Fortescue Bay paddle

The company with which I did my Bathurst Harbour kayaking trip last year also offers a number of day trip tours and for a while I’ve been promising my approaching-xx-agenarian dad (and myself) a day out on the Tasman Peninsula. I’d been watching the weather forecast this week, and hoping that I could find a window of opportunity to escape on a day that was both good weather and one on which the tours were running.

Having picked today, the weather started off disappointingly dull, but then cleared to be one of those splendid late summer days with almost cloudless crystal blue skies, not too hot, and with a bit of a breeze. After an initial briefing about paddling and emergency exiting we launched from Fortescue Bay.

We made our way around the southern side of the bay, with the breeze behind us and an incoming benign swell. The dolerite columns that characterize the coast down here grew taller, and revealed themselves to be the home of some very young Australian fur seals.

 

The highlight of this section — the iconic Candlestick rock stack — came into view as we reached the end of Cape Hauy.

 

After a snack we headed northward across the top of the bay.

Our destination was Bivouac Bay, where I camped nearly four years ago on a Scout hike. Here we beached the kayaks and had lunch beside the creek outlet.

  (Photo above by Roaring 40s Kayaking)

After refuelling — and, as with the Bathurst Harbour trip, the food was very good — we continued westward back to the main beach.

(Photo above by Roaring 40s Kayaking)

Our final stop en route was Canoe Bay, where we saw the wreck of an old bridge-building ship, its remaining superstructure decorated with cormorants.

Coming ashore was a bit exciting as the double kayaks have a tendency to yaw if they’re caught in a wave. Fortunately, however, everyone managed to beach without anything untoward happening and we posed for the obligatory group photo before heading home (there were tourists from Japan, the UK, and France-and-the-UK-via-Singapore, plus Dad and I as the pair of locals).

(Photo above by Roaring 40s Kayaking)