Endless Summer

Summer has certainly made its presence felt this year with water temps sitting around 26 degrees Celsius with weeks of northerlies pushing in hot and humid conditions.  To escape the heat, we have been getting on the water early, though you need to be on the beach by 4:30 am to catch the sunrise.

A southerly change had come through overnight, though lighter inshore, but with a promise of up to 20 knots.  A small car shuffle was in order to extended the downwind run from the Port of Brisbane to Redcliffe.

We spent the first hour paddling into the headwind, hugging the coast and winding our way in and out of the mangroves exploring a number of inlets up to the Port of Brisbane.  The wind was building but only got to the 10-15 knot range as we headed out to the "Coffee Pots" (a name for a set of the channel markers outside the Port of Brisbane) for a tailwind run to Redcliffe.

We saw a lot of bird life along the foreshore leading up to the Port, including a colony of Bee-Eaters which make a stand of Casuarinas home.  The inlets were protected from the wind and the incoming neap tide allowed us to wander our way through the mangroves.

A change of pace, but we were looking forward to another down wind run!  I will get around to editing some of our downwind run footage but I have been a bit pushed for time lately with the run into Christmas.  We are doing the extended family Christmas at our place this year so I might have to do some mowing and yard work that I have been putting off! 

Downwinder with wind and a swim

Its time to get out the lawn mowers in BrisVegas with plenty of summer storm activity producing rain, hail and the humidity to make mowing a weekly affair.  The weekend saw the wind swing to the south to bring in some cooler weather with 20-30 knots of southerlies to herald the change.

With that sort of wind blowing the lawn can look after itself for another week.  Instead we grabbed the kayaks and headed out for a downwind paddle from Wellington Point to Redcliffe.

With family commitments for lunch, we took off early for a 33 km paddle/sail around the outside of Green and St Helena Islands before crossing the shipping channel for a lumpy downwind ride to Redcliffe.

The swell started picking up around Green Island and the runners kept growing in size as we made our way past St Helena and Mud Islands - without paddling I was still travelling between 10-20 km/hr.

I ended up going for a swim whilst we were waiting for a container ship to clear the shipping channel. We had turned beam on to the wind, whilst letting off the boom ropes to clear the wind out of the sails when the wind whipped the sail around the mast on a gust as some swell pushed me up into the breeze and over I went.

I dropped the sail under water but my paddle had become entangled so had to pop out of the boat to sort the mess out.  Rather than do a re-enter and roll I called my paddling partner over for an assist as I don't have an electric pump in the boat.  It has been a long time since we have had to practice some of our rescue techniques in rough water so whilst it wasn't orthodox- I was back in my boat in short order, pumping the remaining water out as the container ship cleared the shipping channel.

We kept the sails down whilst we crossed the shipping channel as the conditions were still building and gusting around 28 knots with swell coming from all directions - very much a washing machine.  We paddled back towards the coast to get a good line into Redcliffe and then put our sails up for a fun trip back.

We had some hootin' rides and had an average speed over 10 kms/hr including the time I spent having a swim and sorting myself back into the boat in adverse conditions - thanks to Jono for the assist.

A downwind slog

Mother nature didn't come to the party and deliver the promised 15-20 knots of northerly wind to assist us on a downwind run from Redcliffe south.  There was plenty of kayak bling on show as 3 Tarans, a Pace 17 and a ski lined up for the downwind blast - the only thing missing was the wind.

In a Queensland summer we are nearly always guaranteed to get some afternoon wind, but with the prediction for afternoon storms, a plan for an early morning down wind paddle was hatched earlier in the week.  We were watching the predicted wind models decrease the wind intensity over the week, but still were supposed to have between 10-15 knots off shore.

The original plan to go around Mud Island and down to Cleveland was shortened within half an hour of heading off shore, to head down to St Helena Island for a break before coming in at Manly Harbour to a well earned ice cold drink (thanks to the support crew for providing!).

Summer is well and truly here with a week of storms predicted so I think we will be early morning paddling only for the next few months.

The wind turned up as we were sitting at our destination, having slogged 30 kms, averaging 8.5 km/hr with no wind assistance at all - just four hours late!

It was great to catch up with some of our paddling mates who have been enjoying paddling ski's in recent times.  I'm not sure it was a great day out to convince them to get back into some sea kayaking but there is always another day!

Some further photos can be found at: Sutton Beach to Manly Harbour Paddle

Cottontree

This year the end of year celebrations for the Queensland Sea Kayaking Club were held at CottonTree on the Sunshine Coast.  I was fortunate enough to get a public holiday on the Friday thanks to the G20 so joined with the crew for a fun day out on the ocean as well as the on shore social activities.

I assisted a new trip leader with taking a small pod out through the Cottontree bar for a circumnavigation of Mudjimba Island.

The wind was pushing 10+knots from the north as we paddled out to the island.  There was a meter of easterly swell running, with the winds predicted to rise to 20 knots later in the day.  The lee of the island offered good protection from the strengthening winds and swell which was starting to run from the north.

There was a nice wave on the north-west corner of the island (right hander), and the left hand reef break was starting to fire on the south-west corner of the island.

I took the opportunity to surf the left hand reef break - I was tempted to stay out for a few more hours as the waves were a perfect shape, breaking over the shallow reef.

We had a great down wind run on the way back to the Pin Cushion and a uneventful crossing of the bar.  A couple of us stayed out on the bar for some more waves before paddling over to Pin Cushion for some chill time.

More photos at: QSKC Christmas Weekend

Amity Banks Paddling

Sitting and waiting at work to hear the outcome of a major tender wasn't doing me any good so I opted to start the weekend early and took Friday off to spend some time on the water and to enjoy some island time.

A loose plan to paddle against the incoming spring tide over to either Moreton Island or North Stradbroke Island for a day of wildlife spotting was the general idea.  I am always amazed at the amount of wildlife we encounter on the Bay - it just comes down to spending time on the water no matter what the conditions.

We took off from Wellington Point, following the leads out to Hope Bank and then the plan was to continue to the northern side of the Rous Channel.  After 8 kms of slogging against the incoming tide and prevailing wind, we hatched plan B which was to paddle south over the Banks and not worry about going across to Moreton Island. Plan B turned into Plan C and we ended up paddling across the banks and getting a lift up to Amity with the outgoing tide thanks to the 5 knot current running in the Rainbow Channel.

The banks always produce an amazing array of wildlife, though you have to be looking at the right place at the right time to see a dugong as our local dugongs are very nervous and it isn't often that you will find them relaxed on the surface.  In addition to the dugong, we saw the usual gambit of turtles and dolphins, but it was hard to spot the sharks with two plus meters of textured water over the banks.

A walk to the cafe at Amity for brunch saw us spotting koala's as well as a range of bird life including the Eastern Osprey (in the first photo) who's mate was sitting on the nest at the top of a radio tower calling to this one who instead of providing food, was resting in the shade.

After lunch we jumped back in the kayaks and paddled over to a local exposed sandbank to check out the birds we had spotted settling on the banks early in the day.

We ended up with 47 kms of paddling for the day, and ticked more boxes than we expected on our wildlife tour of Moreton Bay.

More photos from the day can be found at: Amity Wander Photos

Pimped Up Rudder

Find that your stern lifts and you broach when paddling in steeper seas?  This rudder might be the answer.  It is a tandem rudder which apart from having more aesthetic appeal than its smaller cousin, gives you more control when conditions get interesting.

We did a down wind run in 20 knots for 30 kms in Moreton Bay.  This is a shallow bottom bay so your wave period is short and the waves are steep.  The few times I broached in the breaking swell was due to the setup of the rudder - there are a few settings for spring tension to keep the rudder in position and I hadn't wound it up sufficiently so the rudder was not fully down when I was on a run (not to mention smacking into a few jelly fish which caused the rudder to lift).

We spent the first hour and half of the 3 hour paddle, running across the front of the wind and swell, before turning for a direct line down to our destination.  The conditions were a little scary in places with the swell pushing up onto some shallow banks and breaking into deeper water.  I hit 27 km/hr surfing into the shipping channel and there wasn't a lot of control happening!  Once we were across the shipping channel the size of the swell dropped off for our run into Manly harbour.

A salt water injection

The past two weeks have proved to be a little difficult to find my way free to get in some paddling, but I escaped for a few hours on Sunday afternoon to surf some wind waves in Moreton Bay.  It had the main ingredients of salt + water so it was all good!

I am starting to kick around some ideas for a bigger paddle in 2015 and have commenced some preliminary research for three to four weeks away island hopping through Queensland waters.  No firm plans as yet but the two main options are exploring the northern end of the Capricornia Cays or heading north and paddling the islands that dot the Queensland Coast from Townsville to Mission Beach, which will include Hinchinbrook Island.

In 2010 I paddled out to the bottom end of the Great Barrier reef from Fraser Island and island hopped my way up through the southern end of the Capricornia Cays.  It was an amazing experience paddling up to 100 kms off the coast in pristine waters and large seas, including the 96 km open sea paddle to Lady Elliot Island.  I'd be keen to repeat this experience, with the only caveat that these are very exposed waters and getting weather bound on these remote coral cays is almost guaranteed.  If it wasn't for needing fresh water it doesn't sound all that bad really!

Paddling up the islands dotting the Queensland Coast would be a little more protected from large swell coming from NZ as we would be paddling inside the Great Barrier Reef.  The only problem here is Crocodiles and some very nasty marine stingers, neither of which would be good to be in the water with.

In the mean time I will be working on my photography skills and there may be a few more land based shots than usual, as one of the reasons for this blog was for somewhere to catalog some of the images I capture along the way.

Its not all about the kayak

For me kayaking is a medium that allows me to explore the natural world in way that I become immersed in nature. Each trip I plan has more island time than kayaking time - a chance to explore, discover and capture images of this amazing planet we live on.

One of the critical bits of kit I take with me is my camera collection which to date has consisted of two under water cameras and one point and shoot land-based camera.  The underwater cameras allow images and video to be shot of the journey on the water, as well as underwater as a lot of my trips are out to islands and coral atolls around the Great Barrier Reef.  I generally have more underwater footage than above water footage when I return from these types of trips!

My family have just added to my camera collection and have supplied me with a new DSLR camera for capturing land-based images.  Now I am going to need to find some more space to put another 1 and a bit kilograms of camera gear!

I've spent the past couple of weeks fast tracking my knowledge and experimenting with the new camera in a range of different lighting and environments - Google has been my friend!

All roads lead to Noosa

Noosa is one of my favourite paddling destinations, just an hour and half drive from BrisVegas. I have surfed here since the 70's and can understand why people travel from all over the world to visit.

Today we had an outgoing tide and some messy swell coming in from the North which meant wind and swell against tide on the Noosa Bar, a constantly changing shallow bar which has swell pushing out of deeper water breaking heavily onto the outside banks before pushing into the river mouth - 200 meter rides with the right conditions.

The plan was to spend the morning surfing at various destinations from the Noosa Bar, around to Alexandria Bay on the eastern side of the headland and back through the three bays; Granite, Tea-Tree and National before surfing the bar again if we had any energy left.

The Noosa river offers a number of good places to launch from that are close to the bar - here we are taking off from a canal off Weyba Creek.

Graham joined us for a surf at the Noosa Bar, but the conditions weren't surf ski friendly today.  For the start of a spring long weekend in Queensland and the end of the school holidays we had very little company on the water.

There was more swell running than expected and the outgoing tide had the waves standing up - my kayak bow is in there somewhere!  We experienced some lumpy water today with a lot of rebound off the cliffs around the Noosa National Park headland.  There was some bigger swell running around the headland so running the gauntlet in Hells Gates was off the agenda, but Granite Bay was picking up some of the swell so we had some fun runs back into the more protected bays as we made our way back down to Noosa.  The following is some kayak cam of the surfing around Noosa.

Up the coast for a quick surf

I had to sneak an early paddle in on Saturday this weekend due to a list of jobs at home that has started to seriously affect my lifestyle!  An early start and an hour or so later I had the kayak in the water at Mooloolaba with a plan to do a short paddle around Point Cartwright to find some surf along the open beach at Kawana.

There wasn't a lot of wind around so we had glassy conditions on the water and fat meter of swell running on the open beach.  The waves were dumping onto the shore break, but were forming enough on the outside bank to pick up and surf through to shallow water.

We only ended up with about 15 kms paddled after returning to Mooloolaba to practice some rolling and balancing (well attempting to balance).  The lazy surf must have been enough to prepare me for some serious gardening (and not of the rock variety!)

I finished the garden off on Sunday so it is all planted out.  On to the next thing on the list - retaining walls that need replacing...:-(

Some video footage shot around Point Cartwright.

Salt Water Injection

I've just come off the back of a busy week finalising a tender response, getting two large scale software development projects ready for implementation and basically staring at the walls of my cubicle going slowly insane.  The murky waters of the bay weren't going to cut it this weekend.  I needed an injection of deep blue water that only ocean kayaking can give you.

With perfect conditions predicted, we took off from Mooloolaba to paddle out to Mudjimba (Old Woman) Island which is a 20 km round trip if you stop off for a surf along the way. 

We took off at the top of the tide to head out to the island with a plan to do some rock gardening and surf into a rock lagoon which is sheltered behind a rocky outcrop on the north-western corner of the island.  If you can make it in behind the rock wall then you have access to the island.

The island is surrounded by a rock reef which is one of the best reef breaks on the East Coast when the swell starts to wrap around the island.  The swell that was running today was missing the island and building onto the coast which gave us a somewhat easy access into the rock lagoon.

The Shearwaters (Mutton birds) have been in residence, clearing out their nests ready for their nesting season.  You can only walk around the rocky edge of the island as the middle of the island is a mine field of Shearwater nests.  After visiting the island residence, we did a walking circumnavigation before jumping in our boats and heading off for a surf on some north shore beach breaks.

We had a great surf on the way back with some very nice peaky waves forming on the outgoing tide.  I had a first today as I slotted my sea kayak through a barrel that was forming, prepared my high brace for a thrashing, but somehow came out the other side of the barrel onto a clean wall - should of towed my surfboard along!

Thanks to Gaza and Jonathan for keeping me company - we were like stoked grommets by the time we headed in for lunch!