The Dipping of the Paddles

By John and Anne P. 

8th December 2018

Due to an overwhelming dearth of volunteers, a last-minute decision was made to change the time to Saturday at 1 PM. The Bertolla’s & the Poulton’s were the only listed attendees, so the change wasn’t difficult. 

William Beach Park was ‘packed’, the busiest that I’ve ever seen it, so we parked on the south side of the causeway unloaded the boats and put them into the water there, rather than at the usual embarkation point on the beach in the park. 

A very pleasant paddle downstream with a huge number of quite large fish leaping out of the water all around us. We assume that there were some even larger predators lurking in the depths, evoking terror in the mullet. It has been reported that bull sharks and juvenile white pointers both frequent Mullet Creek so we decided to not dangle limbs in the water, ‘just in case’. The wind added another level of excitement [& exertion] to the paddling but we bravely headed out for about 45 minutes, at which time we hit an even stronger wind which encouraged us to turn tail and scurry back to the cars. 

Of course, by that stage, the tide had also decided to head out so we were somewhat paddling against the flow on the return journey, which reminded me that the shoulders hadn’t done a lot of paddling for quite a while. Oh, the joys of ageing. 

Although not a long afternoon activity [we were on the water for an hour and a bit], it was quite enough with wind, tide and heat somewhat sapping our reserves. 

Boats were taken out of the water, hoisted onto cars and lashed in place. Homeward bound to unload, rinse the equipment [which then, fortunately, dried quite rapidly] and pack away. We all enjoyed the trip and the plan is to arrange another one earlyish next year. Hopefully more folk will be able to attend once the festive rush has settled down. My apologies for this trip. I know that this is a busy time of year but I wanted to get something easy in before Xmas.

Special apologies to John Z. I know that you said you may come if we changed to Saturday but I didn’t feel that the situation lent itself to you on a stand-up paddleboard, however, I’ll make sure that next time it will be more suitable for a wider range of watercraft. Have a great, safe and Holy festive season.

 John & Anne