It Was All Good Until It Wasn't

I’ve cornered Megan before she’s had coffee at the Sunday morning leaders meeting at Rock N Roll and she has blithely agreed to my plan to supervise me leading a group of paddlers south from Corrigans Beach to an easily accessed beach where my husband, Doug, or “Saint Doug” - as the other leaders have jeeringly called him when they hear this plan - will pick up enough drivers to get all the paddlers and kayaks back to Corrigans Beach. The forecast, as all attendees will remember was for strong northerlies. But I paddle this coast all the time from my home, a mere three kilometres south of Corrigans Beach and these summer northeasterly winds always tick up gradually. By 10 am, we’ll have a pleasant but gentle tail wind which will be my signal to look for a sheltered landing near car parking where our group can escape.

Except it did not happen like that. At 11 am, in completely calm winds, but slightly bouncy seas, we were paddling past Pretty Point, and I was wondering if our group could make Guerilla Bay, the next sheltered landing point in time for Saint Doug to pick us up and get himself to Corrigans Beach to join Mark and Rob’s downwinder from Durras when, the wind roared in at a steady 15 knots with stronger gusts.

Suddenly, a number of people in the party seemed to be just hanging on and the group spread had widened considerably. The only thought in my mind was getting the party to retreat to the calmer waters of Pretty Point Bay before we were dealing with multiple capsizes. It took some time to get people turned around and heading north for a couple of hundred metres until we could run into the sheltered bay with the wind behind us. As a new leader, I was dismayed to see my up until now relatively well managed paddle deteriorate into chaos in mere minutes.

DB photo

Would I have to call Marine Rescue? Where was my flipping radio which I had left with Saint Doug to use as Beach Master on Saturday? Where was Megan? Were all our paddlers still right side up? Finally, why had those eye-bleeding risk matrixes required for Sea Guide not prepared me for this?

Over the roar of the wind I heard “someone’s in the water!” “It’s started,” I thought dismally, “this is where it all goes wrong.” By the time I got turned around, the someone in the water had, with the aid of Rod, vaulted back into her boat. Fear is a wonderful thing sometimes. No need for complex instructions on hooking a foot into the boat and wriggling in while staying low. In a fit of adrenaline spiked athleticisim the capsized paddler had leapt three metres into the air, pirouetted several times and landed back into her boat sitting upright.

Megan, it turns out, was right there, but taken up with contact towing another paddler who was feeling unsteady. Our capsized paddler had a hands free pump, yet, as so often seems the case, the pump was not working, so a hand pump was being used, but the northerly wind was rapidly blowing the party onto the rocks.

Just two days previously, I had carefully daisy chained my short tow, clipped it into my tow hook and fixed it handily to the deck of my kayak suspecting that I would be set up with a mock tow situation sometime over the weekend. To be honest, I’m pretty lackadaisacal about having all these bits and pieces of safety equipment handy. So often we paddle out and nothing untoward happens. My obsession with not getting caught out now seemed prudent rather than neurotic as I was able to quickly clip onto Rod’s boat who steadied our rescued paddler while I plugged away to the beach at Pretty Point Bay trying not to wince as the two towed boats surfed forward on waves and collided with the stern of mine. On the way into the beach, I obsessively counted paddlers, so many times I almost hypnotized myself. Occasionally, I’d miss a head as my boat dipped into a trough and I’d start the count again, “1, 2, 3, …, yes they are all there.”

Safely onshore, I called Dial A Doug to come and pick us up and while we waited we had a group debrief. “It was all good until it wasn’t,” quipped one paddler, I heartily agreed.