The Great Trip South — Paddle from Cronulla to Currarong
From 18. to 20. November 2003 Claudia did her first big paddling trip on the open cean: 130 kilometres from Cronulla (a suburb south of Sydney) to Currarong near Jervis Bay. The report below was written for the magazine of our sea kayak club. See also our Photo Gallery The Great Trip South and our Monthly Report November 2003.
Coffee Cruiser or Bruiser? - Sydney to the Rock'n'Roll in Currarong 2003
Director: Claudia "Nemo" Schremmer
Starring: Kevin "Bruce" Brennan, Andrew "Talkin' Donkey" Watkinson, Harry "No Sail" Havu, Claudia "Nemo" Schremmer
Cameo roles: Rob Mercer and Vince Browning
We met in Gunnamatta Bay too bloody early, 6:30 am, on Tuesday, November 18 2003. The weather forecast was not too promising: The sky was overcast and it was raining. It was deceptively still, but southerly winds were promised for later that day. Rain for most of the following days, winds 15-20 knots southerly, turning northerly on Wednesday and Thursday, thunder storms building up on Thusday, and a southerly change on Friday were our prospects. We prepared regardless and hit the water at 8:00 am. Our gang consisted of Andrew and Harry in their Mirage 580s and Kevin and I in his Mirage 730.
Kevin had spent all Sunday reinforcing his skull, sorry - hull, cutting ropes and putting all the fittings for his sail onto the 730 (the sail last featured on his 580), Andrew had his sail, but not Harry - although my sincerest feeling is that Harry will have a sail by the time this article will be printed...
The trip from Gunnamatta Bay in Cronulla to the Rock'n'Roll venue in Currarong is 130 km, and we allowed 4 days, having the plan to arrive on Friday afternoon.
We had barely left Point Hacking for the open water when a 20 knot southerly announced its arrival. Sitting comfy in his back seat, Kevin remained dry and cosy, but my position in the front meant that I basically ducked, weaved and dived through the wild seas with waves crashing over. Kevin, suitably protected and dry managed to remain calm and collected, quite an achievement really - don't you think? Anyway, Kevin proceeded to use my body as a battering ram and headed south.
At some stages, we slowed down considerably. Andrew - reknown racer on the Lane Cove Time Trials and winner of this year's Rock'n'Roll racing competition - seems to have a mental problem with headwinds. His cadence went down. On occassions he barely made headway. Considering the sheer cliffs in the Royal National Park and the rough conditions of the sea, we started to realise that there was no way to make it to our planned destination Coledale and even if we could make the distance there would be no landing through the surf. The question was: Who would raise the topic first? Comfy Kevin did: We would pull out in Wattamola for morning tea and re-consider our options. Wattamola Beach is protected by two reefs. Once you've made it past them without being trashed, landing is easy. It took us a long while, watching the rhythms of the wave sets and finally taking the courage to go for it. At a certain stage, a rouge wave introduced itself to Andrew, and but for some rather enthusiastic backpaddling he might have explored the reef to a somewhat unsatisfactory end. We all made it ashore safely, and were happy to have finished our first day at 10:00 am after only 13 km, and to enjoy the rest of the day. Wattamola is a nice place: flush toilets, water, sea, and a lagoon: Holiday!!
Complete even with it's own Red Light district... Jack, we shall call him, threw on such a show with his lady! Jack was a most rotund fellow, but we presume Jack was a man because Jill was clearly a woman, or two... Actually they had enough flesh between them to cover everyone who attended Rock'n'Roll 2003. Eventually, like after 3 hours of sticky date pudding like attention, the sky cleared up, and they were finished. So were we.
Wednesday morning started calm and sunny, forecast 20 knots northerly. After 90 minutes on the water, the wind came up as predicted. And this is when the coffee cruise started. We had the most perfect conditions one could possibly dream of. Sunshine and tailwind. Now the sails paid off. The Mirage 730 itself is a weapon on the water, combine it with a sail (not just with any sail, but with the perfect Kevin-Brennan-Design. Kevin spent many years of his life on sail boats and knows everything about sail shape and power transmission) and the result was that I was barely allowed to paddle, as we constantly had to wait for Harry "No Sail". Half way down the coastline, approaching Wollongong, we realised this weather would allow us to make good for the territory lost on the first day. So we didn't even bother to go ashore for lunch, but spent 8 hours straight on the water, finally pulling out in Shelly Beach after 55 km. Harry - the only one who can actually claim to having paddled the whole distance - was well pleased to be on terra firma again.
In any case, we learned the hard way what has been posted on the Club's Web site so many times already: That it is important to watch your food and drink intake. Both Harry and Kevin didn't drink enough - as proven by the merest dribble of output during 8 hours on the water. Is no wonder that Kevin never "gets it" when you take the pis outa him - he has none! Wednesday night, Rob and Vince managed to catch us, having wussed out on the first day to exclusiveley paddle in perfect conditions. Vince gave a determined demonstration of a washed-out surf landing when it seemed so much easier to make a smooth landing. Rob did. Then they set up their tents next to ours, waited until the other neighbours (2 French babes) left to go to town - and nicked their chairs! Andrew thought that was a poor score - 2 babes and all 5 burly guys could score were 2 plastic seats - good grief, might as well get married and buy a couch!
Thursday's weather was as perfect as the day before, for which we properly thanked Kevin for his benevolance. However Friday's forecast was still for a southerly front coming through by midday. As I have often observed on the Australian East Coast, the forecast is unreliable, but one thing seems to be a rule of the thumb: If the forecast change really comes through, it will be earlier than predicted rather than later. So 65 km from our destination, we made the decision to cover the whole distance in one day to be on the safe side on Friday. At some stages during Thursday, the wind dropped, anxiously observed by us to see whether that would indicate a southerly change even earlier. It turned out to be alright, after each calm period, the wind came up again, always from the same northerly direction, blowing us down the coast. The real adventure started at Black Head off Geroa: The compass course took us away from the coastline, steering into open waters. The air was full of haze, visibility was poor, for about 3.5 hours we couldn't see any land. Andrew had a GPS no compass aboard, Harry had a little toy attached to his PFD. Kevin couldn't see our compass from his rear seat, and was too pleased with his fast boat speed to care, so I became the navigator of the gang.
Group speed was inhomogeneous: "No Sail" had the tendancy to stay behind, "Talkin' Donkey" took whatever direction he felt like. We were about 6 km from shore when a trawler crossed our way. Judging from the number of gulls following the boat, he must have had a giant net out in the water -- I don't want to know what other teeth follow a fish trawler through the water, so we sped up to cross before the boat. And Harry fell back. Come on, Harry, pull in, you don't really want to go behind that boat?!? He made it. But the trawler seemed to follow us. Later, when we were in Currarong, we heard that the fisherman was actually in the VHF radio with the manager of the local fish'n'chips bar, amused by the three kayaks appearing from nowhere and apparently going to nowhere, having a lot of fun with us. The wind direction and the direction of the waves changes slightly, and all the four of us had the subjective feeling that we had changed our course. It was strange to see that the compass course was still imeccable whilst your intention tries to talk you into something different. Anyway, we made it straight for Currarong. As proven by the GPS which we had occasionally switched on for control purposes, our line across the bay was almost straight, not bad navigation :-)
At night, lying in our tents, we heard this strange noise in the sky. It was completely calm, but something was building up high up in the sky. At 10:13 pm precisely, it hit us: The southerly buster. In times, the tents were almost flattened. Out on the water, that would have been a disaster (for the sailors anyway)! The change came through 14 hours earlier than forecast. Our decision to make the whole remaining distance in one day was a wise one.
Most of the readers will know the rest of the story: A very wet Rock'n'Roll 2003. The wettest one ever I was told (It was my first one). In fact so wet it made sitting in a tent a good thing. That couldn't get our spirits down, nevertheless. We had a great week-end following our two-day coffee and biscuits cruise from Cronulla to Currarong.
Appendix to the "Coffee Cruiser or Bruiser?" report
by Claudia Schremmer
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Claudia receives the first ever Female Bruiser Award of the NSW Seakayak Club
What shall I say? I am lost for words... For my great trip south from Cronulla to Currarong in 2 days, I was not only emphatically not awarded "The Inaugural Trevor Gardner Certificate Appreciation Award Incorporating Coffee Cruiser of the Year" - but I was indeed honoured with the Club's First Female Bruiser Award. And yes, it is indeed a sock! Not a Gore-Tex sock as so many South Coast Bruises proudly own - there seem to be "male" and "female" socks. Mine has other (better?) features: It is skin-coloured and of a special shape... I haven't yet decided whether I'll frame it and put into my living room yes or no... Thanks anyway to the gracious producer of my award. I feel very honoured!