So what to do? The forecast looked unfishable, possibly surfable, certainly paddleable (which isn’t a real word) so I figured on taking it easy and launching at the end of the road, a quick visual determining which yak to use. Si was up for something, anything and we agreed that he’d be around at mine for seven. By this time I’d had a coffee and a quick breakfast wandered down the end of the road to check things out. The waves had gone so the RRRapido was staying in the garden…Si was going to christen his Scupper Pro so should I unload mine? I decided not to in the end and instead took my Necky Chatham 17 off the roofbars for the first time in ages and clambered into my drysuit. It’s a wonderful kayak to paddle but my priority is fishing or surfing, not going anywhere really so the poor girl is underused.
I was in and out of the house looking for spraydecks and pumps, paddle keys and all manner of pointless bits and pieces but finally we were ready and with Si’s yak on a trolley and my Necky on my shoulder we set off.
The sun was already nice and warm and the sky was blue. It was a beautiful morning and I was glad to be out but what to do? We launched easily enough and paddled out past the groyne. The swell was a bit better out here and we initially aimed for the channel markers a couple of miles out but with the tide how it was and the sun in our eyes I decided I was bored with that so we decided to turn and run down the coast to Pakefield. The trouble was we had no clear goal, nothing to aim for. It wasn’t like we had a destination or a task or anything like that. No, we were out strolling at random.
I started to get bored quite quickly. It was a beautiful morning as I say but I just wasn’t really all that excited. I could have fished, the forecast was wrong. We headed down for a mile or so and then I decided to head right in close and play amongst the waves. Not that they were all that exciting either. Sod it, we headed back again, sticking close in. It was okay but only one bit of excitement occurred when a slightly larger one caught Si beam on, span him and sent him surfing into the beach. It looked great but I didn’t watch until the end, an end which saw him rolled out.
We reached the launch point and I started trying to surf the Chatham…some swells were just about large enough to pick up and get some reasonable runs on and this was all good practice for me but nothing really sick as the boardies would say…but we carried on for a while before being joined by a lifeguard in one of their skis. He caught some short runs closer in and while I waited, and missed, a few of the slightly better ones we decided to head back in shortly. I waited and then finally caught a reasonable wave in, riding to within fifty yards of the beach before cutting back over the wave and over-bracing on the seaward side for the following one. So I walked a flooded kayak in and we headed for home! A waste of a possibility but fun all the same. So we posed for some pics to at least get something out of the sunshine.
A couple of hours later, cycling back from town with my youngest daughter, I spotted something half a mile out. At first I thought it was a paddler (I was looking out for John Willacy on his way around the UK and likely to pass sometime during the day). But no blade movements. It didn’t look fats enough for anything else so perhaps it was an inflatable? Then I saw someone in the water behind it, going ion the same direction. I figured it might be someone accompanying a swimmer in training but no, the distance kept increasing. Then, as the swimmer turned for shore I made my mind up that it was a jetski. The swimmer was doing okay under his own power having made the right decision to stop chasing the ski and come in (wind and tide were taking it further from him) but it was getting closer to the harbour mouth which could have been a hazard. So, first number on the phone is dialled and I’m through to Yarmouth Coastguard…I call it in and then spot a pilot boat entering harbour. I suggest that might be able to go pick up the ski and it entered port, turned and came back out again before lashing rope to the infernal machine and towing it in. Quite funny turning round and seeing the Endeavour, 74m and 3000 tons, stopped outside the harbour mouth waiting for the pilot boat to come back…
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