It’s all well and good getting up to fish for a few hours on a weekend morning but there’s not a lot of things better than a good paddle on a Friday evening with a couple of mates to clear the head from another week at work. There are some, of course, including naughtiness with girlies, and a bit of paddling improves fitness and physique thus giving more chance of indulging in this on a regular basis. It also means you have a regular source of salt stored in your eyebrows in case the chippy runs out. This was the reasoning behind the start of the weekend’s yakking up here. With the fishing off Hopton being fairly close in the only real exercise is in dragging the yak back up the slope so it was arranged for Steve111 and Hungryfisherman to join me at 8pm for a paddle and some capsizing practice off Lowestoft before going for a pint.
They arrived and although there were reservations (and questioning of sanity) these were soon overcome and we wandered down to the beach to launch. The sea was pretty flat and the current was not looking to be strong so we set off south to Pakefield, a popular shore mark, about a mile and a half south of the launch point. The swell was long but low but being practically blind to what it was doing meant a few surprise ones coming in beam on that kept us on our toes.
Having called in to the Coastguard before leaving we paddled off into the night and after a while decided that it was such a nice evening with absolutely no boat traffic and shallow water on our route that the nav lights didn’t need to be switched on all the time and the difference was pronounced – it was easier to see the swell, visibility was increased and the night seemed more peaceful somehow. Drifting off the CEFAS building I discovered that the flint of my lighter was worn out and thus on arrival off Pakefield itself (devoid of lamps from beach anglers, a bad sign) we decided to switch the lights on and head offshore a bit to cadge a light off what appeared to be an inshore fishing boat. As it happened it was a yacht and we decided not to bother when we were about 2/3rds of the way there. I’m glad that we did because as we turned north we were treated to the biggest and most impressive meteorite I have ever seen. It wasn’t huge, but it seemed fairly close and was large enough that the flash we saw streak across the sky seemed to me to have a shape at the front of it. Stunning. Steve saw another a bit later that I missed that was even bigger too.
Now, I’d decided earlier that it would be a good idea for us to practice capsize drills and re-entries, in the dark and cold water and although not super keen on the idea it was agreed that we’d do it. No longer concerned about taking a dunking we decided to have a play first and started trying to catch some waves and surf them in…what a grin!
We played for ten minutes just south of the pier with our navlights inside Steve’s rod pod, all getting a ride or two. It was a lot easier to wait in position and have someone tell you to paddle rather than try and spot the slightly bigger waves yourself but an eye had to be kept out for collisions too! We then paddled through the pier supports onto the north side and started playing there – it drops to around three feet deep here, with a bank about a third of that halfway between where we’d catch them and the shore, interesting paddling ;D The waves seemed slightly better here with some tripping over themselves into a bit of foam. I spotted one coming in bigger than the rest (must have been all of two feet!) and grabbed it. I rode it in quite nicely for a while and then watched as my nose dipped – I’d been waiting for it – and I was tipped ungraciously off the side of the yak, disappearing up to my shins in the cold water. I heard laughter from the other two that became one laughing twice as loud as my hilarious demise took the concentration from Hungryfisherman and a sneak eighteen-incher put him in the water ;D they do say that revenge is best served cold…
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