A Bashing At Bellevue

Labour Day. Forecast - southwesterly 20 km, gusting to 40. Location - the large sheltered barachoix behind Bellevue Beach. Group - six 'yaks, experience varying from several years to several paddles. Sounds good, huh? NOT!!!


Things went fine for most of the run - pretty civil for the downwind run to the beach, about 2 kms. By the time we got there, it had gotten chippier, so we hauled the 'yaks over the beach and paddled to the barachoix entrance from the ocean side - nice flat water, in the shelter of the beach.

Back inside, the wind was still sweeping down the 3 km. length of the barachoix, creating lumpy but readily manageable conditions. We picked our way along, working from point to point to take advantage of whatever lee we could find. By now, the middle stretch of water was starting to show significant whitecaps as we rested behind the last sheltering point before the final crossing of about 1 km. Not great, but hey, as the pic below shows, definitely doable.




And that's where the real fun - if you call it that - started, and continued for the next hour. As we started the crossing, the wind continued to build, creating first continuous whitecaps, then significant waves in the 2 foot+ range, then breaking waves. The boats ahead started hobby-horsing, and waves regularly threw splash up on deck - 15 minutes later, my VOLKSKAYAK was steadily burying its bow to the forward hatch and beyond , and breaking waves were curling back along the sides of the sharply peaked deck (thank you, designer Gerry Gladwin, for that lovely wave-splitting sharp peak!) and dumping in the sides of my skirt.


I've been paddling this kayak since 2001, and that's the first time I've ever seen solid water on deck or taken waves in the skirt. Once again the old sailors adage - the boat can take more than the man can - rang true. While I know it's really hard to estimate wind speed on the water, I'd reckon we had guts hitting 70 kms or more - there were times when it took a fair bit of strength just to keep your paddle in your hands.


The worst thing was the fact that my wife, in her Cape Horn 15, kept falling back - it's just a shorter, slower boat, and I couldn't stop moving completely for her to catch up without risking getting broadside to those breaking waves and broaching. Conditions got bad enough that even trying to look aft to check her position was dicey; wait for a lull, swivel the head, sweep the eyes, there she is - and then, in a heart-stopping moment, no Cape Horn - glance ahead, deal with the oncoming waves, another lull, another look aft, no Cape Horn - just ready to turn back, and I finally, mercifully, catch a glimpse of her battering her way along slowly off to leeward and well behind. That has to be the longest 30 seconds or so I've ever spent in my entire life!


Finally, after a brutal hour of slugging it out dead to windward, we started to pick up the lee of the shore - the waves dropped, my wife caught up with me, and we were able to paddle the last few hundred meters in a relative calm. A motor boat, God bless him, had shadowed the group across much of the worst stretch, and his presence was enormously comforting.

Safely ashore, and bloody well thankful to be there, we loaded boats and gear and headed home, tired and somewhat humbled. Closer inspection at home showed about a liter of water in my forehatch, and perhaps four liters dumped in the cockpit as those boarding waves leaked down around the rear of my skirt. The Cape Horn had about 2 liters in its aft hatch. We'd come thru far rougher weather than we'd ever encountered before, and it's nice to know we can do that, but you certainly won't see us out looking for that sort of trouble in the future.