With a busy weekend coming up and a busy week behind, Marty and I decided to sneak out for a paddle on Friday evening. We put in at Tuggerawong at 5:15 and paddled across to the Entrance. There was a noreaster blowing as usual for this time of year and a well developed two to three foot wind wave was on our stern quarter on the way across.
I'm in the market for a spare paddle to compliment my beautiful Werner Cyprus so I had a go with Marty's spare carbon fibre Skee paddle. These are a locally made paddle which has a fairly large blade area and are very popular with Mirage paddlers due to their strong catch and light weight. This one was adjustable and the shortest I could get it was 214 cm, just a bit long for me in my narrow beamed boat. I certainly found it delivered with the powerful catch but it felt awkward to me whenever I tried a sweep stroke or blended strokes together. After 5km I had a blister and a sore tendon in my elbow so I swapped back to the Cyprus. A nice light paddle in a ruddered boat but perhaps not suited to a more traditional skegged design where a wider variety of strokes are used. Maybe I'm just spoilled, but the search continues.
We spent a while in the channel, playing in the calmer waters, edging and generally goofing around with draw strokes and rudder strokes. We ran the gauntlet of fishing lines down to the channel entrance, but the tide was very low and we decided not to try and go out into the open ocean.
As the sun was setting, we headed back across the lake and made it back to Tuggerawong in the last of the light. The wind had dropped and the lake had calmed down nicely. My new kayalite did it's job well and kept us very visible to any other boat traffic. Thanks for your company and the loan of the paddle Marty.
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