Saturday 14 April 2012

Inchcolm night paddle

Silver Sands
Well, it was that time of year again, the Easter night paddle. Hubby dear organises this and doesn't like to give up his eggs too easily, therefore sets us all up with various challenges.
This was the first time Jill had been out in the sea boats with us. This was the first time Stewart had been out in the sea, with anyone. Let's start off with a night paddle! He was really just excited at the thought of playing with his glow sticks! And Sarah T has been out before.
We met up at the boatshed, then made our way down to Silver Sands in Aberdour. We were all given three bits of paper. One had a skill, one a challenge and the other we had to find a point on the map with the bearings given to us. Luckily, they all pointed to Inchcolm, where the eggs would be dished out.
This sea kayaking is real relaxing
Look, no paddles!


Inchcolm abbey
Passing the Happy Warrior

 We set off, completing our challenges on the way, on a lovely still night. We rounded Hawkcraigs, past Aberdour to Braefoot, where we had a break before heading over to Inchcolm. We had our usual audience of seals on the way. By this time the sun was sitting quite low. We paddled round Inchcolm and into the little bay to wait til it was dark. This gave Hubby dear the chance to play with his good camera, writing our club name in the dark. It took a few shots to get the spelling correct! This also gave us time to devour our eggs.
Egg time
Hubby dear playing with his torch
Yeeha! Glow stick time!
Once it was dark, we donned our glow sticks and headed out past Car Craig and started back towards Mortimer's Deep. By now it was pitch dark and we could see the lights of a tug coming up from Braefoot. We would be OK as the boat was passing well in front of us. As we were carrying on, we were aware of the sound of waves, but in the dark all waves sound big. But these ones were big! Hubby dear gave the shout for us to raft up just in time for some rather large, fast waves to hit us. Stewart was between Hubby dear and Jill, whilst I had rafted up with Sarah T. A good few waves later and the water was calm enough to carry on. We rounded Hawkcraig and arrived back at Silver Sands. I'm saying Silver Sands, but the tide was exceptionally low, some ferries had been cancelled due to the tide level, that any further out and we would be walking from Burntisland! By the time we had lugged the boats back we must have well and truly worked off our eggs. Although we paddle that stretch regularly, it always seems almost magical paddling it at night. 

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