50 Kilometres is Never Easy

It’s training, not entertainment. Steve Bechtel.

50 kilometres is never easy. Off the beach at 6.30 am and west into Batemans Bay, the tide is running in so we should have the current with us but the Clyde River is awash with water from the latest rain with so much water running out that the tide makes little difference. It feels like a long, slow pull all the way to the highway bridge at Nelligen. Two kilometres past Nelligen I paddle up to the very end of Cyne Mallows Creek, also running out swiftly, getting to the end of navigable water right when my watch indicates I’ve paddled 25 kilometres. I can turn around. Thank the good dog for that as today, everything seems to hurt.

Back at Nelligen, I stand out of the rain under a picnic shelter and eat some food. I have no appetite again but I’m pretty tired and I’ve still got 18 kilometres to paddle and, the usual easterly wind will be in my face on the way back. Doug arrives shortly after, he had paddled past Cyne Mallows Creek and his total for the day is 56 kilometres. My shoulders ache just thinking about that.

The current helps on the way south and, at times we are nudging nine kilometres an hour. At Chinamans Point (I can’t believe some authoritarian anti-libertarian hasn’t renamed that yet) we meet the easterly wind. The last nine kilometres will be a trudge, if it is possible to trudge in a kayak, into the wind. The current is strong however, so although the kayaks begin to bang, bang, bang into steep wind waves, we are still moving well.

Notorious Anchored in the Bay

The Batemans Bay bar is as rough as I’ve seen it with 1.5 metre – really! - breaking standing waves where the current hits the wind. The kayaks plunge down and up, the worst is approaching motor boats who are coming in not expecting kayaks and the waves are so tall and steep we are buried in the troughs. We want to stay in the main channel, not just to get the benefit of the current but to avoid the lines of breaking waves on the sandbars to the north. Luckily, the only boat coming in is a NSW Maritime boat which, although large and powerful, is driven at a reasonable speed.

The standing waves run almost all the way to Snapper Island and then ease up a little, but it’s rough with a confused sea paddling around the headland to Sunshine Bay. It’s only the fact that the current is still ripping that we manage to keep going at a good pace. Finally, our home bay, dodging in through the reefs to calmer water. It wasn’t entertaining and mostly not fun, but it was training, and it is over, again.