ron-t kayaking blog
18 March 2015 ............ The Stacks
A beautiful day, with a light wind from the east or the north, depending on where you got the information from, and midway between Neaps and Springs.
Having failed on my last trip out, I thought I would have another go at the Stacks.
In theory it was an ebb tide until mid afternoon, and when I launced into Porth Daffarch, the tide was well out.
In fact the tide was surprisingly far out - out at Penrhyn Mawr, the Fangs were well exposed - and there was a second block of exposed rock several metres away from the Fangs, which I have never seen before.
The other thing that surprised me was that the flood tide had already started at Penrhyn Mawr, well over an hour before it should have done.
I began to have doubts about my reading of the tide times, and had a brief conversation with another group of paddlers about it.
When I got home I checked the tide times again, and I had misread them - by 55 minutes.
Now how do you misread tide times by 55 minutes ? I think it is quite an achievement !
As it happened, it all turned out very nicely, with quite favourable tidal conditions at both South Stack and North Stack, although I did spend quite a lot of the time paddling against the tide.
Here is my first target - South Stack
Under the bridge, and just two small channels connecting to Gogarth Bay.
I didn`t go through them, I went around the outside of South Stack, and met a surprisingly strong ebb current, which gives you some idea of the complexity of the tides around that bit of the coastline - a flood tide at Penrhyn Mawr, and an ebb tide at South Stack.
Heading across Gogarth Bay now, and this picture just does not do justice to the huge cliffs that border Gogarth Bay.
When I was getting nearer to North Stack, a Stena Line ferry suddenly appeared beyond North Stack, so I sprinted to get into the shelter of North Stack before the wash hit me - it can be quite severe, I believe.
Then into Cathedral cave for a quick pitstop, before heading back - I wanted to get back past South Stack before the flood tide started in earnest.
I`m rather looking into the sun here, so a somewhat hazy picture of South Stack from North Stack.
Just to the south of North Stack there are some good caves - I missed out the one with the windopw above the door, but did get into the cave with an identity crisis - it really doesn`t know if it is a cave, or an arch, or something else.
It has three entrances at high tide, but only two at low tide, there is a much smaller very deep cave off it, and the most amazing cliffs that drop down into it.
By now the flood tide in Gogarth Bay had started - on my way up to North Stack I had been going against the ebb tide, and now I was going back against the flood tide !
I went round the outside of South Stack, to begin with I was in an eddy, and went flying along , but then I met the race where I met the flood tide proper. However it was in its infancy, so didn`t have much bite.
Not knowing what kind of current I would meet in Abraham`s Bosom, I stayed fairly close to the coastline all the way round.
Abraham`s Bosom has some good cliffs and caves - here are a couple of caves - the left hand one wasn`t that interesting, not very deep at all.
However the right hand one goes in a long way, and look at the lovely pink sea lichen on the slab of rock on the right.
Here are a few pictures of some of the cliffs and rock features around Abraham`s Bosom.
Once you are round the first headland off the Penrhyn Mawr peninsula, the coastline becomes a bit more rugged, and continues to be quite spectacular.
At Penrhyn Mawr the flood tide was in full swing, The Fangs were picking up the swell, and producing the classic Penrhyn Mawr waves, although I don`t think you could have played on them, it would have been too shallow.
I didn`t try to paddle up through the outer race, I couldn`t paddle up through the inner race because of the current, and I couldn`t paddle through the next race either.
So I had to try to get through one of the small channels through the rocks closer in to the shore.
But Penrhyn Mawr had another challenge in store - I have never seen such a low tide level at Penrhyn Mawr before - each of the small channels had a waterfall at the far end, where the tide piling up on the far side of the rocks was dropping down into the channels, and I couldn`t get up any of them.
In the end I found a very narrow channel that had three small waterfalls in series instead of one big one, and I managed to get myself up each one by pushing off the rocks. No chance of using the paddle, the channel was way too narrow.
So that was all quite good fun.
Back at Dinas Stack - and what an amazing bit of rock bending - can you imagine the size of the forces involved that could bend rocks like that !
So a most succesful day, even if I didn`t have just as good tidal conditions as you can get in the other half of the Springs / Neaps cycle.
website design by ron-t
website hosting by freevirtualservers.com
© 2024 Ron Turner
