Banks Strait 2018 - Laurie Ford     (Mac's report here.)        (John's report here)     (Roger Greenwood's report)

 (The Debriefing trip)

39 trips across Banks Strait without ever the slightest problem and I totally screwed up the 40^th attempt by making the most basic elementary mistake.

I’m sitting in front of my computer shaking my head, and thinking “did I really do that?” But I did and I can’t think of any reason why, other than I must have had a total mind block at the time. Ah well, worse thing happen at sea.

 I imagine I can hear the words “Senile”, and “Past his use-by date” being bandied about – but no harm was done. We just didn’t get anywhere we should have and had to return to the starting point – running before a bit of a gale for several hours. Not only was I way off, I also went through a whole comedy of errors during the night paddle.

 I’ll try and run through the whole sequence of events.

 I (78) was planning to paddle out to Flinders Island from Little Musselroe Bay for 2 weeks with my friends John (65), Mac (63), and Toby (68). Toby had flown down from Ballina in northern NSW especially for it.

 Three Victorian paddlers – all that was left of the original group of 5 who were going to paddle across Bass Strait decided to paddle with us across Banks Strait. Roger was then going to paddle Bass Strait on his own and Georgia and Tom in a double were just going to go out and back to Flinders Island with us.

 We all met at Little Musselroe Bay on Saturday the 24^th March and the forecast for the next few days was basically gales – but with a small window of opportunity to get across to Spike Bay or Preservation Island on Saturday night.

 Now some years ago (2016) I left Little Musselroe Bay at low water and paddled straight across to Spike Bay and then onto Trousers Point without the slightest trouble with tidal currents. http://www.laurie-ford-kayak.net/Training%20Trip%20to%20Trousers%20Pt.html

 In 2014 Sue and I had left Swan Island at low water and paddled straight across to Spike Bay and then to Preservation Island, landing there 3 ½ hours after leaving Swan Island without any problem with the currents.

http://www.laurie-ford-kayak.net/Flinders%20Island%202014.html

  So you can leave from Little Musselroe Bay at low water (but it is better from the eastern end of Swan Island) but only if the difference in the height of low and high water in Bass Strait is low, ie as much under 2 metres as possible.

 So for some unknown reason I thought we could leave Little Musselroe Bay at 10.15pm (approx. an hour before low water) and do the same thing, but I never even looked at the height of the tides. That was crazy.

 For many years I’ve been explaining to paddlers the best way of crossing Banks Strait – mainly by starting 2 hours before low water (or high water) and heading north (or south) the whole time.

http://www.laurie-ford-kayak.net/Banks%20Strait%20N%20to%20S.html

 Now if you read that you will see that I know damn well that the difference between the height of low water and high water makes a huge difference to the speed of the currents.

 So why did I blithely not even look at the heights this time – I can’t explain why I didn’t. Later on after the event I did have a look and the difference was about 3 metres – ie maximum current. So we left before 10pm after I made it clear to everyone that I would not entertain paddling with anyone having a white light on their kayak. I threatened to smash Roger’s off his kayak if he attempted to use it. It may be the law but the authorities are not out here in the middle of Banks Strait on a wild night trying have good night vision. We have been using red flashing lights for over 35 years, and in fact Toby had one of the original ones that we home built 34 years ago before LED bike lights were invented. He had it tied across his rear deck as well as a bike flasher on his hat. Roger and the double managed to cover their white lights with red material.

 And if you look at the path of the Tracker it is fairly obvious that the current took us a hell of a long way out to the west – a hell of a long way. After 5 hours I realised that we had missed Clarke Island and would probably have to paddle NE to get back towards the top of it and in the direction of Preservation Island. Roger and Georgia turned their GPSs on and found that we were miles away from anywhere and I heard “We have to paddle east to get to Cape Barren Island; we have to paddle east to get to Cape Barren Island.” They didn’t realise it was Clarke Island we were west of. I still preferred to go NE. We had been paddling north the whole time.

 It was about now that a whole lot of comedy of errors happened to me. First of all when we had paddled out of Little Musselroe Bay I didn’t have my spray deck on as I thought we may have to get out and drag the kayaks over the small bar. We didn’t have to but I got a lot of water in the kayak so once out through the tiny waves I put the spray deck on and turned the electric pump on – and then forgot all about it. It runs fairly silently and it wasn’t till much later in the night when I had a bit of water in the kayak that I went to turn the pump on and found it was still on, and had flattened the battery.

 I found that my thighs were getting extremely painful when I was sitting upright and could only paddle when leaning back quite a bit. I had my sail up in the very light wind and calm conditions and had let the paddle go to reach forward to turn the torch on to illuminate the compass for a moment to keep checking the direction and got caught by a gust of wind from the other side of the sail – without the paddle in my hand to do a support stroke and promptly capsized. Now that was extremely embarrassing – for Laurie Ford to capsize in those conditions. The double came alongside and helped me back in – but in pulling myself back into the cockpit I broke the fibreglass seal holding the front of the cockpit rim so now had a leaky kayak. I had lost my sponge and a bottle of Coke in the capsize so borrowed Toby’s sponge. It was slow but I could feel the water getting lower – but not fast enough for the others and Roger gave me his hand pump.

 In the capsize my red flasher on my hat had stopped working so I dropped it in the ocean and got a spare one out of my glovebox and put that one. Later on (on shore) I discovered my waterproof digital camera was also not working.

 I think it was about here that a little bit of panic set in. I was told by Roger to order Mac to accept a tow because he was slowing us down and we needed to speed up or we would be out here all night. I told him Mac didn’t need a tow and that I had no problem with being out all night. He said that he’d been on the go for 30 hours and he didn’t want to be out there all night.

 Not long after that he departed from us, taking the double with him, heading back to Little Musselroe Bay, after asking Mac and John and Toby if they were going to go with him. They declined, so the 4 of us were left to ourselves.

 I take a bit of a dim view of this because as far as I am concerned if you start paddling with a group you finish paddling with that group. You should never have individuals all making their own decision and splitting off in different directions.

 We continued till it started to get light thinking we’d see where we were but there was not a bit of land to be seen in any direction – just low cloud all round. I was in great difficulty by now and was almost lying along the back deck to be able to paddle at all – and now the forecast gale started to make itself felt. The only option was to head SE back to Little Musselroe Bay, directly downwind. Now I could put my small sail up and scoot off without paddling. I was getting a lot of water in the kayak and every ten or fifteen minutes would ease the sail out to let the others catch up, and take the front corner of the spray deck off and sponge out with one hand. I was getting it pretty dry every-time by the time the others caught up.

 After an hour and a half of heading SE I felt we needed to go south a bit more – we still couldn’t see land in any direction. The wind had been increasing all this time and the seas building up and I was having one of the best sailing experiences I’ve ever had. And there was an absolutely brilliant display of lightning from a fairly close brief electrical storm – I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. The thunder claps and rolls were great.

 Finally directly ahead we could see the wind generators on Cape Portland, and then could easily see a lot of beaches straight in front of us. When we were closer and obviously all going to make shore I pulled the sail down with a lot of difficulty because of the force of the wind. When they caught up again I told Mac that there was no way I could get to shore without sailing – my legs were getting a bit excruciating by now. He nodded and kept going with John and Toby. Now I had a hell of a job to get the sail back up again. I’d just get a cm or two of the mast in the hole when I would have to let it go to do a support stroke and the sail and mast would blow into the water. This happened three times, and my paddle went in as well once.

 Finally I did get it up and away I went on a wild ride towards the shore – terrific fun. I decided I wasn’t stopping anymore and would let the water get higher in the cockpit and just go for it. There were many beaches but the first few had big sand hills behind than and I was looking for one with trees where we could camp in shelter. I had to get ashore and I assumed the others would want to get ashore as soon as possible as well. These beaches did all have surf on them. So I found one with trees and headed in and surfed up on the beach with the sail up and the rudder down – and then found my arms didn’t have the strength to lift me out of the cockpit. I had to lie along the deck and push off the footrest to lie on the back deck and then rolled off onto the wet sand. Got on my hands and knees and stood up and promptly fell over flat on my back. I moved on hands and knees a couple of metres to my paddle and used that to help me stand up – I was in bad shape. I was wet and in a strong wind so staggered off along the beach to find a way up to where I thought I’d seen a building. There was a beautiful stone house there and I sat in shelter for some time to recover a bit. I trekked back and forth along the beach a hundred and fifty to two hundred metres to get dry clothes and tent fly and sleeping and camping gear. I’d landed at 10am, pretty well exactly 12 hours after launching from Little Musselroe Bay yesterday.

 None of the others landed in here so I assumed (quite wrongly as it turned out) that they just headed into the first beach to get ashore as soon as they could. I struggled back along in that direction to check out a couple of the beaches but then was too tired to go any further. I still had the Tracker on as didn’t want to hit the OK button till I felt things were OK. We’d been so close in that even if they had all capsized they would have all ended up ashore so I turned the Tracker off – but still had a minor concern over where they were.

 Mac and Toby have paddled in much bigger seas than that for a much longer period in 1987 when they did a double crossing of Bass Strait. The strong wind warning we thought we would be paddling in from Deal Island to Flinders Island had been upgraded to a Gale warning unbeknown to us.

http://www.laurie-ford-kayak.net/maatcm87.htm

 But John had never been in anything like this and was in a very unstable kayak, but I knew he had an excellent support stroke. My concern was that he had dislocated his shoulder a few weeks ago and it was possible it could happen again with a big support stroke. Later back in Hobart he told me that he had it strapped by Matt before coming and that had probably helped a lot to stop it coming out again.

 I settled in under my tent fly for the night, feeling pretty well done in. The first high tide that day came right up to the Sea Leopard so I moved it right to the back of the beach. The high tide the next morning came almost right to there so I ended up putting it on top of the 2 metre bank – in the bushes.

I’m hoping that John and Mac will write their own story shortly. Mac's report. John was slightly ahead of Mac and it was very difficult to keep looking back to see him. John remembered from previous trips that I had told him you need to keep very close to shore off Cape Portland or you will be in danger of not being able to reach the shore – and end up being swept out to Swan Island. So he kept very close and landed on the first sheltered beach, and waved his sail so that Mac would see him. Mac did but couldn’t get to this beach and landed on the next one. Toby came round close inshore and landed with John.

Mac had been too far out to land on John’s beach so landed on the next one. At the end of the road to Little Musselroe Bay there are steps down to a small beach – Mac landed on the next beach just to the north of that, and Toby and John were on the next one north. Mac did actually walk to Little Musselroe Bay and then back to his kayak. Toby and John rested for an hour and then paddled the last km or so to Little Musselroe Bay, gathering Mac on the way and they all arrived together. Georgia told Mac the exact time they landed and Mac and the others landed on their beaches only 15 minutes later – we had caught up at least an hour and a half on them.

  I had made it very clear to the Victorians when they first turned up on Saturday that our policy is that if we get ourselves into trouble WE will get ourselves out of trouble. In forty years of paddling – sometimes extreme paddling, we have never had the occasion to involve the police.

 Monday morning I had recovered somewhat and went off to find a hill where I could get phone reception – but intending to stay camped where I was till the weather was more suitable for continuing to Little Musselroe Bay. I got one bar on the phone and rang Sue (it was her Tracker) and told her I’d mislaid the others. She told me she’d had a text message from Toby yesterday and they were fine – so no problem – just a bit concerned over me. She then told me that Peter had rung the police at Georgia's request, but then Georgia rang him again shortly after and told him to cancel it as Mac and Toby and John had just arrived. Peter rang the police again and said all was OK, which made the police very happy.

 I had a bit of a chuckle over this as I had a mental picture of a chopper setting down where I was camped and the police finding me reclining under my tent fly listening to the radio and consuming an egg & bacon pie with some coke and a conversation something like this:

“Are you Laurie Ford?”

“Yes.”

“We had a message that you were in trouble and needed rescuing.”

“Whoever told you that you’d better take them to court and charge them with making nuisance calls.”

So I was lying under the tent fly warm and cosy and dozing when I heard “Laurie, Laurie” I couldn’t believe that anyone had found me but it was Liz Ponting and Toby. Liz’s brother Dave comes out a few times a week to open the visitors centre and he and Liz and Toby had a good look at the Tracker plot and Liz said she’d drive to the beaches about where it showed I was. They checked out a couple to the west of me before finding me. All this land is owned by the Hydro and trespassers are forbidden but Liz worked on the Cape Portland property and had keys to be able to get to some of the padlocks to check on the cattle. She still had to inform the Hydro at the entrance what she was doing.

 So she drove me back to her place to get my vehicle, and Roger asked if I needed a hand and came back with me to help Toby and I to carry the still loaded kayak along the beach. Just before we arrived at the house my left rear tyre went flat and we put the spare on. We just threw my gear into the car and the loaded kayak on the roof rack and headed back past the Hydro office to let them know we were leaving.

 Liz Ponting is a good friend for doing all this and refused any payment for her troubles.

 Mac and John had gone home yesterday, and Georgia and Tom had also left. Toby was still keen to continue to go to Flinders Island. The weather wasn’t suitable for the next day or so and as I now didn’t have a spare tyre I opted to drive to Scottsdale to get it repaired and consider our options. We just made it 5 minutes before closing time and left it with the tyre people and booked into a motel.

 I wasn’t in any shape to continue the paddle right away, but do usually recover fairly quickly from tiredness. But this leg problem was something totally new and I was a bit unsure about it. I also would have to repair the front of the cockpit. My pump battery had been recharged by my solar panel while I’d been camped on my own. In the end I said I thought it would be a little foolish of me to continue till I recovered really fully and investigated my leg problem. Sue had said when I was talking to her that this is not uncommon and is a back problem – by a bit of osteoporosis of the spine, L4 to be exact.

 I have found this online:

However, with its heavy load and range of flexibility, the L4-L5 segment is also prone to developing pain from injury and/or from degenerative changes, such as:

• The L4 vertebra can slip forward over the L5 vertebra, impinging the nerve root and causing lower back and/or leg pain (sciatica)
• The L4-L5 disc, in between the L4 and L5 vertebrae, can herniate or degenerate, leading to possible leg pain (sciatica) and/or lower back pain
• The two joints called facet joints (or zygapophyseal joints), which connect to the L4 and L5 vertebrae in the back of the spine, can allow abnormal amount of motion and/or develop osteoarthritis
• The back of the L4-L5 segment has a nerve that passes through it, from inside the spinal canal down through the back of each leg (as part of the sciatic nerve). This nerve is called the L4 nerve root. If any in inflammatory proteins from inside the disc herniate and come in contact with this nerve, or if anything presses against it, pain can travel down the nerve (called a radiculopathy, or sciatica).

Bugger.

 The next morning we found the tyre was not repairable and when I asked for a new one was told that he sold the last two yesterday. Toby and I continued to Launceston and then Devonport where his Landrover was. He only moved to NSW last year from Launceston and had to leave the Landrover for later. He was going to take it on the ferry when he went back to NSW. I left him and continued towards Burnie to call on a friend who had just had a quadruple bypass; and I was pulled up for speeding through Wesley Vale – 74 in a 60 zone. I was certainly having a “bad hair day”. The nice lady policewoman let me off with a caution and then noticed my haggard condition and asked if I was alright. I told her I was just having a bad day.

 I stayed the night with a friend on a farm and he had a spare wheel and tyre that didn’t fit either of his utes but did fit mine so I then had a spare tyre for the 6 hour drive home.

 I feel pretty bad about letting everyone down, particularly Toby who had come a long way, and also Georgia and Tom. They had come with us (the experts) to learn a bit about paddling in this area – sorry about that kids. But at least it was a good learning curve and an excellent demonstration of the tides in this area – an excellent demonstration.

This quite plainly showed my track onshore, walking to check out the beaches. Why would anyone consider calling the police? Spot 27, before I started walking, was logged at 10.02am, 148.02022, 40.75404.

 Sue and I are planning to paddle to Flinders Island about the same time next year but I have a feeling it might just be the two of us – I’m not sure anyone will ever want to paddle with me again. Certainly not at night. Ah well, worse thing happen at sea.

 Laurie Ford.

March 30^th, 2018.

The Debriefing Trip

 Return to Home page.