ron-t kayaking blog
24 June 2014 ............ Penrhyn Mawr
A short evening trip out to Penrhyn Mawr to play on the latter part of the flood tide, somewhere between Neaps and Springs.
It was a very good evening weatherwise, and there really wasn`t any swell of any substance, so the playing was all about the current, rather than waves, but both the innermost race and the inner race provided some good fun.
Here are a few photographs of what it was like.
Every now and then, the inner race produced a few bigger waves -
There were a couple of seals around, who were rather elusive, so I only got one picture of one of them, making a brief appearance.
I also had a shot on the outer race - but I must confess, it was by accident.
I was out by the outermost rock looking across the outer race towards the Fangs - there was quite a few waves out by the Fangs, and I was sitting in the eddy downstream of the rock, trying to take a picture of the waves out by the Fangs.
I did succeed in getting a picture - although it isn`t really all that wonderful, but here it is.
However whilst I was concentrating on my camera, I didn`t notice that there was a bit of a sideways current in the eddy, which carried me across the eddy line and into the outer race.
Oops !
Having pushed me across the eddyline outwards, there was no way it was going to let me cross it back into the eddy, and I was carried away in the current.
Now if I had been facing downstream, I could have done probably have done a breakout back across the eddyline - but I was facing upstream.
So I was getting washed backwards down the outer race - and bit downstream of the picture were the waves.
It was a case of surfing the waves or die !
Eventually I escaped.
Time for a teabreak.
By the time I had finished that, the current had died down just enough to let me paddle back through the races to get back to Dinas Stack, but it was a fair struggle.
Don`t underestimate the speed of the current through Penrhyn Mawr even if it is not Springs - especially during the second half of the flood tide, when a lot of the rocks are covered - it is going faster than you can paddle in your average sea kayak.
The chicken shoot only takes you half way through Penrhyn Mawr you still need to fight the more open water.
Back at Dinas Stack, and it was not too far from high tide, so I was able to do a bit of caving.
Round the back of Dinas Stack there are two caves - the first one has quite a wide opening, and tapers down - here are a couple of views of it.
The second cave is much longer and narrower I got almost to the beach right at the back -
And finally, there was enough water for a couple of trips through the arch.
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