Midlifekayak

The story of the big one. This was the crossing that made us apprehensive when we were planning the expedition. Sure there are plenty of challenging tidal conditions and crossings around Britain and Ireland. We know there will be days when we are seriously challenged by conditions that weren’t forecast, but the George’s Channel would be the longest and most committed crossing the pair of us had ever undertaken.

We made the most of our cafe days in St David’s to study the weather reports and make plans for our Irish Sea Crossing. Thursday (today) was looking “ok” for the crossing but not ideal, but if we didn’t attempt it then we couldn’t see another window opening up for us over the next week.

As the weather models updated through the day on Wednesday, not all of them agreed with each other but there was enough consistency to reassure ourselves we could cope, even if we got the worse end of the forecast.

Decision made, we hurried back into St David’s to get provisions for the crossing. Geoff made enough cheese and tomato sandwiches to last us about two weeks let alone the Irish Sea crossing, and to that we added: dates, carbohydrate gels, nuts, flapjacks and some chocolate bars. We would also carry around 6 litres of water each.

We had prepared a detailed plan taking into account the winds and tidal streams. We calculated our vectors and headings. We also had waypoints plugged into our GPS handhelds.

I called Milford Haven Coastguard to let them know of our plans. “Blimey” was the response from the very friendly chap on duty. ‘Routine’ passage info shared, he wished us the best for our trip.

It was going to be an early start so we packed as much as we could the night before. Alarms set for 3am, neither of us really slept. We packed the tents away and carried our kit down to the boats that we had left by beach. We shovelled breakfast down, carried the boats down to the water and packed the last of our gear. We launched through the surf at 4.40am.

It was slack water and so no danger of us getting pushed by the strong tide into the Bitches that we had had so much fun in a few days earlier. It was a chilly start to the morning but after hauling the kayaks down the beach we were already feeling too warm with our cags on. We agreed we would take them off at our first break.

There was a red glow on the horizon over our right shoulder, and soon we could see the sun starting to rise.

The first Shearwaters and Puffins started to appear from their burrows soon after as they started their morning fishing trips. A solitary porpoise broached the surface in front of us, too intent on feeding than to notice us.

We were on a heading of roughly 295 degrees, although it is impossible to steer accurately on a kayak so our course would be anything from 280 to 310. Our GPS would indicate our course over ground and whether we were shaping the most efficient route.

And so we settled into a pattern of paddling 5 miles, break for 5 minutes for a pee, bite to eat and drink, and paddle on. That’s 9 stops. We counted them down.

Long paddles are all a head game. Yes the body gets sore and uncomfortable but the biggest challenge is how you feel about it all. So we look for any positive on the way, like moving from being in the 40s to go, to being in the 30s to go. Or we’d note that we were 20% there already.

Our speed changed with the changes in stream and wind throughout the day. The best we got was early 5s (5.1 to 5.3 mph) to low 3s. Doesn’t sound like much difference but it’s the difference to your breaks coming every hour or every hour and a half.

The middle 10 and the last 5 miles were the hardest.

Backsides and backs ached and tendons in our wrists and arms were sore.

So we did anything to distract ourselves. We told stories, we sang songs (badly), and slowly the miles ticked away.

But the best distractions were provided by some amazing encounters with wildlife. We saw several pods of Dolphins, some of which were incredibly playful and came in very close to check us out. They broached and looked at us, dived just under our boats and circled us for what seemed like ages.

Shearwaters and Gannets in particular seemed to come in close to see what we were doing.

We had the odd seal encounter and wonderful sightings of Puffins, Guillemots, Razor Bills, Fulmers and Turns.

It’s such a privilege to be in this environment, completely out of sight of land, and be surrounded by such beauty (and I don’t mean Geoff!).

We were paddling on a compass bearing, hoping that we might see land about 10 miles out. But nothing. Wexford was shrouded in mist.

Then after paddling for 12 hours we got our first sign we were definitely on course. We saw the lighthouse on Tuskar Rock appear through the mist. We had planned to be south of Tuskar Rock and the strong tidal streams that run north of it. Sigh of relief.

Shortly after we heard the throbbing engines of a Stenna Link Ferry. We could just make out the shape of the ferry in the poor visibility. It wasn’t clear which way it was headed. We assumed it was aiming for Rosslare which was north of us. We carried on paddling but kept an eye on it.

About 20 mins later it became apparent the ferry had actually just left Rosslare. We obviously couldn’t see that as it was shrouded in mist. Question now was what was its destination. If Fishguard, we knew we could carry on paddling safely, but if Cherbourg, then we had a problem.

Guess what, it was the latter, and the ferry was heading straight for us. We did the sensible thing and waved our paddles in an attempt to remind the Captain ‘paddle over power’. Just kidding, we actually did the only thing you can do in these situations and that was to about turn and start paddling in the opposite direction. So only 4 miles from our destination, we found ourselves paddling back in the direction of Wales. We halted when we could see we had give the ferry enough room and we watched the crew on the bridge in their pressed white shirts stare at us out of the window. Heaven knows what they were thinking.

The last 4 miles seemed to take an eternity but we knew we had done it. We landed at Carne Beach (what a coincidence!) and we have to confess it took us a little while to climb out of our boats.

Then we were quickly reminded of why we love paddling in Ireland so much – the friendliness of strangers. As we made camp we spent a good couple of hours chatting to the local fisherman and hearing their stories.

Job done.