ron-t kayaking blog
30 January 2014 ............ The Swellies
We are heading up to a weekend of very big tides - on both Saturday and Sunday, Holyhead will have a 6.3 metre tide, with low tides of 0.2 metres - that is a tidal range of 6.1 metres - that`s big !
In fact I think that a tide height of 6.3 metres is the theoretical maximum height that Holyhead will ever get - however a low pressure area might well increase the tide height above this.
Two days before this peak, and the high tide was 5.8 metres, low tide was 0.5 metres - so a tidal range of 5.3 metres - more than big enough for the Swellies wave.
Even better - very unusually for January - this was going to be during the last hour of daylight.
So it was off to the Swellies.
The wave started pretty much on cue, and I had a good run for maybe fifteen minutes or so.
However it then started changing quite quickly, and within the next 10 or 15 minutes, it changed into quite a gnarly hole, with a foam pile almost to the bottom of the wave.
It might have been good for a playboat, but it was far too short for my boat, which is best in longer greener waves.
The other thing that happened is that the usual green portion of the wave to the river right of the hole pretty much flattened out - so all in all, my surfing came to an end.
It was also noticeable that the second wave was unusually tame, as was the whole of the rest of the rapid - it is normally quite a chunky and challenging bit of water, and you sit on the wave hoping you are never going to get washed into it.
Here is what the wave was like by now - the light was fading, so the exposure time was quite long, so the moving water isn`t just as crisp as it could be.
A lazy paddle back under the bridge to the slipway - looking up at the bridge - complete with a splodge on the lens !
And finally, I rather liked the silhouette of this tree against the evening sky.
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