Paddle 35 Chichester Harbour

A nice early Sunday morning paddle.  The main aim was to dust off some cobwebs and try out new dry-suits and fleece under suits.

Chichester Harbour has decided that kayaks no longer need to pay harbour dues!  This brings it into line with Langstone and Portsmouth harbours.

My Crewsaver Cirrus has been good the past 4 times I've used it.  Not a drop past the neoprene seals and it's been very comfortable.  This time I used it with a Lomo fleece under suit.  I was perfectly comfortable stationary and paddling slowly, but anything more than gentle paddling and I was too hot.  It will certainly be useful later in the year, but really it was too warm for today.

Steve enjoyed using his Gul dry suit.  He doesn't have as much natural padding as me, but his neoprene seals also stayed dry.

We did see a couple of seals off Thorny Island and also managed to get a picture with a local friendly Orca!

Paddle 34 Seal Hunting (with a camera)

We dusted off the old double and went looking for Common Seals.

The seals tend to hang out on mud banks at low tide and like to avoid the motor boats and jet skis.  Today we found a group of 9 seals on the SW side of Thorny Island.  I really need to get a better digital camera, despite the seals coming as close as 20 feet to us, we only managed a few "Loch Ness Monster" style shots, here are the best:

 

Paddle 33 Eastney to Chichester Harbour entrance

F3 Easterly, dawn paddle, beautiful.  I pushed my self today and really enjoyed the work out. It took me 1 hour 42 minutes to cover 9 statute miles.  At that pace it would take me just under 2.5 hours to paddle round Hayling Island.  I'm not sure I can hold that pace for 2 and a half hours yet.

The flood tide into Chichester Harbour is later than Portsmouth Harbour, so an anti clockwise trip would get the most tidal assistance.  I reckon leaving the West end of Hayling beach 1.5 hours before HW Portsmouth on a big Spring tide would be optimum for me.

 

Paddle 32 Warsash to Calshot Spit

A SW wind gusting F6 led to a mix of wave shapes and heights as it blew against the tide running out of Southampton water and over the various depth changes.  We had flat water, long sinusoidal waves 4 feet high, vertical faced waves from 1 foot to 5 foot and plenty of foam.
As I only had my handheld camera I didn't take pictures in the bigger waves, I know there is a tendency for wave height to be measured as accurately as fisher men can judge "the one that got away" but there were plenty of times when Rob and his paddle were completely hidden from view.

 

Paddle 32 PDCC end of season wet training & curry night

The final wet training session of the year!  Where has the time gone?

The session was very much about having fun rather than following a syllabus.  We had an all in 18 paddler rescue. I finally managed a cowboy self rescue, which I hear vaguely resembles an aquatic version of a bear on a bicycle.  I won't be using that as a real time rescue technique just yet.  I use more energy getting back in than I would doing 10 of any other type of rescue I can do.  I did several re-entry rolls and it started to feel more technique less brute force.  The Kodiak has an enormous cockpit volume, but even so I found it easy to paddle flooded.  I'll pack out as much of the cockpit as practical with foam and that should make a huge difference.

Paddle 31 BCU 3 star assessment.

Being ill sucks, being ill and not knowing what it is sucks even more. I found out today it's not cancer, but needs more tests to tell me what it's not.  Luckily for me there was an open slot on a BCU 3 star assessment, I went along not expecting to pass but thinking the experience would be worth while.  The examiner casually mentioned that the conditions just outside Eastney Harbour entrance were beyond the remit of 3 star but that the area with in the harbour was at the top end of acceptable.  That was a surprise, as was the remainder of the assessment.  I'd clearly warped the standard required into something far higher than the reality.

I passed!

Paddle 30 Monday night training PDCC

Monday night practising at Eastney. I managed a re-entry roll but it was a triumph of brute force over sloppy technique.