Warm images from a cold night

We usually paddle south or north and this day we started south. Then form some reason we veered east and out towards the immensity of the ocean. We kept paddling for a few kilometres until the coast lost its usual form and we had a bird view of it. The sun was setting down, the swell was nice and the wind was playing somewhere else. A peaceful paddle shared with akin souls.

 

 

 

 

 

Surfing sea kayaks

Surfing sea kayaks... or I should rather say broaching and capsizing sea kayaks. No, let’s leave 'surfing sea kayaks', it attracts more hits in the search engines :-)

Lots of broaching

and some more

It happened during the sequel of “’You'llbe fine.’ Rock gardening with composite boats.” Apparently the people from the club didn’t learn in the first round to avoid this ‘trip’ and more came. Again Josh organized the paddle and I came to give him a hand. This time however the swell was bigger, around 2 meters, and carried enough water with periods of 10 seconds to prevent us from getting too close to some of the rocks. Also the group was different with more paddlers in the early stages of the learning curve and one that I think was going to be the first time doing a surf landing. For the others I think was also the first time with waves this size.

Some good sized faces

We launched from a small river mouth and went out through a moderate surf with no problems. We had surfed that place before but this time we didn’t because the water quality was no good. It had been raining nonstop for almost 2 weeks and when that happens the waterways are not very nice.
So we then paddled a few kilometres to a beach that before the storms of late was very nice to surf. We soon discovered that many sand banks had formed under water and the waves were not as tidy as we had hoped for. They were bouncing against the sandbanks, getting very steep and not braking, or breaking in places you would think they should not. Then there was a good rip that flattened out the brakes but also made it very hard to pick up speed to surf the waves. Or worst, the current took you to the sand banks at the sides of the rip where the waves were dumping heavily. At least all that added to keep it challenging, interesting and gave me good footage that I captured from the beach J

Interesting images

After the guys rested a while in the beach and I kept trying to time my goes with the dumps (with no much success as you can see in the video) we headed to a famous blow hole nearby. With the swell of the day we could not get into the cave too far but getting close was enough to see the huge splash on the back, where the water is blown out through the roof of the cave and hear the explosion of the water colliding the walls of the cave.

We also manged to practice some unwanted rescues

On the way back we also had a situation with serious cramps that made the paddler incapacitated to go on. There was some deliberation as what to do. One option was leave the paddler on a cafe in an easy landing spot and pick him up later. Another was to tow him with the whole group back to the cars (probably a bit over 1 hour of paddling away). And a third option that nobody voiced was to feed him to the sharks :-). The first option was chosen. We got him to shore where he changed into warm clothes and stayed in the cafe. There he spent a good time sipping hot coffee and chatting with a young pretty waitress while we kept paddling in the cold with the rain hitting out helmets. Some paddlers don't get where the real fun is.

PS. As the cramped paddler is married I have to clarify that the part of the cafe and the waitress is only my invention. Any similarity with real events is purely a coincidence.