Slowly Getting Braver

• Distance: 15.5 km

Yesterday brought big winds, but by this morning the wind had completely dropped off. Swell + no wind = perfect conditions for Penrhyn Mawr. TPC had 21 paddlers and with a Sea Kayak Festival also happening at Anglesey Outdoors, we knew it would be busy. I counted around 35 paddlers at Penrhyn mawr alone!

On the paddle over, we talked about switching from gear 2 to gear 3 to catch waves. Craig set the expectation that when you first put the power down, you don’t actually speed up: leaning forward and using power strokes initially slows you down, but gets you up to “gear 3”.

We warmed up on “mini mawr” and the Chicken Run before practising in the inner and outer races. We paddled down through the outer race a few times, then broke into the middle to practise surfing. I accidentally caught one and instinctively hit the brakes! We didn’t make it to the front of the race, but it looked impressively smooth (if slightly intimidating).

Mark did four roll attempts in the outer race, which was eye-opening. You could really see how quickly a group gets split up in those conditions and Paul and I struggled to see where they had gone, never mind read their hand signals.

We did a couple of ferry glides across the stream to reach our little lunch spot. Afterwards, we headed back to the outer race, but everyone was a bit tired and I need quite a lot of warm-up time to mentally get into the chunky stuff. So instead we journeyed up towards Abraham’s Bosom, passing some interesting geology, and practised a few rescues.

Sarah wasn’t feeling well, so we turned back. By the time we got back to Penrhyn Mawr, the race had dropped significantly. I sat in the smaller waves for a while to boost my confidence, watching the others trying to surf the dying waves. Caoimhe shared some words of wisdom as we paddled back in the sunshine.

With Sarah, Paul & Mark with Craig Leslie (SKUK) leading.