ron-t kayaking blog
29 September 2018 .............. Penrhyn Mawr
First time out for several months, and I fancied a play at Penrhyn Mawr during the last hour or two of the flood tide.
Mini Mawr was surprisingly wild, with quite a stream flowing through it - I wimped out of the main rapid and sneaked through closer to the outlying rock.
Penrhyn Mawr was its usual self, with plenty of rapids to play on, or to avoid if they looked a bit too scary.
After it had started to die down a bit I had a go at crossing over the current to head into the mini beach at the back of Penrhyn Mawr - however the current had other ideas and it flipped me over.
Oh dear, it wasn`t going to let me up again, and after a few failed attempts at rolling I had to give up and come out my boat.
My attempts to do a re-entry and roll up were also a fail.
Time for plan B - the paddle float - and a re-entry and roll up worked okay with that.
By then I wasn`t alone, a couple of other paddlers had come over to offer assistance, so thank you to them for that, but I am pleased that I didn`t need any assistance.
My first ever swim at Penrhyn Mawr - my increasingly aging joints and a lack of recent paddling certainly took their toll.
After a bit more playing around, I headed along the coast a bit - the hidden passage was looking good -
Out past the last point before Abrahams Bosom, and the classic view across to South Stack -
That was as far as I went, I headed back along the coast toward Penrhyn Mawr, and went to say hello to the big cave along there -
The water inside the cave was fairly quiet, so I got quite far in - and note the seal who popped up to see what I was doing -
The seal stayed around long enough for me to get a close up shot of it -
And so back to the mini beach at the back of Penrhyn Mawr for a lunch break, and then back to Dinas Stack - the cave was a bit too chunky for me to go in there, but the arch was okay, and I got through that okay, and then back to Porth Dafarch.
A good afternoon out, a pity about the swim, I do wonder how much longer I can go on sea kayaking, I don`t now have the flexibility that closed cockpit kayaking requires, and if rolling is going to elude me and self rescue plan B becomes self rescue plan A, then I don`t have a plan B and it all becomes a bit more hazardous.
As well as that it is becoming a real struggle getting the boat on and off the roof rack - so I don`t really know.
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