20 paddlers turned up at the Milsey Bay car park on Sunday morning, providing the first challenge of the day, which was finding a parking space. The 2nd challenge was remembering that you had a kayak on the roof before attempting to drive under the very low car park barrier.
Whilst kayaks were being unloaded and folk were kitting up, Neil B. briefed the leading & support team and they formed a plan to split us into 3 groups, which would all paddle west from Milsey Bay, towards Fidra and the beach at Archerfield. This suited the tide and wind (LT at 09:22 ; Easterly F4+) and meant that we would get some wind assist on the return paddle.
We had a good mix of paddlers, with some newer members, some returning paddlers and some of the usual suspects. Everyone launched from the beach without mishap and we headed west in our pre-arranged groups, picking up 2 paddlers on the way, who had chosen to launch from NB harbour.
The group I was in decided to do some coastal rock-hopping on the way and different paddlers in the group got the opportunity to practice leading us through the various nooks and crannies. On the way, I added a couple of small scrapes to my Northshore and gave Louisa an opportunity to practice her contact towing. We then decided to head out to Fidra and paddle around the northern side of the island. This was partly prompted by Chris spotting one of the other groups paddling out that way and getting it into her head that they might have spotted a minke whale and we were missing out. The whale notion turned out to be false but we did see puffins and other assorted seabirds. (Note for Neil B: We took care to keep our distance and not disturb any nesting birds)
After Fidra, we landed at Archerfield, joining the other 2 groups for lunch. 22 kayaks lined up on a beach is quite an impressive sight. Getting 22 paddlers to stand still next to their kayaks whilst taking a photo would also have been impressive, had I achieved it.
After lunch, we re-launched and headed back, with the westerly providing us with some nice assist. After some democratic consultation within our group, we decided to head out past Lamb Island to Craigleith, which gave us some more quality time with the puffins and other seabirds (but still no minke whale). One of the other groups chose this route too, whilst the other group took the shore route. We successfully rounded Craigleith and then headed back towards Milsey Bay, with the wind from starboard (sideways). We avoided getting in the way of the dinghy racing, with the help of some hand gestures from their safety boat crew.
Overall, conditions did not reach the forecasted F6 gusts and it felt more like a reasonably steady F3-4. The wind over waves gave us some reasonable swell but the feedback at the end was that everyone felt within their comfort zones.
Many thanks to Neil for taking overall leadership of the trip and to Andy, Nick, Chris, Gerry, Mark and Penny for leading or assisting with the sub-groups. Thanks also to Tim Gibson for providing launching & recovery services at Milsey Bay.
