Southerndown to E Nash Buoy: With Tide
‘It’s just a short jaunt’ explained Eurion yet again as he drags me from the comfort of my sofa and another episode of The Apprentice. ‘Get your stuff ready we’re leaving in a few minutes!’
I never rush off to do anything without thinking about my stomach – so I prepared a few sandwiches, chocolate, a banana and a flask of coffee. Got the gear together and rushed off to help Eurion load the kayaks onto the mother of all Land Rovers. (Can you believe he drove his family all the way to Whitby in big red thing that’s as aerodynamic as a brick!) Loaded and ready to go (actually we had to go back as we have a 100% record of forgetting something – yes we’ve arrived at the beach sans wetsuit, towel or paddle in the past – but never the sandwiches!)
Suited and booted we lunge onto the water and headed east. Southerndown Bay is protected from any prevailing bad weather by steep cliffs so the Bay is usually calm compared to the Channel estuary – its not until you round Witches Point that you expose yourself to the everything the British weather can send at you. Today it’s was OK, the tide was ebbing and the wind offered little resistance. Mark pounded ahead as usual (no idea where he gets his energy from – its certainly not from attending our frequent training sessions!).
Mark has the Skye today I have the Easky as my plastic ‘horse’ and with the odd adjustment to my skeg, good progress was made to the Buoy. This huge steel and concrete monolith is even uglier close up than it is from Nash Bay 500 yards away, the bell even tolled for us in the small swell of the last of the flooding tide.
Sunday, 22 April 2007
Coffee and sandwiches were served as usual and photographs taken for the website. Psychologically its important that we all ‘rounded’ the buoy and started back on the ebb to Southerndown. Within minutes we seemed to be half a mile downstream of the buoy – its amazing at effect paddling with the tide can have on progress, particularly when measured from a fixed point at sea. At 43 I’m now the oldest of the team planning to cross the Bristol Channel later this Summer and the body seems to cope reasonably well considering its encased in a cramped, wet prison for hours on end. As we round Witches Point and spot the fisherman escaping their wives and families in favour of a remote chance of catching a mackerel, I realise I have forgotten my ‘trailing lines’ once again. Apparently our chances of catching mackerel using a trailing line, small weight and rubber sand eel are remarkably high so next time out I’ll try to remember all the fishing gear and attempt to catch some supper.
Just when you think your ‘home and dry’ the Channel has one last trick up its sleeve – for the novice sea kayaker, even the smallest breaking wave appears as some daunting barrier to total safety. I have little control of the kayak at the best of time but when Mother Nature grabs the kayak and swoops me towards the sandy Southerndown Bay there is little chance that me or my equipment will survive the experience totally dry.
This time, the nine inch swell took hold of my kayak, swung it round to the left and tipped me over before I could yell for assistance. As I rolled over I made a pathetic attempt at inhaling as much oxygen as I could to survive the underwater experience. Shouldn’t have bothered as I never actually rolled fully over – with only twelve inches of water beneath me, my shoulder and head plunged into the sand in the same way a formula one car leaves the track and plunges into the gravel run off. Scraping my face along the sand I struggled to release myself from the kayak. More embarrassment was to come as this failed too and when I finally came to a halt, on my side still strapped to my kayak, I looked up to see a family of four running towards me to offer assistance. ‘Thanks but no thanks’ I said to their offer of recovery, ‘got caught out by that rogue wave!’.
After all of that – Eurion was right – it was only a short jaunt.
Roger