I decided to take a relatively inexperienced person along, on the condition that Jeff and the others didn’t wait for her - I didn’t want what would probably be a serious trip to be slowed down by a beginner. Lyn Grey has paddled before - once - to Maria Island last year, in fairly good conditions. Since then she hasn’t been too well, and has only just started paddling again - at the age when most people are thinking of retiring and taking up lawn bowls. The problem was that I would shortly be moving to the East Coast of Tasmania to live, and wouldn’t be able to give her anymore training. I notified all club members by email a week earlier that she was only coming on the condition that they not wait for the two of us.

The tide was right for a 9.30am start from Robbins Passage on Saturday, and Jeff, Jamie, and Ian arrived at my place late Friday night. Bob picked up Lyn early saturday morning, and went straight to Robbins Passage. This area has a 12 ft rise and fall of tide, so you need to be there somewhere near high water to have enough
water to paddle in. At low water they drive vehicles, and cattle, across the passage to Robbins Island - over the wet sand.

I arrived early to help Lyn get organised, she was going to paddle the ‘Splinter’ - an old down-river racer of mine. This is a fairly stable kayak, but has a very low back deck and very little room for gear. The bow is too low and narrow to put anything in. This kayak did not have a rear bulkhead, and did not have a pump fitted. It is actually the first kayak to ever go to Maatsuyker Island and return - paddled by my 16 year old son 20 years ago. All the gear had to be in small bags to squeeze in past the seat - but Lyn only took her food and a few other small items. I took her tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and dry clothes in the longboat.

Lyn and I were ready to depart just as Jeff and the others arrived, so we set off to get a bit of a start on them.The weather was ideal - flat and a bit overcast, with a very light northerly wind. Somewhere near Kangaroo Island (7km) I noticed Lyn trying to keep a wet bandaid on one hand, and found out that she had a blister from
the training she’d been doing. We landed on Kangaroo Island briefly to get some gloves out of her clothes bag - because as I explained to her, if your hands get too bad to paddle with, you’re stuffed (just as bushwalkers have to really look after their feet).

There was no sign of the other four behind us so we set a course direct for Stack Island  - 10km away. We could just use the sails to head in the right direction, but I knew we might just miss the island as the tide would sweep us past as we got closer. It was too difficult for Lyn to point any closer to the wind, and we would have
gone too slowly. About halfway across I noticed some sails way behind us, just appearing from behind Kangaroo Island, and thought that they would not catch us. However, they sailed on a much higher course to allow for the wind and tide, and about a km from Stack Island I could see that Jamie was steaming along flat out with both his sails up, and was overtaking us like a steam train. Jeff and Bob weren’t far behind him, with Ian a bit further back.

The tide and wind were too strong for Lyn and I to get to Stack Island, so we continued on to Hunter Island where I thought we would probably camp anyway - as the campsite on Stack Island is quite often too wet to use during winter. The six of us all landed together on Hunter Island, and we had a quick look at the hut that
we used to use for camping in in years gone by. It had only ever been half completed, and rarely used by anyone - but has since been bought by a new owner. He has done a lot of work on it, and it was obviously used on a monthly basis, so we crossed this off our list of places to use. Jeff then decided to go back across the 1km channel to Stack Island, to possibly camp on it anyway, but Ian stayed behind for a couple of hours to have a look at this end of Hunter Island. We stopped on a beach on the western side of Stack Island out of the wind for lunch, and lit a fire - the day was cooling down as the wind was increasing. Even Jamie was wearing a coat, and gloves. And at Christmas time on the 14 day Flinders Island trip all he ever wore was a cotton singlet under his buoyancy vest - the rest of us couldn’t believe it, we’d all been rugged up in long sleeved thermals.

As the forecast was for rain, Jeff decided that maybe Stack Island campsite would become too muddy, so we had a change of plan, and headed back across to Hunter Island, to a beach that we had checked out a few years ago. The wind had now gone a bit to the NE and freshened yet some more, and it was pretty chilly on the beach. However, the campsites in a hollow behind the back of the beach were relatively sheltered, and would have been ideal in the normal westerly winds that frequent this area. There was no sign of Ian crossing to Stack Island from further down the coast of Hunter, and I left my kayak down on the beach with its big bright pink sail up so he would see it.

After changing into dry clothes and finding a spot almost out of the wind round a small point, for a fire, we cooked tea. It was now very late in the day and there was still no sign of Ian. This worried quite a few of our party - Jamie had already walked down the coast to where we had left Ian, but he was not there. We assumed that he had gone to the old campsite on Stack Island, un-noticed by us as we put our tents up and gathered drift wood for the fire. We had a brief club meeting to discuss the offer by National Parks to take part in the forming of a management plan for the newly formed Tasman National Park. Even with the fire it was too cold to stay up much beyond 7.30pm, so we retired early.

The next morning delivered a ‘strong wind warning’ from the radio - north easterlies, and then gradually going round to the west, then south west and then southerly tomorrow. It had been blowing strongly all night, and the chance of landing on Steep Island were pretty slim - as the sea would be crashing up the rocky foreshore.
I didn’t like the sound of southerlies tomorrow so decided Lyn and I would head off at 9.00am today, and use the strong northerlies to blow us across the channel into the shallow water near the Tasmanian mainland. Then we could paddle in much flatter water along to the cars, being close enough to the shore to go ashore in any
emergency.

Jeff also didn’t see much future in waiting about for another day, and would leave too - going via Stack Island to gather in Ian if he was there.

I rafted up with Lyn and tied our two bows together, and with both my sails up sailed straight downwind. This was pretty good, and we flew along at a good pace, surfing down the bigger waves in the deep channel - the only problem was getting cold. After an hour or so we were pretty close to the shore, and the waves
were non-existent in the shallow water, which was only a metre or so deep. It was now safe for Lyn to paddle by herself, even though it would be side on to the strong wind. She handled this quite well, and we made good progress along the coast towards Short Island. I kept looking back and out to sea for any sign of the others, but there was too many rain squalls to see anything. Apparently they found Ian OK, but had to wait for him to pack up, and left about an hour after Lyn and I. They then headed straight across in a direct line to Kangaroo Island in some big seas and strong winds - having a terrific sail. Bob said later that it was the roughest conditions he’d ever been in - but I’ve no doubt Jeff was looking back every now and then to see if he was still upright. Sailing is just so much fun in these conditions that you just have to go off as fast as you can, tearing down wave after wave. On a long open crossing the front paddlers would normally take their sails down every now and then for the last paddlers to catch up, but across here they were getting closer and closer to the cars every minute - and running into shallower and shallower water as they neared Kangaroo Island.

Lyn and I got to Short Island just as the wind freshened even more, and went round to a bit more of a headwind, so I decided to tow Lyn the last 6 km. I could just sail across here, and had both sails up, surging along with the Splinter following along behind. We were side on to some small waves till we actually entered Robbins Passage, then the waves decreased even more. I breathed a sigh of relief that we were now only two km from the cars, and I had got a relatively inexperienced paddler back from Hunter Island in quite bad conditions. There was still no sign of the others catching up.

THEN, the longboat experienced a lot of drag and I heard a muffled groaning like a sick seal. The Splinter was over, and Lyn was desperately hanging on to the stern. I quickly released both sails which were still pulling the kayaks along, and hauled in on the towline to bring the Splinter alongside. This was my worst fear - having to rescue a kayak without bulkheads or a pump, with someone who’d never done a rescue before. The paddle was floating a short distance away, but was out of my reach for now. Lyn had swallowed a lot of water while struggling to get out of the kayak - which would have still been doing a fair speed even upside down. She looked deathly white, and sounded quite ill. I struggled with the kayak full of water, dragging it up over the deck for an X-rescue, and had to direct Lyn to swim out to the bow of the Splinter to put some weight on it to help lift the stern out of the water. This took a couple of goes, but eventually all the water was out and the kayak was back in the water up the right way for Lyn to get back in. My front sail was up all the time this was going on, and I’d noticed the sails of the others coming round the Wallaby Islands about three quarters of a km away, and heading up Robbins Passage. I’d hoped they might have seen the trouble I was in and come to my aid, but no doubt their sails hid me from view till well past - and with the speed they were sailing at they wouldn’t have been gazing around a 360 degree circle.

Now Lyn was back in her kayak, facing the opposite direction to mine, and her paddle was probably fifty metres away upwind. I couldn’t let her go or she would have capsized again, and that could have been fatal, and I didn’t like my chances of turning both kayaks around against that strong wind. It would have taken too long - it was imperative to get Lyn into dry clothes as soon as possible. As the wind and waves would be pushing the paddle towards the shore (only a couple of hundred metres downwind) I decided I would come back for it, and set my sail and Lyn surfed backwards towards the shore. The tide was so high we surfed right up on the bank, stopping with the kayaks half out of the water.

It only took a few minutes to get Lyn’s clothes out and point her towards some sheltering bushes and telling her to get into dry clothes and stay behind the bushes out of the wind, while I went out to pick up the paddle. I paddled straight back out into the wind and waves, and couldn’t believe that I didn’t spot the paddle immediately. I circled around and around, and up and down, and towards the west which is where the current would have taken it a bit. (I worked out later on that if the current had been say 2 km per hour, and if it had taken me say 15 minutes to get Lyn ashore, and back out again - then the paddle would have gone half a km in that time).

After about 20 minutes of searching I was just starting to work this out, but thought I’d better go and check on Lyn before going off again. I found her deathly white, and walking up and down behind the bushes trying to warm up. It was time to do something before she succumbed  to hypothermia. The choices were to put her tent up and put her in her sleeping bag, or walk the 2km to the cars. She certainly wasn’t any way exhausted, just cold from the immersion, and was quite coherent and walking without stumbling - so would be OK to walk. This is what she wanted to do anyway, so I told her to walk along the shoreline, so I could tow her kayak along close to shore, and keep an eye on her.

This was OK for a while, but this country is very low and marshy, and there are quite a few drainage channels flowing into the sea. At the first one I had to run the two kayaks ashore, and pick her up and carry her in waist deep water across the channel. She was in dry clothes and wet weather gear, and wearing a woollen beanie,
and had a pocket full of butterscotch, and chocolate bars. A bit later on she encountered a very boggy point and had to backtrack and go inland through some thick scrub, and I lost sight of her. The kayaks were starting to scrape over rocks as the tide fell, so I made for the cars, leaving Lyn to look after herself.

The others had been back for a couple of hours by this stage, and were patiently waiting. Jamie and Bob sped off in Bob’s car to drive along the road into Woolnorth property in case they could see Lyn across the paddocks, but came back a bit later without any sighting of her. While they were away I heard about their own
dramas - Jamie has smashed one blade off his paddle leaving Hunter Island, and had sailed all the way back with only one blade - a pretty good effort in those blustery conditions. Someone had got too close to Bob and knocked a small nylon fitting off his rudder, and Jeff had had to repair it at sea - no mean feat either.

Jeff had walked along the shore to the first point but hadn’t seen Lyn coming, so Jamie and I then set off with her spare dry clothes to walk all the way till we did find her. We only got to the first point and there she was, strolling along the shoreline. Wet to her waist where she had had to ford more boggy patches, but quite cheerful about the whole incident. She was soon drinking Ian’s hot soup, and Bob’s hot brew, and it was only at this stage that Ian met Lyn - as they basically hadn’t seen each other the whole trip, Shortly after we all headed for home.

That night I had to break the news to Cec that I had lost her best paddle - a paddle that had been around the Greek Islands, and circumnavigated Fiji. Naturally she wasn’t all that pleased. I studied the map with a view to working out where the paddle might end up. It all depended on what the wind was doing at midnight. If it had been taken sideways by the current, it would have eventually been eased out to one side by the northerly wind and waves, and grounded on the falling tide - maybe somewhere in the vicinity of Kangaroo Island. IF the wind remained northerly at midnight at the next high tide, then it would have been driven further ashore, and stayed there when the tide fell again. So if I paddled along the shore at high tide the next day there was a remote chance it would be floating up against the grassy banks. Of course if the wind had gone round to the west or SW by midnight then it was probably half way to Victoria.

I was on the water an hour and a half before high water in the middle of the day, and paddled right along to Welcome Inlet, no more than a few metres offshore most of the way. The wind was gusting out of Harcus Inlet and Swan Bay with such strength that I had trouble making any headway at times - and on the ABC news that night they mentioned that the wind had been 40knots in this area during the day.

There was not a sign of the paddle, but it was still an interesting trip. Usually we get straight out into deeper water when we paddle in this area, as the tide can fall very quickly and leave you high and dry - with the water going out 6km. The tides were unusually high today, and I was able to paddle a few metres from the shore all the way to Welcome Inlet and back. I snuck round one small point and surprised a couple of wallabies grazing a metre from the water - one hopped away a few paces, but the other one just watched as I glided by. Then around another point I surprised a huge sea eagle in a tree only ten metres away - but he very quickly gained a lot of height. And there were huge flocks of pied oyster catchers on various little grassy islands all the way along here. At Welcome Inlet I was able to turn around and have a screaming sail back to the car. I was even colder today than I had been at the finish yesterday.

In view of the 40knot SSW I was extremely glad that we’d come back yesterday - there was no way I’d have been able to get Lyn back across from Hunter Island today. It would have meant another day or two on Hunter.

The next day was so fine and sunny that I went for another paddle, this time along the western shore of Robbins Island, as far as Little Creek, just in case the paddle may have blown ashore there - no luck.

In hind sight (always the best way to solve things) I should have let the towrope go and rescued the paddle before I rescued Lyn, or better yet (and I’ll do this NEXT TIME) I should have had a paddle leash on the paddle, tying it to the kayak - as Bob always does.

It was a couple of days later that Lyn rang up and said she couldn’t find some of her gear, and I realised that there must still be a bag stuck right up in the stern of the Splinter (containing her gold dress-watch). She was pleased to find out that she hadn’t lost it in the capsize.