It was a weekend at the end of October for which Natalie chose to do a trip to Simonds Yat with some friends from our club. I wasn’t very keen to do open boating again so soon, so I decided to rather stay in London and spend some time working on club boats. Few days before Natalie was due to leave I had a call from Alastair asking if I wanted to come along for some sea kayak surfing in Bristol Channel. Later it became clear that he actually meant North Devon and I couldn’t say no. Then Vincent and some other of Alastair’s friends were to be there, and I knew that if anything would be possible, one thing was for sure; there will be lots of fun.
Quite unexpectedly I happened to be the one who made our journey to Croyde less than ordinary. Not being familiar with Alastair’s car I was happily driving not checking the fuel indicator till the warning light came on. What was left in the tank would let us go for another 20 miles only, instead of 70 as I am used to. To make the story short, there wasn’t an open petrol station in Friday midnight, and we had to go back to M5. The last five miles the car must have gone on pure adrenaline pouring from our ears, as the car computer clearly stated “RANGE 0 MILES”. We made it in the end.
We set up in a campsite at half past two at night, to be kicked out by a security guard at 7am. Apparently we pitched our tents on a wrong field. And more was coming.
Let’s get back to the paddling. We had great conditions for the whole weekend. While I was enjoying surfing and Alastair swimming, Vincent decided it was time for some excitement, and tried to kill his friend James. Fortunately James used to fight for his live, didn’t hesitate and when he found himself upside down in the surf with the spraydeck loop tucked under, he managed to wriggle himself free sacrificing only few fingernails. Vincent called him The Hamster for rest of the weekend.
In the meantime Natalie had great time ferry gliding from eddy to eddy at Simonds Yat rapids. And we decided to produce a short paddling clip again.
On top of all this, I have a proof that it is possible to get a sea kayak flying while surfing.
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