Some time ago I wrote an article about sea kayakers being rescued, and having to pay for their rescue.

This article from the Hobart Mercury newspaper is exactly the type of situation I was talking about.

Two planes and two boats searching round in the middle of the night for a fool that shouldn't have been out there in the first place.

This is very reminiscent of 1982 when Richard Flanagan and Jim Bucirde thought they would nip across Bass Strait without any knowledge of sea kayaking, or local knowledge of tides and currents. They set off early in the morning, failed to paddle to Clark Island (a very simple 4 hour paddle), and were rescued right on dark.
Over 12 hours, trying to do a four hour crossing.

Richard Moore seems to me to have been similarly ill suited for sea kayaking in this area. It would appear that he could not roll, so one must assume that he may well have been relying on a paddle float. This is laughable. They may be great in a swimming pool, but have no place in the sea where conditions must have been so extreme that you have capsized in the first place. It's possible for paddle floats to blow away with the wind before you can use them.

I can only surmise what happened in this particular instant - but I have talked to the local resident (Liz Ponting) at Little Musselroe Bay. Liz generally sees a lot of kayakers starting and finishing trips. Apparently a couple of groups of two have just completed Bass Strait crossings.

On the morning in question the Maatsuyker Canoe Club (7 or 8 paddlers) started a trip to Flinders Island at 6.30am (low tide was about 7.48am). This was good planning and would mean they would easily get near Spike Bay on Clark Island and be swept along by the current to Preservation Island, and maybe on to Thunder and Lightning Bay. I personally may have started an hour earlier than that.

Richard Moore arrived by car at 7.00am, and started paddling shortly after 9.00am. Ten hours later he must have capsized (in a light swell and a light NE wind) and failed to re-enter his kayak. It would seem he was then in the water for 4 hours after setting off his EPIRB, before being rescued.

His situation was fairly similar to Flanagan and Bucirde - had they not been found till daylight the next day, they may well have died. Later on he was observed sitting in his car at Little Musselroe Bay campground where he stayed for about a week. The locals thought he may have been suffering from shock at the thought of the very near miss he had had.

Why did Richard Moore fail to get the short distant to Clark Island??? One must assume that he had the fitness to paddle the distance - otherwise he would have been completely crazy to start in the first place. Therefore I see two possibilities - which really amount to the same thing. For years I read about sea kayakers ferrygliding across currents - they're crazy. You may perhaps ferryglide a very short distant across a slow moving current, but to ferryglide for 4 hours across a current that is as fast as you can paddle is not on. Should you attempt this then you will end up sitting out in mid stream not going anywhere - apart from more or less paddling straight into the current to try and stay on the straight line between the two points you are crossing to and from.

The other possibility is that he had a GPS, and plotted in the straightline course from Little Musselroe Bay to Rebecca Bay - and attempted to paddle this course, by ferrygliding.

It is very difficult for some people to grasp the idea of ALWAYS paddling at right angles to the current, and let the current take you one way, and then bring you back again. Maybe if you consider the water between the islands to be a page of paper, with the ruled lines being the direction of the current. You start at the bottom of the page and paddle at right angles to the lines, and you get to the top of the page in the shortest possible time - you are not ever paddling into the current and thereby being slowed down. You then have to imagine that this whole page of paper can move 20 km to the left, and then 20 km back to the right when the tide changes - it doesn't matter a damn how fast the current is. It can be 12 knots, but provided you allow the same amount of time in either direction you will end up exactly where you intended to be. I did endeavour to explain this in a separate article.

Laurie Ford