I’m set up better than ever now. I have the best fishing and surfing kayaks Ocean Kayak have ever produced in the Scupper Pro and RRRapido, all set up how I want them and the best sea kayak that Necky have done in a composite Chatham 17. I’ve got the perfect paddles for my needs in my trusty Lendals, I’ve got a new camera, I’ve got my action cam, great gear in the Typhoon PS220 drysuit and O’Neill Psycho 2 Wetsuit, My trusty Humminbird 787, Navionics charts and Shimano TR200G and Charter Special reels are still finding me the fish and catching them. I’m newly slim, fit and focused, have made some excellent new contacts and got some great new info and my freezer is full with a choice of fish…so I’d better hurry up and finish sealing this floor so I can go and get my bicycle.
Oh yeah, it’s New Year’s Day and my bike is a mile and a bit down the coast. My wife’s gone there with the girls in the car to do some other stuff while I finish up. Red rag? Damned right! Excuses excuses…I’m going for a paddle.
I brush on the last bit of wax, run upstairs and haul myself into my wetsuit. I don’t need dry gear today; it’s 1st January and perfectly suitable for wetsuit wearing. Of course it’s a decent wetsuit, a 5/3 steamer not my summer one. My wetsuit boots, bought in 1997, fit me again so they’re on my feet. Paddle, PFD, VHF, pump and deck and I’m away. Oh yeah, and some straps and a bike pump.
I lift the Chatham from the roof racking and walk down to the beach. A hideous troll of a Suffolk scumbag leers and licks her lips at the sight of me clad in neoprene. I don’t know how I do it but at least it’s an improvement on the John Inman type who was letching at me when I came back from riding my RRRapido the other week. No doubt I’ll have a seal try and shag me next.
I place the Chatham on the sand and stash things away. It’s half in the water when the waves roll up the beach and with the deck around my waits I sit in, pull it over the coaming and try to lift myself to the deeper water; I don’t need a lot, like my wife I can make do with a couple of inches. It looks quite uneven out there, not a horizontal line of blue but a corrugation of shit-brown. At least I can’t see what lies beneath…
…I push hard and power out through the first wave, the second; this was bigger and as I plough on through the breaking crest the camera goes flying into the drink, the suction cup failing on me. That’s what leashes are for. I get through and scoop it up on the paddle. Now, do I leave it out of reach, loose, or paddle back in and reposition it, maybe take a swim and charge back out repeating the exercise? Nah, not yet. I paddle south.
I get a couple of hundred yards when I see a couple of playboats surfing in the waves over the sandbar at the pier. They’ll do. Of course they ride into the beach as I approach but I call one out and he refits the camera for me – nice one!
Now to try a quick surf before that evil glint leads me through the legs of the pier, twitching.
Through in one piece and out the other side it’s time to put the paddle down, reach inside my deck and have a rummage between my legs. It’s not that the crone has got me hot or anything, no, I have my new Barbarian Beardhead down there! Out it comes and on it goes. NOW I AM READY TO ROCK!
I don’t know quite why but these Beardheads invest me with special powers; I go into Beserker mode and life amuses me no end suddenly. RAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Right, enough of your namby-pamby-let’s stay safely upright shenanigans, this is what we’ve waited for, this is it boys this is war! I hammer along close in to catch every bit of broken water I can and then I see a breaker rearing up; it grabs me, spins me on my paddle from parallel to inward-bound and I’m shooting in to the beach, cackling like a fool. I hop out, turn it, hop in again and power back out through the waves, the camera staying put this time.
I take some good waves side-on and stay upright and then I see a set of three coming; I put my shoulders into it and increase speed to rely on the inherent increase in stability…Bang! Up and through… Crash! I rid over the top of the second…Wallop! Now what? I dunno. I knew I was a gonna though, it was at head height and breaking and I wasn’t even into it yet. Before I knew it I was spinning and upside down; I’m holding here half up, my head and shoulders out of the water but I can’t flick her over; I’m under the water. I have the paddle in one hand, my Beardhead is staying on and I’m groping for the loop on the front of the deck. It’s not really coming off that easily so I just do something else and it pops off; I’m out. Don’t ask me what because I don’t know, I can’t recall. Kind of a lot of stimuli at that moment in time.
I pop up and take a look inside my flooded cockpit. Okay, try and re-enter. I can’t roll yet. I try going across, sit on top style. I go straight over the other side. I go up with less power and more balance but the deck slides down and I’m stuck with my legs together. I hop back into the water. I pull the deck up and try again – it pulls back down. Ah bollocks, this ain’t gonna work. I should have gone from the rear and crawled up after all; too late now so I swim it in.
She weighs a lot when I have to roll her over to drain the water out. Still, never mind. I get the pump out and empty the dregs. Back I go, into the cockpit and while pulling the deck on I get picked up and turned backwards. This will never do but I’m damned if I’m taking eh deck off again. I lift myself with my hands and between my own efforts and receding waves I eventually turn enough to get moving and slide out into the sea again.
Back into the waves. I’m having a whale of a time. It’s good to be alive. Actually no, it’s great. Nah, that doesn’t cut it. It’s fucking fantastic! I’m grinning, laughing, bursting into terrible songs from the eighties, nineties…and roaring on my way to Valhalla. I wring out my beard and go around the bend.
The salt water sends me mad. I start doing impressions of local paddling buddies (6 minutes 20 onwards on the video). Probably ex-buddies when they watch it. Then I decide to become safe and normal again, whip the Beardhead off and become myself once more. Hmm. No change. I charge through the water, hang slack off the landing beach waiting for a wave that doesn’t come and go in anyway. I hop out and, with the yak flicked onto my shoulder I walk up the steps to the top of the cliff, across the green, down the road and into my friend’s driveway; my wife is still there.
The ride back on my bike is entertaining in its own right. I’m still wet. As I race down past the Claremont Pier I see a bloke in a kilt pushing a baby in a pushchair. Wow! Think I, that’s weird, very random, and utterly bizarre. Then it hits me – he’s just seen a bald bloke on a bike wearing a dripping wetsuit and a lifejacket. Yeah, it’s a Happy New year alright!
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