One day in 1999 we actually paddled with the kayak club group, I think they were from Wynnum Redlands Canoe Club. 

  I have no reasonable excuse why I did not join a Canoe club in those days.  Every time I wanted to go paddling I was happy to do it by myself and either went locally or with Richard.  I was reasonably busy doing two Science degrees at the time and my paddling was keeping me as occupied as I wanted it to be.  (This was also in the age of film cameras, so therefore not many photos of these events were taken; there is a limited supply of photos of my kayak adventures.)  On this trip, from Cleveland (Wellington Point) around Peel Island and back, about two or three nautical miles all-up, with the kayak club group, we met a seal; the sea animal kind.  This is far too north to meet a seal (very unlikely in these warm waters), in the sub-tropical area of Brisbane.  The seal was very friendly and stayed on the surface with us for some time – I think it wanted some company.  Carrying on, and the seal no longer following us, we came to a reef and I and another kayaker trolled a fishing line with a lure attached: we caught nothing (I have never caught anything on a lure despite several attempts).  

This is a LURE

The Kayak at anchor while I did some snorkeling.

Near the far point of our excursion the blade on my paddle broke.  I was right beside the manager of the canoe-shop  I bought the paddle from when it happened, which was lucky.  I asked if they had a warrantee and the manager said he would replace it.  This was from Rosco Kayaks (a very well known and respected store in Brisbane City) and it was a generous gesture because I don’t think retailers usually do returns on paddles :  they can be abused too easily.  Anyhow, I had to paddle canoe-style using only one end of the paddle (I had no spare).  One of the other kayakers had a spare but I was not about to belittle myself and take a paddle off a more organised and elder paddler (I was a young 33 years old and the paddler was grey haired).  I paddled with all my might to keep with the front runners of the group because I was determined no-one was going to wait for me.  There was another paddler with us with a wooden kayak, other than Richard and I, that he designed and built himself; using its nineteen-foot length this kayak kept with us in the front.  He was going to paddle this nineteen-foot boat around Australia.  I never kept up with the story and do not know if he even started the journey.  In those days the internet was not what it was now and these people usually wrote a book and had it published when they did something adventurous like that (‘Keep Australia on the Left’ was a book the kayakers were reading at the time about a around Australia kayak attempt).  I was one of the first kayakers (or canoe-ist as I was) to make it back to the ramp at Cleveland (Wellington Point), Brisbane.  The wooden kayaks were picked up and carried by their owners by themselves; one of the fibreglass kayakers said ‘do you need a hand’ and the other wooden kayaker said ‘no, these are real boats’.  Fibreglass sea kayaks, in those days, were heavy craft and needed two people to carry them and lift them on a car-roof.  As a final note, on this trip it was commented that my kayak bobbed like a cork on the swells, the other fibreglass kayaks did not seem to be as buoyant as mine; I do not know if this is a good thing but I do not use a spray-skirt on my boat as I find the water rarely comes over the deck, even when loaded.  End Blog 7. 

Another interesting story to note was a nice day trip I had on the Moreton Bay, by myself.  I took my fishing rod with me, which was short enough to fit inside the kayak.  I launched from Wellington point (Cleveland) instead of our normal area of Wynnum-manly.  I paddled around the near-by islands with no particular plan – when I saw a fish jump about twenty metres off the beach of an island.  I decided to fish off this beach of this island.  While fishing I noticed a sign erected in the shallows of the rocky area nearby facing outward.  I was in luck and soon caught a nice sized fish (Snapper).  Having enough for dinner, and no means to keep any other fish cold, I decided to head for home and have a fish dinner.  Curious about what the sign said I paddled over to it, it said, “Fish Reserve Absolutely No Fishing Allowed”, and a monetary penalty for those caught.  Dear reader, do not think to dob me in – this happened over ten years ago and the statutory limitations have long past!

{From previous blog, we set off from Manly to Mud Island -- a memorable trip due to the bad weather.}

Richard met another kayaker, a bit younger than me, perhaps in his twenties, and I think I remember his surname was West, I have forgotten his first name.   He also had a wood kayak, a Cape Charles like Richards, which is how they got talking; wooden kayaks were uncommon in Brisbane City. West had paddled his Cape Charles, with a companion kayaker (also in a wooden Cape Charles), up the Queensland coast from Brisbane to Cairns (about 2000 kilometres) for charity.  In any case, the three of us, Richard, West, and I,  decided one day to make from the Marina at Wynnum Manly to Mud Island, a few nautical miles (half way to Moreton Island) away on a really windy day with short one-metre swell.  On the way out, we saw a large turtle almost on the surface distracted while eating a jelly-fish (Moreton Bay is known for large population of Jelly fish); we got very close to it and watched it for a few seconds.  The turtle soon became aware of us and darted away in a jolt.  It took us about two and a half hours to get to Mud Island.  I thought my kayak performed really well going into the wind and short chop on the way out.  Richard did not want to land on Mud Island because the tide was low and he thought he would scratch his clear-finished boat on the rocks.  A word of advice: paint your hull so that you are not afraid to scratch it otherwise you will miss-out on many adventures.  We ate our lunch sitting in the kayaks off the shore.  The trip home from Mud Island only took under two hours compared to the two and a half hours it took to get there because of a following wind and sea.  My kayak, I found, did not handle well with a following sea; it had no rudder or skeg.  The others were well ahead of me on the way home.  I noticed Richard, in his Cape Charles, had to paddle-brace a few times (he did a low-brace).  With his rudder, he kept a fairly straight course but he was later to say the rudder did not work efficiently because it was out of the water so often.  West, in his Cape Charles, was not able to keep a straight course, the same as me, but it was a bit straighter than mine; his kayak had a skeg fitted which may have helped.  I needed to learn to do a corrective stroke when the swell was in the middle of my kayak and the ends were out of the water; I spent most of the time slightly off course on the way home.  We had a quick chat about the paddle in the car-park next to the boat ramp afterward and Richard went home to get his wind-surfer.