ron-t kayaking blog
01 March 2014 ............ The Swellies
The current Springs are producing some very big tidal ranges, and a day or two before the biggest tides there was more than enough of a tidal range for the Swellies wave, with an hour or so of daylight left.
In fact the low tide was 0.2 metres, and the next high tide was 5.8 metres, both at Holyhead - so the tidal range was 5.6 metres.
That`s kind of big for my boat, as the wave can get quite gnarly, but it was worth going to see what would happen.
The other reason I wanted to get out was because my paddle research has gone off on a bit of a tangent - I still haven`t had the chance to try out a Greenland paddle, but I now have a pair of Kinetic 600 N12 blades from Celtic Paddles, which I have put on my own shaft.
My older paddles were supposed to be 705 cm² in area, so these new blades should be 105 cm² smaller - however I am not convinced that the old ones are actually 705 cm².
As well as the different blades, I have now shortened my paddles - I have gone from 192 cms to 185 cms, to see if this helps with my wrist problems, with a zero degree feather as before.
With the very low low tide level, the Swellies looked quite different to what I am used to - I don`t think I have ever seen the big mass of rocks around the Cardinal Marker before.
The wave started a bit early, so I missed the start of the wave, and it was growing rapidly into a hole.
I tried a few times to catch the green wave off to the river right of the hole, but the wave was too flat for the speed of the water, and I just couldn`t catch it.
So no surfing.
However not to waste the trip, I fought my way up the mainland side of the Swellies against the current, to see what I could find.
What I found was magic - opposite the house on the island there was the most fantastic big volume, big and bouyancy, grade 2 river rapid - this wasn`t a tide race - this was a river rapid.
So I went back to my river paddling days and had some great fun on it, and around the islands.
As usual, photographs just don`t capture rough water, but this is looking across the rapid towards the house on the island high above the water level.
I couldn`t get up to the top of the rapid, there was no way up, and I tried but couldn`t catch a bit of a wave quite near the top of the rapid, so crossed over, and tried again to get up to the top of the rapid, but I still couldn`t do it.
This is a bit of a drop near the top of the rapid where the water was coming over the rocks, the current then flowed diagonally across, and joined the main flow coming down from Brittania Bridge.
I could cross this current okay, but still couldn`t get up to the head of the main rapid.
After running down the rapid a few times, I headed off around the bottom of the house island, and tried to get up the far side.
It was quite challenging, had lots of fun and eventually with a lot of effort managed to get up, headed round the top of the house island through a tide race, then across to the rocks, down the drop, and down into the main rapid again.
By this time it was beginning to get dark, so I headed back down, through the Swellies wave rapid - which had got a bit more lively by now - and then back to the ramp.
The last delight of the evening was the now exposed sewage pipe just up from the ramp that was discharging I don`t want to know what into the sea - but it stank !
So I didn`t do any rolling or whatever.
But what a great evening - I was so glad that the Swellies wave was no good for me, and my Celtic blades were good - much lighter to paddle with than my other ones - they flowed through the water smoothly, I could get a higher cadence, and they certainly were not in any way too small a blade area for anything I was doing.
I was also very comfortable with the shorter paddle length.
But I do need to see what they are like for rolling and self rescues.
Thank you to Simon for the tour around the factory whilst my blades were getting their spigots fitted - it was most interesting to see how they make the blades - the thing that I am intrigued by is the way in which each blade is cut out from a blank - because it opens up the possibility of a customised blade shape.
This has got me thinking - because instead of thinking about using either euro blades or greenland paddles - maybe I should be thinking about a blade shape which takes the characteristics of both and merges them.
Hmmmm!
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