Gone Paddling Sea Kayak Circumnavigation of Britain 2010

Today was another day off thw water.  Joe’s elbow is slowly improving, and while the weather is not great it seems silly to risk making it worse again.  Due to the fact that until now we’d been ahead of schedule, our fundraising permits for street collections in South Wales did not actually start until today anyway, so having a day in Carmarthen was pretty productive anyway.

We had a live interview on BBC Radio Wales this morning, and another on BBC Carmarthenshire this afternoon – and a few people who donated on the street in Carmarthenshire mentioned about having heard us on the radio this morning, so it’s great to know the word it spreading, because ultimately this should help the charities by raising awareness about the trip.

We’ve also spent some time with freelance broadcaster Jo who has been very keen to film what we’ve been up to, in order to put together a piece for the news.  Once we’ve paddled out of Tenby she’ll finish off the edit and hopefully we’ll have some decent exposure on TV as well as all the local papers and radio coverage we’ve been receiving lately… again – fingers crossed.

James

Day 10

Another rest day today, waiting to see how Joe’s elbow responds to some time off paddling.  Lots going on though – finally we’ve had a chance to update this website with photos from the last week, and we even managed to squeeze in a TV interview this morning, which fingers crossed will make it onto the news in the next few days.

James

A bouy in Carmarthen Bay

Following a steady transit into Tenby at spring low tide.

Fort Tenby?!

The RNLI Tenby slipway

Day 9

Joe’s been having some trouble with tendonitis in his elbow, so rather than attempt the suggested mammoth paddle all the way to Milford Haven, we decided to shorten the target and aim for Tenby, and then give Joe’s elbow a day or two to recover more fully.  After some interesting and unexpectedly large waves off Port Eynon Head, we followed the coast about a mile offshore until Worm’s Head, and then cut Northwards towards Pendine.  We would have liked to cross staight to Tenby, but on a full spring tide, and knowing there were very few stopping options between Tenby and St Govan’s Head (big tidal races), we were very keen not to pass Tenby.  Swell was about 2 metres from the west, wind abotu Force 3 from the south, and current a couple of knots from the east; this made for paddling conditions a little more difficult than yesterday’s open crossing from Devon.  Given we had shortened the day’s paddle from about 11 hours down to 6, the “short” paddle across Carmarthen Bay felt like a long slog, even though it was in fact a similar distance to that covered yesterday.

We arrived in Tenby in early afternoon, and now that Rick has managed to sort out the power for the battery and inverter, hopefully we’ll be able to keep things updated on the website a little more regularly from now on.

James

This was the view for most of the day…

Without being able to see any land for most of the crossing, we had to follow the GPS waypoints rather than use visual transits.

The beautiful coastline of the Gower grows slowly on the horizon.

Aroving at Port Eynon

Day 8

Early morning fog meant we had to delay leaving Ilfracombe by over 2 hours which meant the crossing had to be re-planned to take account of the different tidal rates.  Original plan was to leave at around midway between the ebb tide and arrive part way in to the flood. This would have taken about 5 hours. Leaving two hours later meant we would have more of the flood to paddle in and hense would be dragged further up the Bristol Channel. An appropriate bearing was calculated to compensate. The crossing would now take about 6 hours. However this meant there was time to visit Maplin to sort out the inverter which has been causing so many problems over the last few days (it’s why we’ve been unable to update the website until now…)

The crossing itself was amazing – visibility was pretty good, and with a Force 2 southerly wind behind us and very little swell, we were able to concentrate fully on watching out for cargo ships.  Wouldn’t fancy one of those creeping up behind us.  Joe had replotted the route in a rush while I did the Maplin run, and when we realised the currents weren’t quite as strong as wed anticipated, we stuck to the origianal bearing and hoped they would be quite as strong going back the other way as well.  As the 6 hours wore on, the land in the distance slowly became more visible, and finally we homed in on Port Eynon, arriving in time to catch the fish and chip shop for dinner, only deviating from the planned bearing at the last minute.

Rick then arrived after the first driver change-over; he took over from my mum in Devon and his first job was a 3 hour drive over the Severn bridge and across to the Gower.

We’re not sure, but we think we might be the first people to cross between Ilfracombe and Port Eynon as part of a circumnavigation of Britain…

James

Clearing out unnecessary kit to make better use of the limited space in the van.

The fundraising map now has a few more points on it

Day 7

With Westerly winds forecast for today, and lighter southerlies forecast for tomorrow, we decided to take a rest day in Ilfracombe.  The morning was over in a flash after a long lie in,  then we spoke with the harbour master about the crossing, paid in some charity collections into the bank, cleaned some kit and planned the details for crossing to Wales.  My cousin Fiona returned with 3 delicious home made cakes, made to order from yesterday.  Chocolate ginger, banana, and carrot cake, what a star!

James

Hartland Point in poor visibility

Cliffs near Hartland Point

Approaching Ilfracombe just before the tides turn

Landing by the Scout Hut, just off to the side of the main harbour

So today was supposed to be a straight forward run up to Ilfracombe blown along by the forecast SW4-5. Plan was to be on the water for 7 to slog up to Hartland point to clear the race at slack water, then take the flood tide all the way to Ilfracombe and be blown along all the way by the wind. With a bunch of morning faffing we finally put on about an hour late, and noticed the first swells of the trip – 2-3 foot breakers to paddle out through, not a problem but the wind was a good force 5 and the visibility was poor, with dense fog lying on the land. This was not going to be as straight forwards as I had hoped.

As we were running late, we arrived at Hartland point with the overfalls already running nicely, and with the waves crashing over the rocks we had to paddle stay offshore and paddle through the guts of it. Not too bad, flattened out by the wind. One obstacle down.

Next was the crossing of Bideford bay. This was to be about a 12mile crossing in poor visibility and very poor in the fog patches, so out came the GPS and punched in the coordinates for Baggy point. We absolutely screamed across in about 2 hours with the assistance of the force 5 following sea. very exhilarating and a little intimidating as neither of us had been out in open sea in anything much more than 3-4. As baggy point appeared out of the mist, we started aiming for Morte point. As we passed baggy (a bit closer than planned to the wind pushing us on to it) we were confronted by massive haystacks that took us by suprise. This was the back eddy of Woolacombe bay pouring out and colliding the main flood tide. we managed to stay on course though and looking back at my GPS I got a max speed of 9.5 knots!!! Reckon this must have been hammering down the face of the waves of baggy!! Second obstacle down.

Next was Morte and Bull point. On crossing Woolacombe, I bumped in to Mark Ressell and Ivan Lawler and one other out training on their surf skis. I was a little concerned about the final push to Ilfracombe as I we were a bit later than scheduled and I had only crudely worked out the time of the start of the ebb based on the tidal flowchartlets in the Almanac. I didn’t much fancy ending up in one of the powerful tide races with the force 5 wind against or trying to paddle against the Bristol channel!!Luckily Mark confirmed the local tide times. and we had another 1.5 hours so just enough time to go through the race at Morte point (more big haystacks) and whiz round to Ilfracombe where two enormous pasties were waiting for us!

Rest day tomorrow, so we’ll add a load more pictures. Thanks for reading.

Joe