Hanging ashore

A rare good winter day

Between snow storms and extremely windy weather its been two weeks since I've been on the water. That's the longest absence that I can remember for a long, long time. I'm starting to feel a bit of cabin fever in that regard. Each morning I check the weather forecast with the hope I'll get out soon. I'm due.

Cleanliness is next to godliness

Suppertime (Hazen photo)

Wednesday evening I went to a KNL presentation of a trip by four guys along the south coast of Newfoundland. Partway through the trip one of the guys got violently ill and throwing up. He decided to take a ferry ride out and abandoned the trip.

I spoke to him afterwards inquiring as to what he thought brought on the illness. He was candidly honest - hygiene. Wow, I thought because its not something I've given a lot of thought to myself when I've been out kayak camping. The most I've done is rinse of pots and pans in salt water.

I discussed it with Craig on the drive home. He recounted his practices as a Scout leader. His rules start with washing hands before any cooking starts. After eating, dishes are washed first in hot soapy water, then a bath in a weak javex bath and then a rinse in clear water.

I've paddled the same coastline but I went anyway to show support for the club. I'm glad I did because I did learn something. I will certainly be more careful in future. Its worth the effort to avoid spoiling a perfectly good trip.

Group safety through teamwork

All together

At the doctor today to get a requisition for blood work. Its usually a wait so I took my "Sea kayaking Safety and Rescue" book by John Lull to keep me occupied.

I've read it thru and thru a few times but today my eyes fell on the chapter dealing with group safety and teamwork. It had some application to the situation the last time we were out.

Five kms from the take-out the wind came up unexpectedly as we crossed the mouth of the harbour. We (7 of us) stuck together except after a short while one of the guys drifted away from the group. A considerable distance started to form between him and the group. Gerard went to chase him down and partner up.

As we paddled on into a steady Force 6 wind we got strung out a bit. Back on the beach Gerard thought we should have stayed together more. That would have been preferable but even though we got strung out, no one was left alone. Strung out we had a twosome, another twosome and a threesome taking up the rear. Everyone in the group was aware of where everyone else was so we were still a team.

After reading John Lull's piece, I'm content enough with how the group dissolved yet organized itself into the buddy system. There is, as they say, safety in numbers.

A historic first

Winter outing

Kayak Newfoundland and Labrador offers club paddles during the spring, summer and fall. Up to this year a winter club paddle has never been offered. That is about to change.

A group of us recently approached the Board to put a winter paddle on the Calendar of Events. The Board has agreed with certain provisions for legal purposes. The guidelines imposed by the Board include: mandating the paddle as a Level II paddle (i.e. not a beginner paddle), all participants must wear a drysuit, there must be accessible take-outs, moderate winds and no extreme cold weather.

All this is pretty obvious but they must do their due diligence. We're hoping to get a few more people out to enjoy the winter season and thereby increase the numbers of people paddling all year round.

The case of the vanashing paddlers

Some of the buckos on Sunday

2011 was a tough year on some paddlers. Tough in the sense, they didn't paddle as much as they had in the past.

There's:

Derrick - he bought a sailboat and got himself tied up with that.

Neil - he's gotten into diving.

Malcolm - he's also bought a sailboat but says he's still committed to seakayaking.

Stan - he's gotten into photography. I thought I'd see him on Sunday at Bay Bulls but must have gotten distracted. Probably not a bad decision after all we went through.

Time is short and hardly time to do everything. Nevertheless, I hope I'll see them on the water more in 2012.

The second part - paddle from hell

Going for a look see

We left Bay Bulls harbour to go have a look at Red Rock Cove. There's a big rock in the cove that Gerard said would be interesting with the swell rolling in.

Still no problem

The wind was forecast to pick up but from the NW to 25kms so we were going to cross over to the north side of Bay Bulls. There we would have some protection.

Instead, as we entered the harbour to cross, the winds stayed westerly and steadily picked up to 40 kms generating wind waves of close to 1 meter. As we crossed it increased some more until there were whitecaps everywhere, occasionally breaking over the deck. Still manageable as my GPS was telling me we were maintaining 6 kms/hr.

The track back

The dasterdly wind stayed westerly and picked up some more to 50 kms with sustained gusts to 60. Whitecaps started to blow off of the waves. It was getting ugly and we had 5 kms to paddle straight into the wind back to the take-out. There was no hiding from the wind as we each retreated into our own world to slog it out.

A couple of points of land offered a chance to catch our breath momentarily before continuing the trek into the harbour. I felt I was barely making progress. Almost 100 minutes later we were relieved to be back. Looking down the harbour, the 5 kms we came from looked a long way off.

When I got home I downloaded the data from my GPS. It was interesting. In Useless Bay and up to Bread and Cheese Point we were making 4 kms dropping to 3 at times. Between Bread and Cheese Poing and Flat Point it dropped to 3 and sometimes 2 in the gusts.

Overall the average was just over 3 kms/hr.

What started out as a leisurely day at 10:00 turned into a gut busting paddle at 12:00. It was a tale of two paddles.

But, all's well that ends well and we went off for coffee to rehash the day.

A tale of two paddles

Dean in the sunshine

Today it was a tale of two paddles. Part 1 - a leisurely paddle along the south side of Bay Bulls.

Gerard

The sun was out but it was low in the sky putting us in shadows as we puttered along checking out caves.

Gary chatting it up with Dean

We took our time in calm waters but it started to cloud over.

Checkin' out a cave

Some of the guys went to check out a cave as Neville, Gary, Dean and I waited outside.

Dean entering a hidden cave

A very narrow entry into a cave that opens up like a cathedral once inside. The entrance is just wider than a kayak.

Great big cave

This cave had a much bigger entrance with a vaulted ceiling. A swell was running outside the harbour and we began to feel it as water surged into the cave.

Hazen

The swell turned to foam as it met the rocks ...

Clyde

... which is just fine with Clyde.

Neville

The cliffs sheltered from the sun were covered with icicles where water poured off the land.

This was the end of part 1 of the paddle. Things would go downhill from this point making it part 2 of a tale of two paddles.