ron-t kayaking blog
02 October 2014 ............ Porth Dafarch
Fairly close to Neaps, but a flood tide all afternoon - and the weather forecast was for an increasing wind through the day.
It was also forecast to be the last decent day for some time, with a big change in the weather coming - so I didn`t want to miss out on the day - but what to do ?
I could have gone to Penrhyn Mawr - but that wasn`t really a good plan - I didn`t fancy getting stuck on the wrong side of Penrhyn Mawr until five o`clock, on a day when the wind was going to be increasing.
So I decided to go up to Porth Dafarch, and go down the coast towards Treaddur Bay and Rhoscolyn - I would have the flood tide to get me back to Porth Dafarch, and if the weather got too bad, there are plenty of places I could land, and walk back to Porth Dafarch.
Well it seemed a good plan - only trouble was - the sea had other ideas - by the time I launched about two hours into the flood tide, even though there still wasn`t a lot of wind, the sea was seriously lumpy with lots of white horses, and I was paddling along it, rather than through it.
I need to get a better understanding of sea state classification and how it relates to real sea conditions, but from surfing the web, it looks as if it would have been somewhere around the top end of the Slight category, occasionally Moderate.
From what I have seen so far, I am not sure whether the sea state classification really takes account of the type of sea, it seems to focus mainly on wave height - but it seems to me that a 1 metre lumpy sea is harder to deal with than a 2 metre long period swell.
So in the end I didn`t get very far.
I can`t take pictures when the sea is rough, I am too busy trying to survive - but there were some places where I was a bit sheltered, so the sea was not so lumpy.
Even as you head out of Porth Dafarch itself, the coastline is quite rugged -
Once out of Porth Dafarch, I was into the thick of the big lumpy sea so it was cautious going, however the rugged coastline continues, with some pictures taken when I got the chance.
Round the back of an island I found a good bit where it was not so rough, and there were some good channels through the rocks, so I got a bit of rock hopping - not as much as I would have liked, some of the channels were just a bit too shallow.
The rugged coastline continues - here are a few more pictures.
I didn`t go all that far before I turned and headed back, and sat on the beach and had the inevitable tea break.
However I wasn`t really ready to go home, so I went out again, this time I headed out in the other direction - right over by the cliffs before Dinas Stack, the sea was calmer, so this is the view looking back right across the bay to the coastline where I had been earlier.
I think that although you can`t see it, Porth Dafarch is in to the left roughly in the middle of the picture.
This picture in particular highlights a problem I have - since I can`t take pictures in big seas when I am trying to survive, my pictures never show the rough bits, only the calm bits.
So nobody knows how rough it was - and I look like an even bigger wimp than the wimp I really am.
I also find that the sea always looks flatter in pictures than it does when you are out there in the middle of it - maybe this is psychological, maybe the human eye and brain sees waves differently from the way cameras sees waves.
Some people seem able to take pictures out in the middle of rough seas, and even in the pictures the sea looks big - I don`t know how they do it, but they must be very big seas that they are out in.
I do find a big difference mentally between paddling in a big sea when the lumps just keep coming at you, and sea kayak playing - such as rock hopping and paddling in tide races - where there is a degree of predictibility in the way the water behaves, and at any point you can just stop and chill out.
I have always been more of an analytical paddler, rather than a reactive paddler - when rock hopping or playing on tide races, I can sort of analyse the water, and work out how to react to it - in big lumpy seas, it is all reactive.
But hopefully, if I keep on doing it, I`ll move the edge of my comfort zone outwards, and I will be become more at home in it.
I am still not sure why the sea was so lumpy - it was coming from a direction that means it should have continued right into Porth Dafarch - yet within the confines of Porth Dafarch, the water was almost flat.
Was the wind blowing across the tidal current a contributor ?
After I was all packed up, I went for a swim, and the water was amazingly warm, it was lovely - one of the better bits of the day !
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