Category Archives: English South Coast

Holy moly, end of May and first paddle of the year? It’s been a busy winter and the arm’s been playing up so time to break in with an easy packraft across a back corner of Poole Harbour, our locale for the summer.
Sailing Russel Quay back to Wareham with the tide and the wind sounded like a good one – a mile’s walk + 5 on the water. Although it clashes with our hitherto pristine eco credentials, we have two cars down here, so we leave one in town and the other at Arne.

Teetering on the edge of Open Access land.

This whole area south of the Harbour is a largely undeveloped heathland with rare wildlife and part of an RSPB ‘super reserve’. On the day the famous BBC Springwatch crew were installed for a fortnight or more, motion sensing cameras probing various nests and burrows. Thick power cables lined our track leading up north to the put in near long gone Russel Quay. I’m not fully sure it was a right of way. Dodging irate English Nimbies is going to take some practice after the freedom of the Scottish northwest coast we became accustomed to.
But ironically this area also has the biggest knot of land-based oil wells in western Europe. They’re the small, nodding donkey type, not towering rigs but a couple of months ago one of the pipelines sprung a leak in Ower Bay near the processing plant on the less accessible south shore. Luckily it wasn’t an Exxon Valdez event and at higher tides there could be some good packboat exploring in this inlet-rich area. It’s all we’ll have here bar the more exposed Jurassic Coast.

Not exactly the Summer isles, but it’ll have to do. You don’t get a May week of 20°C+ and full sun up there.

I try to remember what to do and in what order.

Note the water skier. With my typical ‘let’s-wing-it’ lack of due diligence, we’d stumbled on one of the few ‘PWC’ zones on Poole Harbour. (The link’s map is missing but may be what’s at the top of the page.)

Well, stood at the shore it looked like a good north-easterly for a while.

OMG, more menacing water-hoons! It’s a bank holiday Sunday and turns out we were right on their sole permitted skiing corridor. RTFM!

Once on the water there’s barely enough wind to blow out a scented candle from Purbeck Handicrafts.

But according to the GPS, paddling most of the time we did momentarily zip along with the tide.

As it is, tides in the Harbour have quite a prolonged high water period which will be useful. This is a spring tide in a few days.

We should have just cruised close to the shore where motorboats fear to tread. Next time we’ll know.
Near Gigger’s Island we pass a motionless hardsheller, like a heron deep in thought.

Without my GPS, first time finding the Frome river entrance would have been tricky.
Soon impenetrable reeds line the banks, our speed drops and pot-bellied boaters cruise by at 4 knots.
I can see this 2.5-mile river stretch might soon become a chore at the end of a long paddle and an ill tide.

Never get out of the boat? We couldn’t if we tried, but near the river mouth there’s a small jetty and a track back to town. Good to know but with an IK, I’ll need some wheels.

That night we catch a bit of Springwatch on the iPlayer but, as expected, I can stomach the hyper-saturated, happy-clappy ‘Phil & Holly of Wildlife’ for only so long. It’s the final finale of Succession – what are we waiting for!?
A probing bike recce of the south shore is needed. More Poole Harbouring to come.

Packraft Sailing with MRS Barracuda

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It took just one outing with old mate/new packchum Phil to recognise the appeal of packraft sailing. My old WindPaddle Adv 2 was able to haul us both out to the Teign estuary with little effort.

A few clicks online and a 99-euro Anfibio PackSail (same as the defunct WP) got jammed in his letterbox. With a chilly offshore wind blowing off the south Cornish coast, Phil launched his 12-foot long R2 Barracuda Pro from a handy RIB and set off for Brittany.

The combination of the Barracuda’s kayak-long waterline, light weight and the 1.3-m diameter sail soon got the MRS skimming along at nearly 10kph.
That switched to -0kph as he turned round into the 30kn gusts and tried to paddle back to shore. Time to hail down the water uber.

After the Gale: Packrafting with the Teignmouth Beast

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An old mate got in touch to tell me he’d bought himself a top-of-the-range MRS R2 Barracuda Pro and heck, even my packrafting book. He’s in Devon and I was in Dorset so I suggested we meet up for a Yuletide splash-about. Back in the day we were desert bikers; now we’re packrafting pensioneers.

Like some do with a new activity, Phil had got stuck right into his MRS and had already paddled to Dartmouth with his Brompton bike (left), something over in Norfolk, then scared himself further up the rain-swollen Dart from Buckfastleigh to Totnes, noting ‘it’s amazing how dangerous the big branches [and fallen trees] are…’

Tell me about it. If it’s not weirs or camo-&-beard anglers spitting poison darts, it’s deadly sweepers blown down by winter storms. I never quite got round to doing the Dart in my fearless prime, such as it was, but I hear in winter it’s one of the Southwest’s whitewater classics – a bit serious for me now. We settled on the Teign out of Newton Abbot with our respective bangers parked at either end.

If nothing else, we ought to have a good backwind. The previous night had peaked at around 50mph, but by dawn it was tailing off to half that, with the usual gusts at +50%, single-digit temps and showers. A good day for a drysuit and a stable packraft.

Some quick stats on Phil’s noire ‘cuda: 3.6m x 99 wide with 217cm inside and up to 7.6kg with the removable deck, two seats and internal storage, all for a hefty £1750. Compared to my TXL, it’s 80cm longer or nearly 12 feet in old money; our Micra’s shorter than that! It’s also 10% wider than the TXL, about 35cm longer inside so loads of room for 2 adults. Solo/no deck it gets down to 5.6kg alongside the TXL’s 3kg.

We drove around Newton looking for parking and a put-in. Opposite the racecourse and over a broken roadside fence we found a spacious river bank just at the Teign’s tidal reach. By the time we set off we were in the middle of a 3.5-m ebb, midway between springs and neaps.
Either way, like the Frome the other day, the Teign was ripping along at a light jog and before I’d got myself untangled from my gear I was 75m downstream. I thought I’d finally got to grips with keeping it all in one bag, but Today’s Forgotten Item was my seat base [forehead slapping emoji]:
‘Gear drifts apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere forgetfulness is loosed upon the world‘. By chance I had a spare Anfibio Bouy Boy which did the job as a seat cushion.

The Barracuda has the same distinctive prow design as my old MRS Nomad which was a fast solo packraft, what MRS call StreamLine^SL. These prows take up nearly 1.5m in the R2 which explains the massive length while still having a lot of room inside the boat. There’s probably enough buoyancy for four people and a caribou calf, with room for all their gear inside the ISS hull storage.

Before we knew it we’d passed under the A380 bridge and were out in the wide tidal estuary. The predicted 20mph winds came barrelling down the channel so I couldn’t resist flipping out my WindPaddle. With the Barracuda’s mooring line clenched in my teeth I managed the sail while Phil’s phone recorded 8 knots, obviously helped by the falling tide.

There were a few forceful gusts and the fetch kicked up towards the end, but the TXL and Barracuda shrugged it all off and my transverse bow sprit (left) did a great job of steadying the straining sail. I think the MRS has wider attachment points on the bow so may not need it, but I’m sure Phil will be buying a PackSail if Anfibio can do him one in black. He did.

Things got a bit chilly out in the deeper water and I noticed my TXL was creasing a bit at the sides. It’s been so many months since I last used it I’d forgotten high-volume packrafts need a second top-up a few minutes in to get good and taut. It didn’t seem to affect speed, but like properly laced shoes, taut feels better. That’s one good thing with Phil’s black boat; it auto pressurises in the pale winter sun. While we sailed, he tucked into his lunch.

The Teign estuary is actually not too industrialised. Under the last bridge The Salty sandbank was starting to emerge from the chop and as we curved round to the river mouth the sidewind pushed us into moored craft caked in algae. At the narrow outlet a rip of bouncing clapotis was jiggling out to sea and on the beach someone was striking poses for their Insta feed.

A little over an hour for 5 and a bit miles, just about all of it sailing both boats. It was interesting to learn that the WP could sail two big boats without much loss of speed. Staggering ashore, it felt odd not to be arm knackered, but once I got over that we headed into the deserted seaside town in search of the legendary Teignmouth Beast. That’s a local XXL pasty, not the jet-black MRS Barracuda.

Zelgear Igla 410 – first paddle

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Zelgear Igla Main page

In a line
Fast, light, well-made and great value European-made hybrid tandem, the Igla’s removable floor and stacked [twin] side tubes keep the width down while retaining stability.

Everything in the **huge bag** except a paddle
**Removable DS floor** for quick rinsing and drying
Unusually **light** on the water
Adjustable **footrest tube**
**Seat** feels great
**Knee braces** are stock
Twin (stacked) **side tubes** keep width down
Ready for **optional rudder** (supplied)
Closeable **sidetube PRVs**
Fittings for a **deck** (supplied)
Three-year **warranty**
About **£720** + tax at current rates (32,400 грн)

Like many PVC IKs, it’s **bulky** (if not necessarily heavy)
Alloy **skeg** appears to be an extra; and would prefer it in plastic
Skeg can’t be **removed** without deflating DS floor
Limited overseas **dealer** network

With clear skies forecast I took the Igla for a quick spin down the tidal River Frome out of Wareham quay. Some 1150 years ago marauding Vikings besieged the Saxon port in a bid to establish a flat-pack furniture enterprise. The ever dependable Alfred the Great sent them ‘packing’.

The recent thaw and rains on top of an incoming spring tide saw water just lapping over the medieval quay’s kerb and nearby pub lawn which for me meant an easy put in. Once cooling in the water I gave the kayak a quick top up and realised the closeable PRVs are quite handy in that you can close them as they start purging at 0.25–3 bar and so maintain firm sidetubes. Today, with temperatures in single figures there’s little risk of overheating blowing the boat to smithereens. I need to track down my manometer to see what the pressures actually are.

After hopping in I did a bit of pre-emptive wobbling while holding onto the quayside to ascertain stability. I don’t want a repetition of the shaky Shipwreck FDS I tried a couple of winter’s ago. The Igla seems good; a bit more tippy than the super-stable Seawave but unlike many FDS IKs, the round side tubes give it a bit more beam at water level. I adjusted the footrest tube further forward but later realised I may have been sat a little too far forward for level trim. I get the feeling these rock-solid drop stitchers are a bit more sensitive to trim as there’s no sag in the floor.

I see now that floating on the water the bow and stern prows are just above water level. With these relatively water-slicing forms (for an IK) I wondered whether the Igla might manage without a skeg but decided not to risk it.
You can’t fit/remove the twin-fin alloy skeg with the DS floor inflated, so I made a quick copy from a plastic container (below). My MYO skeg was a bit flimsy but setting off downstream the Igla tracked fine while turning as easily as the Seawave. It wouldn’t be hard for Zelgear to redesign the skeg and mounting to make it easily removable while still being secure. And while they’re at it they could make it in ABS plastic.

I’m pleased to report the six-point seat feels about as comfy and supportive as I’ve seen in an IK out of the bag. No need for the usual adaptations or outright swaps. Gumotex take note. It weighs only 700g but offers great support, even from the inflated backrest. And semi-deflated, there was no wobble from the seatbase on the hard DS floor. If you’re looking for a good IK seat, try and get one of these.

The slim footrest tube too works better than I thought, thanks to the hard floor, and with knees braces cinched up, I felt secure in the boat. It’s a tad less stable than my Seawave of the same width but not enough to bother you on flatwater, as least. The Mrs was walking along the south bank and I was going to ferry her over to the north side to walk back, but we got separated in the reeds so I headed back into the growing westerly before the spring tide turned on me too.

Before I did, I hopped out and pulled out my plastic skeg. Doing so soon established that like most IKs, the Igla did indeed benefit from a tracking fin. The boat was paddleable but micro-corrections were required to keep it on track; do nothing and the bow comes round. Again, very similar to my old Seawave and unlike the FDS Shipwreck which tracked fine without it’s huge skeg but could turn better, too.
Bang on time, at 12.20 the tide turned and soon, helped by the run-off from the Purbeck Hills, the river was belting along under Wareham bridge. That’s good to know for later paddles out of here.

Having not paddled for months, that little outing wore me out, but I like the Igla. It looks good, performs well, has many useful fittings which other IKs don’t and, for a European-made boat, is a bargain at current prices. Add tax and shipping (if needed) and it still ought to come in at under a £grand. I’m looking forward to taking it out for a longer session into Poole Harbour and beyond.

Book review: South West Sea Kayaking (+ Reeds Channel Almanac)

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In a line
[SWSK has…] Loads of ideas and detailed information covering 50 paddling itineraries along hundreds of miles of England’s fascinating southwestern coastline.

What they say (about South West Sea Kayaking)

This revised and updated third edition provides a guide to the entire South West’s coasts and islands. It is packed with great photography and detailed route maps, alongside descriptions and anecdotes unveiling the region’s rich tapestry of maritime scenery, wildlife, history, geology and culture
April 2021; 272pp; Pesda Press

*South West Sea Kayaking* and Reeds Channel Almanac

Review
Although I’ve only done a couple of routes, this is a comprehensive handbook to safely plan a paddle along this complex but accessible and populated coastline. Or just browse through to get some ideas of what’s possible. Of the 50 suggested routes, 14 are grade ‘A’ for easy, 25 are ‘B’ and the other 11 are ‘C’, like Cape Cornwall, Lundy Island or the crossing to Scilly Isles which are a bit of ma reach for a solo paddler in an IK, even without a gale blowing. Any IK or even a packraft party could manage a B in ideal conditions – but of course even an A-grade paddle could get too lively at the wrong tide in nasty weather. That’s UK sea paddling for you: a lot of sitting about watching the weather forecast.

Suggested start and finish points are given with a postcode and OS map coordinates along with the given OS sheet. It would be nice to also have more easily copied and interpreted GPS decimal degrees (for example: 51.2025, -4.6777: tip of Lundy) which most people use these days over OS coordinates, even if they’re likely have OS maps in their phone or GPS.
Nearby tidal ports are a way of calculating the time of the tide in your area, and there’s a detailed paragraph on tidal times and what might be happening where and at what stage of the tide and how fast it runs during stronger springs. Some of this information was probably collected from a Reeds Almanac (see below) so it’s one less thing to buy or consult. As it is, most of us will check and bookmark local tide times on a phone before reception gets lost.
In particular the Pedsa book will point out where the water can get turbid at spring tides around headlands – important information you’ll struggle to find or interpret easily online and especially important in a less agile inflatable.
A detailed description follows, you can tell most if not all the routes have actually been done by Mark Rainsley the author at least once, and that’s followed by Tide & Weather and Additional Information, all adding up to a thorough guide to what you’re taking on. In between you get boxed asides, most often describing terrible maritime tragedies or badly behaved smugglers which all chime with the author’s sometimes dark humour, as well as background reading: that’s the sort of guidebook we like!

One annoyance in search of a clean design is putting the captions of the many colour photos deep in the gutter of this thick and thick-papered book that’s about an inch in thickness. Along with the uncluttered colour maps, most of these photos work well in visualising the region described.

I can see myself using this much more than Pesda’s North West Sea Kayaking guide I bought years ago and hardly ever used (as I mostly paddled in one small area). Even if you just end up doing a handful of Southwest routes in your IK or P, you’ll set off well armed with what need to know and so won’t regret spending the typically discounted 16 quid. It’s a lot of book for that money.

It was sailer Barry who alerted me to the value of a ring-bound Reeds Almanac prior to our Jurassic paddle. I’ve heard of Reeds of course, but assumed it was strictly for yachtsmen.
In print since 1932, there’s loads of little value or interest to a fairweather sea inflationeer – the most useful thing kayakers want to know are locally intensified tidal streams and the Pesda book covers that with more clarity on the included routes.
Still, it’s reissued every year with annual tide predictions (easily found online anyway) so you can pick up a recent used edition, like the ‘Channel Almanac’ (south England and NW French coast only) for a fiver, ditch the tide and French pages, and learn all about harbour features, the meaning of buoyage and big-picture tidals streams in the Channel over the 12-hour span of a tide (below left).

Packrafting the Jurassic Coast (video)

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I’ve done a few IK paddles in Southeast England between Rye and Portsmouth, but the Sussex and Hampshire coasts aren’t that inspiring. So it’s about time I started exploring the far more interesting and much more extensive Southwest Coast. From the Isle of Wight to Cornwall and back up to the Severn there are scores of inshore excursions possible in an inflatable. Just as in the far northwest where I mostly sea paddle, all you need is a fair tide and paddle-friendly winds, the latter a bit less rare down south.

In a blobby packraft? You cannot be serious!

So in the face of predicted moderate winds I cooked up a 50-km Jurassic overnighter from Weymouth to Swanage in Dorset. I’m pretty sure they opportunistically rebranded the plain old Purbeck or just ‘Dorset’ coast as the ‘Jurassic Coast‘ soon after that 1993 movie and haven’t looked back since.
Like much of the Southwest coast, the beaches and country lanes become a logjam of holidaymakers on a warm summer’s day. On the water, our paddle would pass below sections of cliffs a couple of miles long and take us to the famed landmarks of Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door arch (top of the page) and Dancing Ledge. We could even carry on back north past Old Harry’s Rocks and across Studland Bay right into Poole Harbour to catch out trains home.

Compared to using regular (solo) packrafts, my confidence in my TXL for sea paddling is a revelation. After all, it’s still just another blobby, single-chamber packraft. It must be a combination of the added size giving a kayak-like perception of security (as I found in my MRS Nomad), as well as the responsiveness and speed from a longer waterline and, I now recognise, the sometimes noticeable added glide from the Multimat floor. There’s also the fact that paddlechum Barry was up for the Dorset run in his similar MRS Nomad, making this untypical packraft outing less daunting.

Lulworth tides – all or nothing (of not much).

For some bathymetric reason – possibly the Atlantic tidal surge backing up in the Straits of Dover, plus hidden offshore shelves – the tides off the east Dorset coast are very odd: they can rise or drop all day, but have a range of just two metres, about as low as it gets in the UK. That ought to mean moderate ebb flows pushing up against prevailing westerlies, plus we were heading into neaps. And while often cliff-bound, if we stayed alert to escape routes we could easily bail and walk or climb out with our packrafts.

East of Lulworth Cove the Jurassic Coast‘s bucket & spade Babylon is interrupted by a 5-mile wide Danger Area – an army firing range. This was probably not one of UNESCO’s criteria for World Heritage status, but the SW coastal path also gets closed for a similar distance. Barry’s Reeds Almanac had a page or two on this (left), as well as useful tidal flow charts (drops to the west; rises east). I left it to Barry to call the ‘0800 DUCK!’ number, but imagined surely they’d leave the target practice to the off season. In fact they’re all it most of the time Mon–Fri, including an evening session 9pm to midnight: all we had to do was click this.

fishing.app – handy and similar toa Reeds Almanac but free

With a plan taking shape, I in turn bought a copy of Pesda’s South West Sea Kayaking in the hope of being alerted to local anomalies. I’m glad I did. It turned up with just hours to spare and identified that the run from Kimmeridge Bay round the Purbeck corner to Swanage was a grade up from the easy section from Weymouth. With headlands, submarine ledges and long lines of cliffs, without a foot recce I decided we may be better off skipping this bit.

It’s noon in Weymouth, but with offshores now predicted by late afternoon, we fast forward by taxi to **Ringstead Bay**, 5 miles in. That first section from Weymouth looks nothing special.

Put in at Ringstead. Ten mph westerlies blowing against an ebbing neap tide.

My Mk2 transverse bowsprit for a wide WindPaddle sail mount to limit swaying in stronger winds.
I’m giving the **Multimat floor** yet another go too, all the better to skim over the water.

We’re on the water at 1pm, hoping to reach Chapman’s Pool, about 21km away.
But around 5pm winds are said to veer offshore and strengthen, so we’ll see.
We sail at about 5-6kph – not much faster than paddling – but I note my TXL creeps forward about half a click faster than the MRS – must be the stiffening Multimat.

Propelled at paddling speed by his inflatable AirSail, Barry casually checks his investment portfolio.

The cliffs below Chaldon Downs. At times we paddled as we sailed to make less work for the wind.

Forty five minutes in, I pull in the sail and line the TXL up to thread Bat’s Head arch.
Note how the layers of chalk beds here have been pushed up to nearly vertical.
Give it half a million years and Bat’s Head will be as big as nearby Durdle Door.

Approaching the famous Durdle Door arch alongside a crowded beach.
The TXL still weathercocks a bit under sail; I keep having to steer hard inland, but the bowsprit ‘stick’ limits the sail’s ability to twist. Or maybe the wind’s bouncing off the cliffs and blowing us offshore a little.
Sitting further back to weight the back end over the waves may help.

Sunbathers watch spellbound as Barry smoothly ‘Durdles the Door’ – a Southwest kayaker’s rite of passage.

The Door has been durdled. Some claim ‘Dorset’ (formerly Wessex) was named after this famous arch.
In high summer young bloods jump off the 60-metre arch. Appropriately, it’s called ‘tombstoning’.

Near the entrance into Lulworth Cove things get choppy. Sat high on the airmat floor, if I feel unstable I can easily let it down. As we head through the Cove’s narrow neck a patrol boat circles back and instructs Barry we can’t carry on east; the army ranges are firing.
‘I thought you said you were going call them, Barry? You had **one** job to do…’
‘But you said they hardly ever do this on a balmy, July’s day!’
And so it went on…

360° selfing in sheltered Lulworth Cove.

A salty-eared boatman tells us the army pack up about 5pm, about 2.5 hours from now by which time the offshores may be on us as we cross the Kimmeridge Ledges mentioned in the Pesda book.
As we slurp a 99 with sprinkles the odd gust blows offshore.
We can’t even pack up and walk the cliff path; it’s closed too, and so is the B3070 road.
Barry wants to paddle on a 5pm, but I propose we bus to Swanage rather than risk being be left high and dry.
Tomorrow we’ll paddle north towards Poole – or as far as the predicted headwinds allow.

So a paltry 5 miles – but the classic stretch of the Jurassic Coast.

A couple of hours later we enjoy a pint and…

But there’s no campsite till August, so we pitch for free up in Durlston Country Park to the sound of beery revellers and Tuesday-night hoons doing burn-outs along the seafront. What can it be like on a Saturday night?

Six am next morning, a light breeze blowing from the northwest means no condensation ;-))
The Anfibio Multimat passed the sleeping test, too.

I walk a mile south to Purbeck’s corner at Durlston Head to inspect the tidal stream. Two hours before LW, it’s negligible, but further west, St Albans Head just out of Chapman’s Pool is said to be stronger. I must do that walk sometime.
Above, a ferry heads from Poole to the Channel Islands.

Looking back north you just see our tents on Peveril Point,
Ballard Down chalk cliffs and pinnacles stretch out beyond, and Bournemouth’s at the back.

I’m amazed how Barry always manages to roll his MRS up so compactly.

At the cafe we meet Rach and Mark setting off on the final day of a staggering 630-mile walk along the Southwest coast from Minehead in north Devon. Their picture above taken a few hours later.

Meanwhile we prime our boats for the 6.3 miles past Old Harry to Poole Harbour Entrance.
We may carry on to Poole itself, but a strengthening wind may nix that idea.

No sailing today, Barry inches into the light morning breeze across Swanage Bay.
We reversed this trip a couple of months back.

Ballard cliffs in the wind’s lee at glassy low water.

Ideal paddling conditions – a chance to explore tidal caves I’ve never noticed before.

Ballard’s spike, thought by some to be a fossilised Dendrosauraus tooth.

We approach the Pinnacles to the squawk of agitated seabirds.

Arches ripe for threading as far as the eye can see.

And it means there’s a lot of this string-weed floating about. It catches in our skegs but I have a solution.

Leaving Harry’s, Barry’s is a bit of a Lethargic Larry cutting across Studland Bay.
Halfway across, I remove a metre-long, kilo of Swanage string-weed caught in his skeg.

It’s all going nicely until 10.30am when the wind kicks up, then picks up some more.
But the GPS revealed we kept plugging on at 5kph, just with a lot more effort.
As Barry observed, it was a slog but good to know our packrafts can progress against this sort of wind.

With brain-out jet-skiers, sailboats, motorboats, working boats and the rattling Sandbanks chain ferry, we have to time our crossing across the busy vortex of Poole Harbour Entrance. Hitting 8kph, we cross a sharp eddyline where the incoming tide clashed with still-draining Poole Harbour. Barry hops out quick before the chain ferry trundles back. (Turns out it’s actually free for northbound pedestrians).

From Swanage to Sandbanks, followed by a 90-minute walk to Poole station for the train home.

Sigma TXL • Packrafting Swanage

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Sigma TXL main page
Kayaking Swanage
MRS Nomad S1 main page

Chalk pinnacles and arches. Studland on the right; Swanage back left.

I’ve been looking forward to getting back to Dorset’s amazing chalk pinnacles near Studland which we paddled in the Seawave one calm morning back in 2019. Today the tide was right and the sun was out; it was just a bit chilly and on the windy side; a good day to see how my Sigma TXL might perform at sea.

A couple of paddlechums were also up for a pre-dawn departure; Barry rode down with his similar MRS Nomad S1, while Nimbus – yet to fully embrace inflatable paddlecraft – brought his 17-foot, plastic P&H Scorpio sea kayak (left). Even at ~30 kilos, it was a proper boat for the conditions and we imagined he’d run rings round our packrafts.

The plan was to paddle the four miles from Studland beach to Swanage town, leave the kayak somewhere then retrace the route over the downs to the vehicles.

Half the length, over twice the width, but a tenth of the weight of a sea kayak.

Early all-day parking is a problem at Studland as the car parks don’t officially open till 9am and anywhere else you’ll get towed and Twitter-shamed. But we slipped into Knoll Beach parking at 8 and were on the water before 9am.
By this time a one-metre tide was about 90 minutes after HW, and we set off into a steady onshore 12-mph northeasterly which would stop Barry and me running away with ourselves. By the time we turned the right angle at the Point for the run SSW along the cliffs, we ought to be able to put up our sails to catch up with Nimbus, except I forgot my WindPaddle. Oh well, I’d just have to paddle the full four miles and get medevaced out.

The tides at Swanage aren’t the classic sine wave. Every other tide rises and falls normally, but in between is a mini low and high. Who knows how or why but I suppose the reservoir of Poole Harbour, plus the English Channel funnel have something to do with dampening every other surge. Either way, the range was only a metre today and is hardly ever more than two down here; not enough volume to raise any strong currents. Nimbus later calculated a southerly flow of around 1mph which may help explain our higher than expected packraft speeds.

2.8 metre TXL – a good sea packraft? We shall see

Nimbus sets off for the Point, far right.
Could the packrafts keep up?

Part of the reason I got the longer TXL was to try more coastal packrafting, even if the extra bulk and weight (actually only 450g more than my previous Rebel 2K) might set me back on overnighters. This is not a paddle I’d have attempted in my backheavy 2K, even with a deck; it’s just too slow to be enjoyable. But having owned a 2.9-m Nomad S1 like Barry’s, I was fairly sure the TXL’s near identical length, buoyancy and similar ‘footprint’ would make a difference. There is something about sitting in the middle, not the back end of a boat, that makes it feel more reassuring.
Unlike my Thames paddle a week earlier, I decided not to fit the TXL’s inflatable floor pad in search of a better glide. As things were, in today’s wind and chop the stability from a lower seating position would be more important.

It was about 1.5 miles to the arches at Old Harry’s headland, so I set off directly across the bay, hoping for flatter conditions further out. That wasn’t the case; the odd wave was breaking, but the TXL moved across the water purposefully. Sure, it rolled, pitched and yawed in the side waves, but sat down low I felt completely at ease, maybe even more than in my Seawave IK?
Barry was clearly having the same bouncy fun in his MRS and I’d assumed the P&H would have raced off, if for no other reason than to maintain stability. But later Nimbus said the Scorpio felt a little on edge in the high-frequency chop and couldn’t have gone much faster than us on this stage.

You’d think the two long, light packrafts’ would have been blown about, but the central, kayak-like position and added buoyancy made them easy to control (with skegs fitted) and the high sides kept most of the water out. I picked up maybe a litre over a mile and a half and didn’t miss a deck at all (though I did appreciate the drysuit).

Even with photo faffing, we reached the stacks of Old Harry in about half an hour, and it hadn’t felt like any more of a struggle than in an IK. It was really quite a revelation how well the TXL (and Nomad) were performing with just an extra 50cm or 20% in the waterline over a regula packraft. The lightness of the boats must have something to do with it.
Round the outside of the Point the wind and tide were fighting it out in a tidal race. It made me realise how well timed our visit in the Seawave had been three years ago. We’d arrived here in much calmer conditions but also around mid-tide with a less nasty looking race. Going round the outside today may well have been doable but set aside unpredictable currents, waves can also stand up and break out of nowhere. It was more fun to slip through on the remnants of the outgoing tide between the mainland and Old Harry’s stack. Next time I come here, I’ll make sure to arrive at the top half of the tide so all the arches can be threaded.

View from above about three hours later. Low water but still a bit of a race off the point.

After a bit of promo filming for the new book, we turned 120° to the southwest and expected to have the wind behind us, but it remained a case of dealing with sidewaves plus cliff rebounds, so we kept out to sea. Despite the packrafts jigging about like popcorn in a hot pan, we managed to make progress south along the cliffs, the Scorpio now edging ahead.

After being jostled around, Barry decided to air up his AirSail, but even with two of us, pumping it up properly in the chop proved too tricky. For easy deployment on the water, the sprung-hooped Packsail (like the old WindPaddle) is a much better idea, even if it’s more bulky to carry.

We rounded Ballard Point where the cliffs turned into Swanage Bay, and with the wind now on our backs, the GPS recorded 6kph (see graph below). As usual though, it didn’t feel that fast as the boat squirrelled around from the stern. I thought about moving myself further back (relatively easily done in the TXL unlike the fixed solo Nomad) so the lightened bow trailed downwind, but it wasn’t really that bad, it just felt sloppy. Sailor Barry was now keeping up with Nim until we all rolled up on Swanage Beach, aired down the packboats and made a beeline for the cafe for a superb Full Swanage Breakfast.

The cafe let us leave the boat among their bins out back, but I was overruled on walking the four miles back over Ballard Downs back to Knoll Beach. Barry clearly had a liking for taxis which I consider more of an emergency service.
“It is not the Packrafting Way!” I squealed as he put a bag over my head and shoved me in the back. Nimbus kept a diplomatic silence.
Back at Knoll Beach, Barry roared off on his motorbike while Nim and I wandered back the way we’d paddled to check out at Old Harry’s from above. The tide was now at its extended low period and the wind had swung to the southeast, sheltering Studland Bay. Down below, a lone kayaker was just setting off.
“That looks fun, a. We should try that sometime.”

Judging by this outing, the TXL has proved to be just what I’d hoped: a dependably agile coastal cruiser with all the other benefits of a packraft. More sea paddles to come.

Kayaking the Sussex Coast

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Once we were let out in the Covid summer of 2020, we did a very nice coastal walk from Hastings to Rye along the Sussex coast. Hot, but not so windy, it would have been just right for paddling. Today conditions were similar for a westbound transit from Rye back towards Hastings.
High Water (and a spring tide too) was at a very reasonable noon in Rye, with a forecast of 8-14mph from the east and a bit of a kick at 3pm. I was hoping for the upper limit and a bit of splashy sport, so brought the WindPaddle I’d used on the packraft last month in Scotland in much stronger winds.

It’s only a 10-minute walk from Rye station to a boat ramp on the quay where the water was still inching up the concrete as I pumped up the Gumotex.

I was taking a gamble trying my untested new rudder set up. Because I expected it to play up, I fitted the stock skeg so I could lift a problematic rudder and carry on as normal without coming shore. To be without a rudder or skeg with a backwind at sea would not be ideal.
Being the ever recirculating goldfish, I forgot to try out my sail stick mount idea.

Rye hasn’t been on the coast since 1287 or so when, along with gradual land reclamation, the biggest of a series of 13th-century storms filled the adjacent marshy inlet with silt and shingle which finished off semi-abandoned Old Winchelsea and radically redrew the low-lying coastline where the Kent and Sussex borders meet. It was the same in Pevensey to the west.
The gif on the left from this interesting regional website shows how the coastline of southeast England was transformed in the late medieval era. Where the Rother river once flowed directly east to enter the sea at New Romney, the filled-in bay saw it diverted south below the old hill town of Rye, now stranded two miles from the sea.
The then important port of Winchelsea was rebuilt on its present site in 1288, but eventual silting saw both it and Rye’s maritime importance decline. What this area may lack in epic spaces common to the north and west of Britain, it gains in fascinating history. 1066 and all that.

I set off along the River Brede which wraps around Rye’s south side like a moat, and soon joins the Rother. It’s about 5km to the open sea.

I’m into the wind but the grass banks are under water and the wind turbines are spinning merrily; all good signs.

Rye Harbour. The tide is high and I’m moving on.

In 45 minutes I reach the old breakwater opposite Camber Sands where I recall bucket & spading as a child. The sea looks depressingly flat.

Seals at the river mouth (a few days later).

It’s nearly 10km to the distant cliffs, a two-hour haul. And with the breeze from behind, I’m soon streaming with sweat. I’m not sure my water will last.

Going with the Flow
A few years ago while planning Newhaven to Brighton, I learned an odd thing about Sussex and Kent tides. For the last two hours of the incoming (eastbound) flood, the tide keeps rising but reverses westbound along the English coast as it backs up at the Straight of Dover and spills back down the sides. That makes HW is around the same time in Folkestone, and 140 miles to the west, past the Isle of Wight, but HW at all the places in between lags behind.
Tidal steams are not that strong here – wind will have much more of a bearing on paddling – but this means you get only four hours eastbound flow with the flood tide and prevailing southwest winds. But if you time your run with a warm easterly off the continent and go westbound – as I did on this occasion – you get a much longer run with the tidal current; eight hours or more; maybe 45km all the way to Eastbourne. The question is: can you paddle that long.

A breeze picks up so I flick up the sail. I check my GPS and am doing 3-4kph, while I can paddle at around 5-6kph. Then the breeze drops away. I wasn’t really planning to paddle the full 30+ clicks to Cooden station, but I can always get off at Hastings, a few stops before.

At least the rudder seems to working as it should, though any quick response is dulled a little by the skeg. A rudder’s not really needed in these conditions, though it compensates for me being blown gradually onshore.
I’m trying a rudder lift-line only, not a rudder lowering line as well. But once in the boat I find I can’t turn enough to even see the lifted rudder to flick it down with the paddle, so I’ll probably fit a drop-line later.

I creep along the expanse of Winchelsea Beach. It’s hot work in a backwind. Eventually I reach the start of the cliffs where the coast turns more east-west, putting the wind directly behind me. But paddling at effectively wind speed, there is no cooling effect. More familiar with paddling at the other end of Britain, I’m not used to 27°C.

Then, as predicted, around 3pm the breeze picks up and I can get the sail up.

Paddling half a mile from the shore, initially it was hard to know if I’m moving and at what speed. So waking up the GPS screen was a handy way of telling if the sailing speed was worthwhile.
With the odd gust I reach nearly 7kph, but average less than 5kph, a bit slower than paddling, but I’m not dripping like a leaky tap or needing to drink. In fact I could nearly doze off.

The cliffs inch by. This is the sea end of the Wealden sandstone formation, less high and steep than the better known chalky Seven Sisters to the west, or Dover’s white cliffs to the northeast. Both chalk cliffs are part of the same formation or bed, but when the land was squeezed and uplifted to the dome or hump was eroded away to expose the older sandstone below. This is what they call the Weald, and near Tunbridge Wells, East Grinstead and Frant, the weathered sandstone ridge produces small outcrops where I started rock climbing as a teenager (right).

There’s barely a sensation of movement; it’s not as bracing as I was hoping

I pass the Stade, the east end of Hastings where the cliffs drop back down. A few souls are enjoying the last day of summer on the shingle beach.

I keep going to the pier and decide to have a leisurely take out there. It’s gone 4pm so another 10km to get the train 6.15 from Cooden would be a rush.

Landfall by Hastings pier.
Compared to the fabulous Summer Isles, for me these southeast coast paddles lack drama and interest, but are easy to reach if tomorrow’s weather looks good.
We walked Hastings to Rye again a day or two later; it took about the same time and was more enjoyable (though it was cooler).
The rudder foot pivot worked fine, though needed a bit of re-tensioning at the pier. Next time I can confidently leave the skeg off, though I can see a rudder would only be needed when sailing or paddling in windier conditions. That is all I have to say for now.