Thursday August 6th 2009
The deck of my kayak is soaking wet here though, so it must have been pretty choppy off the point.
As we arrived at Car ar wig, the tug, minus the rig passed through the sound and out towards jack Sound in the distance. It can be just seen above the stern of Dads kayak above.
After passing through the rock outcrops of Carreg y Esgob and Carreg Fran we had a 5 mins in water so flat it could have been a canal, the sun was out in force now.
After a half hour or so lunch stop at Porth Clais, we headed out again and explored the cliffs and caves along towards Caerfi bay.
Tyf were out with a group of young people, the swell here was fairly big, and I wondered how comfortable some of the group were, the look on 1 or 2 of their faces said it all!
I had the site of these tug wrecks marked on my map, but I didn't expect to see them so easily.
a trip of 9 miles in calm weather.
Porthsele to Solva Harbour
With the weather being changable over the past couple of days, we had managed an afternoon of body boarding, and I had a play in the surf in the Microbat, a couple of big waves breaking on top of me whilst trying to get past the break line. Scary stuff!
We took one of the vehicles around to Solva, and set off from Porthsele at 1030 around 1/2 an hour before slack water.
The beach was relatively deserted at this time, the weather was slightly overcast with little wind.
St Johns point was easily passed today, but the water was confused, I'm pretty sure it was 'slack' as there seemed to be no flow in either direction.
The deck of my kayak is soaking wet here though, so it must have been pretty choppy off the point.
Arriving at Porth Justinian it was clear that the drilling rig was still about its business, on a closer inspection with a tug nosed up to it it looked as if it where about to be moved.
I heard later that the tug was waiting for a weather window to move the platform away, it was costing £17,000 per day for it to sit and wait!
The next day (Fri) I observed the tug towing the platform North across the mouth of Whitesands bay, and it really struggled against the ebb tide, whemn I checked my tide times there was still 3 hours of South flow left, so it must have been painstakingly slow.
The engines were running on the tug, so we sat and had a coffee in the hope we might see it move off, it didn't.
As we arrived at Car ar wig, the tug, minus the rig passed through the sound and out towards jack Sound in the distance. It can be just seen above the stern of Dads kayak above.It looks as though it was off to attend a floating crane that was doing some work on a petroleum terminal at Milford. (from port authority marine notice no.97.
After passing through the rock outcrops of Carreg y Esgob and Carreg Fran we had a 5 mins in water so flat it could have been a canal, the sun was out in force now.
After a half hour or so lunch stop at Porth Clais, we headed out again and explored the cliffs and caves along towards Caerfi bay.
The rock formations here are a geologists dream I'm sure. The shapes and angles of the layers seems to change around every corner.
Tyf were out with a group of young people, the swell here was fairly big, and I wondered how comfortable some of the group were, the look on 1 or 2 of their faces said it all!
I had the site of these tug wrecks marked on my map, but I didn't expect to see them so easily.
I could only see evidence of 1, and with a big swell every so often i didn't fancy finding one submerged under me the hard way!
When we arrived at Solva, we were too early to paddle up to the top slipway, so we went out into the little bay with a rocky steep beach. The water here was shallow, so dad had a little practice at skulling for support!
When the tide had risen enough to paddle up to the slipway we loaded the car and sat outside the pub for a well deserved pint of cider!
Later we climbed Carn Llidi at sunset, a cracking end to a cracking day!
a trip of 9 miles in calm weather.
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