Where everyone is responsible, no-one is really responsible. Albert Bandura.
On Saturday, I took a group of six (including me) north around Twofold Bay. The swell, which had peaked at around 10 metres in the past week, had declined to around 2 to 2.5 metres on the Green Cape wave buoy but still had significant energy. Most of us launched from in front of the Sea Horse Inn where the swell was a little smaller, but, looking north up the beach in front of the caravan park, I did see signs of some carnage getting through the surf break and a number of paddlers came trolleying boats along the beach after watching other paddlers taking swims. The surf on Boydtown Beach varies from a bit of a dump at certain tides to a lovely spilling wave – we had the latter so with some judicious timing and a short burst of hard paddling, it was easy to get out with dry hair. I got all my paddlers out dry, except for one who launched solo near the caravan park and had a swim or three.
We had a pleasant day of it paddling around the Twofold Bay and stuck our heads out into the ocean swells past Lookout Point. We probably could have landed at Yallumgo Cove had I been more on the ball. As it was, we proceeded northeast a short distance and then headed back and had lunch at Cattle Bay, a nice quiet beach with an easy landing.
After lunch, we crossed the bay and landed, one at a time, on Boydtown Beach with everyone this time coming in near the Sea Horse Inn. The tide had dropped, however, and the first break was a bit sharp and steep – not a true shore dump – but a little less friendly for inexperienced paddlers. Despite my best efforts and, what I hoped were clear instructions, I had one swimmer who broached and, without an automatic lean and brace, almost immediately capsized and swam into shore. I am working on clear, concise, easy to implement instructions for surf landings – slightly harder than launching – but the truth is experienced paddlers have a repertoire of surf landing skills that are hard to impart to beginners when most of our responses are reflexive to conditions. We might back paddle, we might rudder, or we might run in on the back of a wave, we may even surf in. A swim at the end is better than a swim at the beginning however, as dry clothes are at hand.
On Sunday, with calm winds, sunny skies and an even lower swell, six of us paddled down to Mowarry Beach. It was relatively easy to paddle between Red Point and Sea Horse Shoals and the paddle down the coast to Mowarry Beach was very pleasant. Mowarry Beach had the usual dumping wave and deep water off the beach, but we had no trouble landing and launching all our paddlers dry. Timing is everything at Mowarry Beach, wait for the smallest wave of the smaller sets and paddle in quickly on the back of the wave. Leap out. The leap out part is of critical importance as the beach is very steep and it is easy for the kayak to be dragged back into deeper water, whereupon one will be pummelled by the next dumping wave.
But how does all this relate to my first quote? Well, if you ask everyone in the group to look out for the entire group and head count occasionally, very few people will actually do this, even in small groups. It’s a bit like communism, it sounds like such a great idea but in reality, is a disaster.
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