Sea Kayaking - a new set of adventures

In 2017 the idea was floated (pardon the pun) that we should look at doing some Sea Kayaking with the objective of circumnavigating the Whitsunday Islands. To be able to do this safely there were some basic skills that we needed to know - eg learning how to Sea Kayak. As a group we had prior experience in kayaking in rivers and lakes, but the bank is always close by and waves are not so much of issue.

Cam organised a session with Rowan, awesome, down at his business in Sandringham where could learn some basic skills such as how to get back into a capsized kayak, how to signal others when out, the importance of reading the tides and weather as well as some of fundamentals of paddling. The course was for a weekend and was pretty darn good.

We took up the offer to take the kayaks for another 4 hour trip several weekend later.

We were on our way.

Below is the start of our collection of Sea Kayak trips that we have done so far.

We sail under the flag of the Jolly Roger - Arrrr

Practice at Inverloch

Over the March weekend of 2018 on the 17/18th we decided to extend our practices in sea kayaking and planned a trip from the Inverloch pier into Anderson's Inlet to the Tarwin Lower boat ramp.

Pirates of Hinchinbrook Island

The idea to do a paddle from Lucinda in far north Queensland was formulated in 2020, but with the rise of COVID19 and all of the ensuing lockdowns and uncertainty around the travel, the idea was put on hold until such time that the trip could be done with a level of confidence.

In 2022 as the tail of constant and changing restrictions became less of a feature in our daily lives we decided that this was the year. We left for Cairns on the 25th July returning back to Melbourne on the 3rd August where we spent 8 days paddling from Lucinda to Mission Beach. 

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Learning at Sandringham

January 2018 saw Dodgey take on a new set of skills in the form of Sea Kayaking. We signed up for a weekend session down at Sandringham with Rowan of East Coast Kayaking where we learnt basic skills such as navigation, deep water rescue from capsized kayaks, paddling into waves and how to keep together as a group. Important among those skills was being able to communicate between kayak members whilst on the water. This was a 2 day course where we learnt a lot about Kayaking and the adage "That it is better to be one the shore wishing that you were out on the water vs been out on the water wishing you were back on shore".

 We also learnt about our friend "lee" and the not so friendly "fetch".

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Corner Inlet

With the team having practiced some skills in the bay and at Inverloch it was time to plan a small expedition over a weekend at Corner Inlet. The trip was on the 21st April 2018. and was for the weekend. Thge trip plan was from Port Welshpool to Tin Mine Cave on the Saturday and a trip back to Port Welshpool on Sunday. Saturday included a trip out to Granite Island and on Sunday the team venturerd out to Snake Island.