is Not Even Fun

It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun and sometimes it’s not even fun. We are bumping our way up the Murramarang coast in our sea kayaks. The forecast morning southerlies switched early and so we are plugging into a 10 knot northeasterly from the get go. At North Head, where we leave the semi-sheltered waters of the bay and paddle out into the open ocean there are two swells, one northerly and one southerly. On top of that colliding mess is a rambunctious sea left over from the strong winds of the last couple of days. Calling the seas confused is an understatement; befuddled, bemused, bewildered, baffled might be more appropriate.

A kilometre of so beyond North Head I start to feel rather queasy, a feeling which increases the further north we go as the jostling in the kayak increases. We are off-shore far enough that trying to keep my eyes on the horizon that keeps disappearing as we fall into a trough is difficult and looking at the sea horizon is nausea inducing.

Truthfully, I am a bit tired. Saturday was a haul into a moderately strong wind in steep seas and then, because I am fearful of losing all my muscle mass from endurance training in the kayak, I strength trained on Sunday.

As we paddle north, I think about one of my young relatives who said, after running a marathon, that she “was tired of structured training.” I remember thinking at the time, as I juggle staying fit for sea kayaking, rock climbing, trail running and bushwalking, that training for one event, a simple one at that, for four to six months sounded like a snap. After 30 plus years of training, I have little sympathy.

Some days are hard and fun in a weird kind of way, and some days you have to persevere even when it is not fun at all.

First Real Distance Day: Richmond Beach

It is only when we get a couple of kilometres out into the bay that we start to feel the wind. The weather tracking stations are recording NNE winds in the range of 15 to 20 knots, and I have the familiar feeling of being back into training mode. Before we went to South Australia, we spent a lot of time paddling into the wind; which is good mental and physical training.

At North Head, the seas are steep, over a metre high, curling white at the top. We decide to make Richmond Beach our turn around point. Landing is generally easy unless there is a big southeasterly swell, and the beach is less steep than others along the Murramarang Coast.

We paddle in to check Oakey Beach, where the swell almost always dumps onto the beach, and then, with a little shelter from the wind, we continue north to Richmond Beach. I feel strong enough to continue to Durras, or at least further north, but today is the first real day of distance kayak training and I am leery of over-reaching early and ending up with an injury. At almost 60, I no longer believe I am bulletproof.

With the wind behind us, we make fast time back to North Head. There are a couple of small boats out, evidence that the Christmas holiday rush is building up on the south coast. Today is the kind of day when we would normally be alone on the ocean.

The five kilometres back to our home bay is the strangest I have paddled in the dozens and dozens of paddles I have done across the bay. There is clapotis all the way, so that the kayaks begin to surf down a wind wave and then hit a small wall of waves coming in the opposite direction. This is perplexing. The current just does not run that strongly out of the Bay and the Clyde River is long past peak. The current effects may be due to the wind over the land, which is blowing WNW at 15 knots. The result is that we have a bit of a headwind in both directions, doubling the training effect.

Dancing With Fear

R is rising up and down in the break zone. One hand grasps her paddle, the other the over-turned kayak. She is 100 or so metres off-shore. Far enough that we cannot help her and I have to zoom right in with my camera to take a photo. I feel a bit guilty. There is nothing pleasant about failing five attempts at a roll in the surf and eventually wet exiting, finding yourself far from shore, no help at hand, a long swim in; the swim of shame that hurts as much from defeat as it does from taking a beating in the incessantly breaking waves. I know, I have done it so many times.  

The last few days have been a blur of paddling in big swells and windy conditions that culminated here, on a windswept empty beach with a decent swell rolling in and a messy sea whipped up by northerly winds.

This is my fourth day paddling in a row. I pack my gear the night before, in the morning, I get up, give myself a pep talk and head out kayaking, each day doing something I dread, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot. Mostly, I am trying to get my roll, which is reliable on both sides in reasonable conditions, bomb-proof when tossed about in the surf. I have failed so many times that envisaging success is getting harder and harder, but is essential for success. If you don’t think you can do something, you are certainly right.

I have been thinking a lot about fear and habits, learning and confidence lately. One thing I have learnt in this life is that you don’t change yourself by force of will, you change by habit. If you want to get fit, lose weight, write a book, become a kayaker, you have to put in place the habits that fit people, lean people, authors and kayakers practice. First the habits, then the belief – “I am a fit person/lean person/author/kayaker,” and finally, if you can keep the habits going through easy days and hard weeks, you eventually become fit, lean, a writer or a kayaker.

But humans respond to aversive stimuli no differently to any other biological animal and if the habit you are building day by day involves an immediate but negative reward continuing to pursue the habit goes against all our evolutionary drives and requires a certain degree of mental tenacity to persist with.

Faff your roll in the surf, bail out, get beaten about the head by the kayak and the surf, swim into shore through a rip towing a 5 metre boat full of water with one hand and grasping a paddle in the other, empty boat, repeat, requires the unthinking persistence of a ferret on the scent of a rabbit. Dreading getting back in the boat in the morning seems a not unreasonable response.

And then, there is fear. Coincidentally, the day after I read about using immediate aversive rewards to help rewire unhelpful habits in James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits” and realised that my dread of rolling in the surf was supported by science, I read the text below that Will Gadd (well known Canadian alpine climber, kayaker, general bad-ass) wrote about fear:

Fear is not the enemy, or to “be overcome.” It’s one of the most powerful tools I have for surviving and thriving in daily life and high-stakes environments—if I choose to engage, dance with it. Listen to it, understand it, learn and grow with it, use it to change. Or ignore it, understand less, shrink mentally, die either slowly from living in fear, or quickly because my mind shuts down when it should be open.

I used to feel ill before I competed in anything. I had a bag of fears bigger than Santa’s gift bag, and it was hard to move with that load. I finally stopped and asked, “Why?” I feared the results. I feared climbing/flying/paddling like shit in front of small or massive crowds. I feared so many things I couldn't focus on the act of competing. And that was the answer: I was worried about the wrong stuff. I started worrying about the right stuff. It didn’t make the fear go way, but it drove me to train harder, stop worrying about results, and perform at my best. Overcoming the fear and competing wasn’t enough; understanding it and using it was. I use that same tool for new routes, presentations, business pitches, now, whatever scares me: Listen to it. Talk with fear. Use it strip away the irrelevant and focus. Time to dance with it again.

Fear is not the enemy. It’s a focusing lens that allows me to see myself and my situation. Or blinds me to the same. It’s the same lens, but I see through it differently depending on who I am that day.

No one “overcomes” fear. At best we can temporarily ignore it. That is not a victory, it’s a delayed defeat. It’s the crux battle pushed into the future, and it just gets bigger and harder to kill.

Hello fear, let’s dance. It's never the same dance, we're gonna make a new one up together today. Anyone else dancing?

My dance with fear has been a form of exposure therapy. Capsize, roll – or not – repeat, over and over. Each time, I get more comfortable, I take a bit longer to set up, I focus on floating the paddle over the water, I relax, sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but the important part is to set up and try again. Start in small surf, build up to bigger surf. Eventually, if I can keep the habit streak going, I will be a kayaker who rolls in the surf.

R, in the meantime, has finally let go of the kayak, which loaded with water now, hurtles to the beach on a series of slamming waves. Doug and I weave about, ready to catch the boat, but not get hit in the process. R, with a hand free now, swims into shore, scrambles up onto the beach, her own dance with fear over.

Slot Hunting

This year the kayak squad Christmas party was at Bittangabee Bay. Three of us arrived early with the idea of paddling somewhere. That somewhere turned into paddling north towards Saltwater Bay. Initially, we thought we would go as far as Saltwater Bay and practice some surf landings but once we had paddled out of Bittangabee Bay we found a very low swell and the game of slot hunting was on.

There is rarely a slot, cave or gauntlet that Nick won't paddle into, particularly when in a plastic boat in low swell conditions so we made our way up the coast, backing into slots and caves, sometimes paddling in bow first and turning around in calm pools behind rock walls. Once we found that the slot we thought was a straight in gauntlet was actually a small rock island and we were able to paddle in one side, turn and paddle out the other.

While Nick and I were slot hunting, Doug was walking along the cliff top doing some cave hunting and managed to scramble down small ledges to a big cave with a gauntlet in front. When we all met back at Bittangabee Bay, and heard about the cave, Nick and I, started to worry that we had missed on of the gauntlets. Nick was so concerned, that next morning he dashed along the cliffs to make sure we had indeed paddled into the pool behind the gauntlet. Phew, we did, a fact that became clear looking at Doug's pictures after the event.

On Sunday, we had a “social” paddle with 16 kayakers out on the water. Somehow, Nick and I missed the entire group because again, the swell was low and the allure of all those caves and slots was just too much so we slowly paddled south to Green Cape, poking into everything we could. A few kilometres from Green Cape we caught up with Doug who had been left behind by the social group as he too was slot scouting.

Finally, there was no more cliff line and we were in the protected water just to the north of Green Cape. The sea off-shore was lumpy and we could see a line of white caps marching across the horizon. No trip to Green Cape is complete without sticking your bow out around the point into the almost always rough water. With a solid southwesterly wind blowing, the sea off Green Cape was churned up into a steeply peaking sea. Within a few minutes we were all wet through from the boats bashing into the seas and the wind blowing spray off our paddles into our faces.

We turned tail, paddled back catching the occasional wave and were back on the beach as the social paddlers were swimming. After lunch, Doug went off to Green Cape Lighthouse and walked back along the Light to Light track while I took my bouldering pad and shoes down on to the rock platforms south of Bittangabee Bay. There is THE best bouldering down there and I had a happy few hours until I felt a wee bit too tired being so high above my one bouldering pad with no spotter and it was time to go back to camp.

All Photos: DB