High Drama at Brighouse Bay!

Well folks, I did think it was all looking a bit easy and generally 'too good to be true' but our recent training session at Brighouse Bay near Kircudbright has well and truly put paid to that.

The weekend of 26/27th April held a Sea Kayaking get-together which was organised by Cumbria Canoeists and thoroughly gatecrashed by the Sea for Cumbria team (except for Ian who was at some pansy social do and Tom who was pretending to be ill so he could research kayaking books and Middle English for the previous post). Anyway, the event was a camping-orientated one so we turned up at the campsite on Friday evening in the teeth of lashing rain and pendulous clouds and huddled together for shelter under Mike's gazebo. Sadly the lack of walls and the horizontal nature of the rain made this a less comfortable prospect than you might imagine, but it did allow us to sit and chat and burn our dinners while we waited for the bar to open. Once in the bar, we met many other Sea Kayakers, most of whom were vastly more experienced than us which was humbling and slightly miffing in equal measure :-) The rest of the pre-paddle evening was spent back at Chez Mike, drinking whisky, talking nonsense and admiring the two brand new composite boats the he and his young son, Sam (pictured) had hired from Carlisle Canoes.

After a damp and lovely night's slumber, interrupted only by the friendly chirp of my car alarm going off in the wind at 4a.m. we got up and stumbled around looking for the briefing on what we were supposed to be doing. We were joined by Wendy, who had forgone the camping in favour of a proper bed, and her groovy new Lomo Renegade drysuit that made her look like the result of a horrific genetic experiment involving bananas. The briefing, given by the uber-experienced Mike Tinnion explained that the sea state way quite challenging (i.e. rough) due to the effects of the wind and that, because of this, there would be two groups - one for the more confident/experienced paddlers who would paddle out around the nearby headland and another group who would launch in a sheltered bay and explore some small islands close to the coast. Being the novices we are, we took one look at the sea and initially decided to join the advanced group until we saw that only 2 other people had gone for this option! This led to a hasty rethink and all of us except Wendy decided that the sheltered bay held a certain appeal. As such, we left Wendy with Mike Tinnion and one or two others (including Carlisle Canoe Club's own Ian Carmichael) and headed for some relaxed inshore paddling.

Down at the beach, we got our boats lined up and headed out into a slightly choppy sea for the 500 metres or so to the first island - the paddle was uneventful and took about 5 minutes - so far, so good! Here we broke up into 3 groups, with the 'Sea for Cumbria 6' (Mike, his son Sam, Jasper, Mark, Kevin and Andy) joining 2 more experienced paddlers before heading back out into the sea. Our plan was to follow the coastline and aim for a tidal gap between the coast and a small isthmus. However, the sea was quite rough with a sizeable swell and 4-5 foot waves and we soon found ourselves orientating our boats out into the sea as paddling into waves is easier and less alarming than paddling across them. Worse, we were each so busy focusing on our paddling as we crested each, increasingly large wave that we soon forgot about group cohesion and ended up more split up than the average 2 year-old Hollywood marriage.

During this mad scramble away from the coast I chanced upon Mark as we nearly collided on a breaker and he suggested that we raft up so he could get his camera out and take some 'action photos'. I have to confess that I was scared stiff by the prospect, but Mark has such a nice manner with these things that it was hard to refuse. As such, we rafted up and let the sea turn us side-on to the waves, leaving me to hang on to Mark's boat while he got busy with the camera. Just as we were packing up, I happened to glance to the right in time to see what looked like a huge wall of water rise up about 20 metres from us. We exchanged panic-stricken glances and 2 seconds later found ourselves upside down, still grimly rafted up!! Coming to the surface and free of our boats we managed to get Mark back into his craft using our lake-practised rescue method but his boat was too full of water (turns out the hatches had leaked) for him to be able to rescue me comfortably. Luckily however, we were soon joined by a serene and magnificent lady-paddler in a Feathercraft kayak who rescued me with an elegance that I will long aspire to while Mark wobbled off to find the others.

Having escorted me to dry land, my rescuer set off into the waves looking for more casualties and I sat on a rock draining litres of water from my not-so-dry dry trousers. While doing this, I noticed an upturned kayak far out in the bay only periodically visible in the swell and waves. Then another.... and another.....

The exact details of what happened out there are the preserve those who went through it, but it transpired that, while I was being rescued, 4 of the 5 of the remaining Sea for Cumbria paddlers capsized in the increasingly rough waters. Mark had 2 more incidents, managing to be rescued from one only to have his water-logged boat throw him in again. Sam spectacularly bow-stalled on a big wave and Mike and Kevin joined him in the drink as they tried to paddle to the shore with their backs to the waves. Importantly, all of these paddlers made landfall by swimming rather than paddling, so it was lucky that there was an onshore wind. Cruelly, Mike and Sam were washed up on barnacle-covered rocks, which gave Sam some nasty lacerations on his hands and arms. Also, their newly-hired boats took a real beating as they scrambled to save first themselves and then their kayaks.

By the time we all got back to the beach, we were a subdued crew indeed - even a Scotch Egg failed to do its usual cheering-up. We hadn't paddled as a cohesive group and, when it had all gone wrong, we realised that we just didn't have the experience to effect a full rescue in those conditions.

Does this mean that the Sea for Cumbria show is over? Of course not! We're still mad for it - but mad for it in a slightly sadder and wiser way. So, keep coming back to learn how we get around our Brighouse Setback.

And as for Wendy and the advanced group? Well, as fate would have it, they were just fine and missed the whole drama all together!!