Finally decided that enough was enough and I had to bite the bullet and get out paddling , been putting it off as I've just had so much to do with the house , I organised with my brother to go down to Roundhill creek at 1770 yesterday , I'd given Bruce my old skin on frame BK18 about a month back and showed him how to set up the lee boards and rudder and he made up a mast out a extendable alloy handle for a paint roller and some metal pipe to suit a sail I gave him ,
So yesterday morning I got up while still dark and got ready , day wasn't starting off well as my back was too stiff and sore to bend over and put my boots on [ back is out again and pressing on a nerve ] , had to wander around for 15 minutes until I could find some thing to hook into the tabs of my laughing side boots and help pull them on , thought maybe that going paddling with my back out wasn't the best idea I'd had for a while but decided " stuff it if I have to wait until I'm not in some sort of pain I'd never do any thing " , picked up my brother and we were on the water by 8.30 am , I'd been working on the idea of paddling with the incoming tide until it turned and then paddling back with the out going tide , there was a bit of breeze [ gentle ] blowing up the creek and my brothers sail worked well , it kept him going at paddling pace while he just leaned back and dangled a lure out the back ,
Me on the other hand had to paddle the whole way , I'd made up a 10 minute version of a Inuit paddle out of a 8 ft length of 2" x 3" pine stud the day before , the sort of Inuit paddle made by some of who has never seen one in real life and doesn't know any of the dimensions and only had a very rough idea what they are about and is in a hurry and does it all by eye with a power plainer and a band saw , but I've decided that I like that style paddle better than any other sorts I've tried and will set about making a proper one in the near future ,
Getting back to Roundhill creek , I paddled at a steady clip for three hours with the tide ,
I looked on the map when we got back and think we would have gone about 9 to 10 km up the creek , my brother actually had to paddle the last few km's as the creek was too narrow , twisting and shallow that far up for sailing , you can pretty much touch either bank with your paddle from the middle of the creek up there , on the way up I managed to catch a under size Flathead and a reasonable size stingray [ about three foot across ] , lost my lure on that one , cut him off at the side of the kayak as I didn't want to loose my mono trace , I realised that I'd left my trace line back in the car and didn't have any spare , holding him by the tail and trying to pull the lure out of it's mouth with some thing that size just wasn't going to work , I also lost a good sized flathead just a few metres from the kayak , must not have been hooked well ,
Another thing I was trying out this trip was I'd made up a short leeboard mounted on the same setup I used for mounting my rod holders , the Mill Creek is a flat bottomed kayak with out a keel and there tends to be a fair bit of side slip with a decent wind blowing , I was hoping that the leeboard would help with that and it did , definitely a lot better with it than with out it .
When the tide changed we turned around , the next few km's were easy as we were going with the tide and the wind was behind us , then the wind changed when we come out of the narrow section and was alternating coming from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock and had jumped up a few notches , I was having to paddle twice as hard just to keep from going backwards , I was trying to get across to the left hand side of the creek to get some protection from the wind but just couldn't get across the wide open water section against the wind , it was all I could do to make any headway against the wind and keep out of the mangroves on the right hand side , my brother wasn't fairing all that well either and while when the wind first come up he was having a great time tacking back and forward across the creek [ it ranges from 150 metres to about 400 metres in the open section ] when the wind kicked up some more one particularly savage gust broke his mast off so he was back to paddling too , the last 4 km I was only paddling on the right hand side trying to make any headway against the wind , the lumpy ride with all the chop was telling me that paddling with my back out wasn't the best idea I'd had in a while
About 7 hours after we started we were back to the car , and I was extremely happy to see the car , with the hard paddling , being out of shape from not paddling for so long , not bringing any painkillers for my back with me and not having a high backed seat I was well and truly stuffed ,
Next time I go there I'm going to change the position of the rod holders and get a better seat , I've been thinking very seriously of building a Southwind and as soon as I check out Mick's I'll make the decision , if I do then the Mill creek is going to be turned into a sailing kayak , my brother was having just too much fun to leave him to it on his lonesome
David
So yesterday morning I got up while still dark and got ready , day wasn't starting off well as my back was too stiff and sore to bend over and put my boots on [ back is out again and pressing on a nerve ] , had to wander around for 15 minutes until I could find some thing to hook into the tabs of my laughing side boots and help pull them on , thought maybe that going paddling with my back out wasn't the best idea I'd had for a while but decided " stuff it if I have to wait until I'm not in some sort of pain I'd never do any thing " , picked up my brother and we were on the water by 8.30 am , I'd been working on the idea of paddling with the incoming tide until it turned and then paddling back with the out going tide , there was a bit of breeze [ gentle ] blowing up the creek and my brothers sail worked well , it kept him going at paddling pace while he just leaned back and dangled a lure out the back ,
Me on the other hand had to paddle the whole way , I'd made up a 10 minute version of a Inuit paddle out of a 8 ft length of 2" x 3" pine stud the day before , the sort of Inuit paddle made by some of who has never seen one in real life and doesn't know any of the dimensions and only had a very rough idea what they are about and is in a hurry and does it all by eye with a power plainer and a band saw , but I've decided that I like that style paddle better than any other sorts I've tried and will set about making a proper one in the near future ,
Getting back to Roundhill creek , I paddled at a steady clip for three hours with the tide ,
I looked on the map when we got back and think we would have gone about 9 to 10 km up the creek , my brother actually had to paddle the last few km's as the creek was too narrow , twisting and shallow that far up for sailing , you can pretty much touch either bank with your paddle from the middle of the creek up there , on the way up I managed to catch a under size Flathead and a reasonable size stingray [ about three foot across ] , lost my lure on that one , cut him off at the side of the kayak as I didn't want to loose my mono trace , I realised that I'd left my trace line back in the car and didn't have any spare , holding him by the tail and trying to pull the lure out of it's mouth with some thing that size just wasn't going to work , I also lost a good sized flathead just a few metres from the kayak , must not have been hooked well ,
Another thing I was trying out this trip was I'd made up a short leeboard mounted on the same setup I used for mounting my rod holders , the Mill Creek is a flat bottomed kayak with out a keel and there tends to be a fair bit of side slip with a decent wind blowing , I was hoping that the leeboard would help with that and it did , definitely a lot better with it than with out it .
When the tide changed we turned around , the next few km's were easy as we were going with the tide and the wind was behind us , then the wind changed when we come out of the narrow section and was alternating coming from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock and had jumped up a few notches , I was having to paddle twice as hard just to keep from going backwards , I was trying to get across to the left hand side of the creek to get some protection from the wind but just couldn't get across the wide open water section against the wind , it was all I could do to make any headway against the wind and keep out of the mangroves on the right hand side , my brother wasn't fairing all that well either and while when the wind first come up he was having a great time tacking back and forward across the creek [ it ranges from 150 metres to about 400 metres in the open section ] when the wind kicked up some more one particularly savage gust broke his mast off so he was back to paddling too , the last 4 km I was only paddling on the right hand side trying to make any headway against the wind , the lumpy ride with all the chop was telling me that paddling with my back out wasn't the best idea I'd had in a while
About 7 hours after we started we were back to the car , and I was extremely happy to see the car , with the hard paddling , being out of shape from not paddling for so long , not bringing any painkillers for my back with me and not having a high backed seat I was well and truly stuffed ,
Next time I go there I'm going to change the position of the rod holders and get a better seat , I've been thinking very seriously of building a Southwind and as soon as I check out Mick's I'll make the decision , if I do then the Mill creek is going to be turned into a sailing kayak , my brother was having just too much fun to leave him to it on his lonesome
David
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