Did you know the club has heaps of kayaks and canoes? Unfortunately these boats haven't seen a lot of use lately, so Katie and I (Daniel) set out to lead a kayaking trip on the Hawkesbury! It would be awesome for these boats to get some more time in the water so I'm writing this post to share some of the logistic issues we faced, as well as some of the hilarious chaos that happened on this trip.
The Logistics
Katie planned the course, a multi-day trip from Mooney Mooney park to Marramarra creek campground and back, and I dealt with the logistics. The biggest constraint we faced was transporting kayaks from the tram shed (near UNSW) to the water, especially tricky for the great long sea kayaks we were using. There are two options for this: cars with roof racks and normal cars with soft racks.
Roof racks are probably the best (and easiest) option. It's pretty simple to put 2 sea kayaks on the roof of a car and you can get 3 on top with a bit of careful stacking. I started by strapping 2 kayaks onto the roof, hull up, and then stacked a third one on top, hull down, passing the strap all the way around the 3 kayaks. We have the required ratchet straps in the tram shed, and are in the process of getting more.
The other option is to use soft racks, which the club has 2 sets of (although there was only one in the tram shed when we were there). These can go on most cars but only let you take one kayak per car, also I've read they can put little scratches/dings in a roof and aren't as secure has hard roof racks. We ended up taking one kayak this way and it worked well. Please be careful when attaching loads to the top of a car and secure them properly! If you haven't done something like this before, get in touch with our gear officers or someone who has. Katie especially warned me about the soft racks, she's seen many a boat/board come off them. If this happens at 110 km/h on the motorway you could cause some serious damage.
Since neither Katie or I had a car with roof racks, we borrowed the UNSW Arc sports car - this was insanely good and I would strongly recommend trip leaders to use the car! The Arc car is an automatic 4WD (a prado) that can be borrowed for official outdoor club trips, it's completely free (even tolls and petrol!!) and was super easy to book. I called Arc up with 2 weeks notice and it was all sorted in less than 5 minutes! We share the car with the other sport clubs and exec have access to the booking information/spreadsheet, so get in touch with our exec if you are a trip leader wanting a car for your club trip! From the looks of things, this car is quite underused at the moment.
We picked up the car, kayaks, life vests and all the other gear from the tram shed on Thursday night before heading to the flodge, thanks to Sam for letting us in!
The Chaos
Before the trip even started, bad omens loomed over us in the form of a 50mm rain forecast and severe wind warnings for Saturday night, so we quickly changed our plans to be just a day trip. However, when we all met up at Mooney Mooney Park it wasn't even rainy! With high spirits we all got ready, hopped into the water at 10am and struggled to fit our water-proof skirts over the kayaks (maybe that was just me). The new plan was to head upstream to an old shipwreck and then see how far we could keep going before turning back.
It's been a while since I've been out for a paddle and I forgot just how lovely the Hawkesbury is! The wind was calm and we were surrounded by lovely hills with stunning sandstone cliffs, how good! The river was absolutely teeming with jelly fish, I've never seen so many in one spot! In some spots my paddle would hit a jelly fish with nearly every single stroke. I think they were jelly blubbers, some clear and others orange. I kept reaching into the water to touch them, picking one up and boldly declaring that they didn't sting at all. After an hour or two, some sea shanties, and paddling tips from Sam, we made it to the HMS Parramatta shipwreck. We were coming in at low tide, meaning the boat was surrounded by some 15m of mudflats. The mud was so fine that you just sunk right into it, with some of us ending up a lot muddier than others...
After a snack we headed on upstream to Bar Point, once again passing through huge fields of jelly blubbers. It was at this point that I had the grand idea of flicking a jellyfish out of the water at one of the other boats - they didn't sting after all, right? The poor jellyfish traced a grand arc through the sky, slamming straight into Emily's side with a wet slap. Through either the impact of the jellyfish or the sheer terror Emily experienced, her 2 person sit-on-top boat went for a tumble, dunking both rowers into a swarm of jellyfish below. Oh and it turns out they do sting, evidenced by Emily coming out of the water covered in red spots that swole up into horrible patches. After administering some painkillers, we made haste for the public jetty at Bar Point to get Emily dry and apply some sting cream.
But as we reached the jetty, the chaos had only just begun. The jetty was a fair bit higher than the water making getting out tricky, Katie made it up first and was helping everyone else get up. "I'll be fine" I said, moments before toppling overboard with a karmic splash. But that's not all that went into the water... As Katie went on to treat Emily's stings, we all heard a clink clink splash and Sam's face fell as he cried "My car keys!" We all rushed over to the edge of the jetty and quickly realised the keys were now back in the knee deep mud from earlier. We could just almost see the bottom so I took out my waterproof headtorch, but the light didn't penetrate the murky brine at all. Katie then suggested she look around underwater with the torch, but she didn't want to get fully wet. So instead she suggested we grab her ankles and lower her over the edge. Katie went for a quick look but it was soon obvious that this strategy wasn't going to work and started to come back up. Not realising what was going on, the rest of us didn't pull her up and accidentally water-boarded Katie before pulling her out. But when she came out there was nothing on her head, and we now had a headtorch and a set of car keys lost in the mud beneath us. We then resorted to jumping into the water and trawling around the mud with our feet, digging around in the vain hopes of finding the lost items. By some utter miracle, Katie managed to feel out the car keys and pull them out - coming out with mud up to her elbow. Unfortunately the headtorch could not be recovered.
After that kerfuffle, we had lunch and decided that was enough excitement for the day, paddling back with our eyes set on the pub. By another miracle, we made it back without any further chaos and were packing the kayaks back up by 3pm. Despite the utter chaos (or perhaps because of it) everyone had a fantastic time! Hands down the most laughter I've had on a club trip.
