Paternoster: kayaking in deep water

There’s something delightfully wild about daring the oceans in a tiny kayak. But, as Don Pinnock discovered, dark things from below sometimes come visiting.

When we die – unless we do it in our sleep or fly a Cessna into a mountain without noticing – I suspect our over-riding thought will be: “This is ridiculous!”

That’s the thought I was having hanging upside down in a kayak in mid-ocean unable to pop the skirt. Even dolphins have to come up to breathe occasionally, and the seven-metre kayak attached to my lower body was, right then, preventing me from doing that.

I yanked hard and repeatedly on the release cord to no avail. Then, by accident, I did in panic what inexperience had prevented me from remembering: jacknife my knees. The skirt popped in an explosion of bubbles and I found myself bobbing beside the upturned kayak gasping for air.

“You spent quite a while under there,” said kayak instructor Leon Franken, giving me a hard look.

“Yeah. Great view,” I grumbled, leaning on the point of the kayak to flip it upright.

We’d being doing practice exits off the white-cottage fishing village of Paternoster on the Cape West Coast. This entailed voluntarily rolling into the soul-freezing Atlantic, popping out the kayak, righting it, then clambering back on board. The wetsuits offered little protection, somehow, and the breeze rippling the sea surface and gently lifting the squawking gulls left us teeth-chatteringly cold.

“When we’re done here we can go surfing,” Leon coaxed. “Surfing’s great fun. But remember to brace.”

I didn’t remember. Bracing means leaning on your paddle while jamming it behind a breaking wave. If you don’t, and if you forget to lean into the wave, you roll. In shallow surf that means the heavy kayak slams your face into the sand at speed and you plough the seabed with your jawbone for a while. I write from experience.

Don’t let me put you off, though. Mostly sea kayaking’s fun, and not particularly dangerous. But my extended dunking reminded me that death was a necessary companion to adventure sport: without it lurking in the shadows there’d be no virtue in delightful acts of madness.

Take the skin of a kayak, for instance. A modern sea kayak is a wonderful craft. You’re sealed in, it carries a load sufficient for week-long adventuring, it has a rudder giving it excellent manoeuvrability and it goes like a rocket.

However, out at sea, diving over rollers creasing an unreasonably vast ocean, its two-millimetre shell seemed woefully fragile. Okay, so it’s made from smart fibre laminates. But thinking about it elicited much the same feeling as glancing at the window ledge of a Boeing flying at ten thousand metres and noticing the thinness of the plane’s skin.

Let’s just say that, on that particular day, I was having a tendency to stare into shadows.
Well, building confidence was what we were doing in Paternoster: an advanced course in sea kayaking run by Coastal Kayak Trails under Leon’s watchful eye.

Those who know the place will understand that the location was half the attraction. Just south of Paternoster is Cape Columbine Nature Reserve, its coastline dotted with huge granite boulders, seal colonies and, in the right season, whales.

Paddling round the great rock domes beneath a china-blue sky upon a turquoise sea is the sort of thing that makes kayaks seem easily affordable extras. And people travel round the world to find places like that. So, from afar, a jawful of sand or the lack of air seem minor irritations.

It’s just that there were a number of questions which, on that day, wouldn’t go away, such as how deep was the sea below me and what would happen if a howling southeaster blew us over the horizon?

There was also another question I really should have avoided asking. The sea was kicking up a bit off Columbine, little wavelets going one way and larger swells going another. Every now and then a really big set would come through, lifting the kayaks high enough to see the Columbine lighthouse. We were heading for an isolated pile of ocean-encircled boulders literally cloaked in seals.

The stench was . . . well, intriguing; the sound of roaring bulls spectacular. Beneath our hulls the water was opaque and I got to wondering what might be lurking down there. The wrong question was: “Do you think there are any sharks around?”

Leon gave me a long-suffering look, maybe considering whether to spare me the news, then answered: “Yep. Great whites. They feed round seal colonies. Try not to fall out the kayak.”

As we approached the colony gambolling seals came out to inspect. The sea around us roiled with dark, sinuous bodies. Each one would scoot underwater for a bit, then stick its head up in a good imitation of a car park bollard and go “arf”. Multiply that by several hundred, then add the roaring bulls to the growling breakers, and you have an intimation of the bedlam.

As we paddled away I hung behind the line of kayaks, marvelling at how human-like a rock full of seals can sound-easy to mistake them for mermaids.

Two dark forms suddenly shot under my kayak, did a wide arc and came barrelling back towards me just beneath the surface. The kayak immediately seemed frail and unsteady. I positioned my paddle to swat them off and wobbled precariously, in danger of tipping myself, I imagined, into the hungry jaws of a pair of great whites.

Two sleek, dark heads broke the surface just beyond paddle-swat and said “arf” in two-part harmony. I nearly swatted them anyway. Still, it was a wake-up call. I paddled down the front of a great green roller and up to my buddies bobbing against the horizon.

Out there at butt level the waves are interesting. There are two types: great, long groundswells, often generated by foul weather thousands of kilometres away, and shorter wind-waves whipped up close by-and often travelling in a different direction.

In the deep ocean beyond kayak range the big swells can reach up to 60 kilometres an hour: great for surfing if you have the stomach for it. Sidling up to land, they slow down, averaging a modest 15 kilometres an hour. In an eggshell boat, though, even that’s fast.

It’s much easier, but not as thrilling, paddling into swells. This is because when running with them your kayak tends to want to broach (depending on the type of kayak). But when you go, you really go.

The lift soon passes, of course, and you seem to slide down the back end. If you’re the nervous type, it’s not a good idea to glance over your shoulder just then. A mountain of water from the next swell coming in your direction can be unnerving.

Some earlier paddling lessons reduced the anxiety, though. “Bend your arms only slightly and rotate your body from the hips,” Leon had advised. “Keep only the blade in the water and push with your foot on the same side. That way you transfer the paddle power to the kayak.”

We’d sat on the beach drawing arcs in the sand with our paddles, learning the backward power stroke, the draw stroke, a forward sweep then a back sweep and, in case a wave smacks you on the nose, a back brace. Eskimo rolls? “Later,” Leon had waved away the question. “It’s better to first learn how not to capsize.”Next morning there were whales in the bay. In the still air before the southeaster got going we could hear the “vroosh” of their blowholes. Kayakers in South Africa are able to approach to within 300 metres of these great summer migrants and we were keen to try.

We dutifully kept our distance as the mysterious creatures huffed, slurped and lob-tailed just offshore. Why are whales so compelling?

The tail which slid up among the kayaks was a complete surprise. It belonged, I guessed, to a southern right whale and was heading straight for my boat, completely ignoring the 300-metre limit. It must have been 15 centimetres thick at its base and was a good couple of metres and then some out the water. The half-imagined creature from the shadows had emerged – spectacularly.

I sat, spellbound, curiously unafraid, watching black doom approaching, thinking: “This is ridiculous.” A few metres from my kayak the huge tail slipped under my craft and disappeared. Whales, it seems, have good road sense.

I sat, bobbing in the waves, my ears ringing from the excess of blood my thumping heart had seen fit to deliver. Then I dug my paddles into the sparkling water and powered down a swell, flinging up paddle-scoops of spray and whooping in delight. Maybe death stalks in many guises. But so do angels. And right then, bobbing in a kayak under an airbrushed canopy of sky seemed exactly the right thing to be doing.

10 things to remember when sea kayaking
1. Always kayak according to your capabilities.
2. Do not kayak on your own.
3. Do not venture out in conditions you can’t handle.
4. In new areas, kayak with more experienced kayakers.
5. Watch the weather.
6. Know your and your group’s capabilities-the weakest paddler determines the strength of the group.
7. Thoroughly familiarise yourself with your kayak.
8. Get a weather forecast for each day you are out.
9. Develop your paddling skills, including turning and bracing.
10. Leave a float plan. Let someone know where you’re putting in and when and where you plan to return.