The Met Office had been forecasting light winds for several days but as Wednesday morning approached the amount of cloud cover and precipitation forecast increased although the winds remained almost non existant.
JR and myself met at St Catherines just after 07.00, this morning for a prompt 07.30 departure. It was a predicted height of 35 feet so there was going to be a lot of water moving around and the tidal window for the crossing was pretty limited.
The one thing that we had on our side was that we were both paddling pretty fast kayaks, JR was in his Taran and I was in the Tiderace Pace 17. It was the first time that I had paddled this kayak I was surprised by just how fast it was. We cruised at 5 knots and on the way out with some tidal assistance we hardly dropped below 7 knots for the first 30 minutes. It certainly won't be the last time that I put this kayak on the water.
A day of limited colours. JR on the way to the Ecrehous.
At high water there are restricted landing opportunities. We were the only people on the reef and whilst paddling there and back nobody else contacted the Coastguard on Channel 82. If I hadn't called in I wonder if they would have spoken to anybody else on their shift.
There is almost a rule that you have take a picture from by the bench looking north. See this post to see what it looks like on a sunny day.
Jersey is out there somewhere. This photograph was taken from the same place as the top one in this post.
The tide was pouring north on the eastern side of the reef.
As the tide drops the tombolo uncovers, whilst standing here a Red Throated Diver flew over our heads which was rather a surprise.
Last time I was here 6 weeks ago I fell asleep here in the autumn sunshine, not today.
The bay on the western side of the tombolo looking towards Marmotier.
Almost back to St Catherine's and the island was shrouded in low cloud.
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