Islands in the sun

A few days after I arrived back from New Zealand I decided to buy a kayak, since I live not far from a bay on the river.

The next day I managed to run it into my garage door.

Dummkopf.

This was due to not waiting for the automatic roller to reach the fully open state (and this, in turn, was due to the fact that a lot of my life’s routines have changed — or, more accurately, the old ones have ended and I haven’t yet developed new ones — and so there are too many things to think about and I get befuddled easily). Fortunately the kayak and car were fine, whereas the garage door needed some treatment and is now a little the worse for wear (let’s just say it bears a few small scars, but at least it does still work!).

Anyway, after a couple of little outings over the next few days in nearby bays I decided the kayak needed a longer trip.

RebornCyclist, one of the cachers on the trip to the Dragon’s Lair, had raised the idea of doing some of the southern Tasmanian caches that are only accessible by kayak or other water craft. We agreed that Pittwater (east of Hobart) would be an ideal location and after adjusting the choice of date to get better weather we met up at Midway Point to embark on our ocean expedition.

Okay, it was all of 7kms!

And ocean rather overstates it (especially since there are vast sections of the bay that are less than full paddle height deep).

What can’t be exaggerated was how glorious the weather was and how much enjoyment I got from paddling out to visit a couple of the islands. I’m a long-time fan of islands, and one of the islands on this day’s trip even had a landing place very much like the secret harbour in Swallows and Amazons (about 20 years ago I was lucky enough to be able to kayak to the real secret harbour in the Lake District upon which Arthur Ransome had based his fictionalised one, the harbour being on one of the islands on Coniston Water while the rest of Wild Cat Island comes from an island which is on Lake Windermere).

Another of the islands on today’s trip was a haven for a whole variety of seabirds, and they wheeled overhead noisily as RebornCyclist and I approached and then searched for the cache that was hidden not far from where we had beached (seen in the third photo).

As we headed back to the mainland we passed a ridge-line of cormorants at the rocky end of the island, and then, just as we were about to come ashore back at Midway Point, we saw a large skate/ray in the shallows of our landing place.

It was a great morning — one of those magical days — and I was very happy with the kayak’s performance, too.

And, what’s more, we scored a couple of smileys for our efforts! 🙂