Seduced by sweetly singing sirens
Sea kayaking at Taiaroa Heads, New Zealand
(This article was written in August 1995, shortly after the experience)
In Dunedin it pays to get on the water early. New paddlers may or may not have heard of the eleven o’clock chop, but Taiaroa Head can be a stern teacher. I had been kayaking Dunedin’s harbour and coastal waters for about six years, and so I was both familiar with local conditions and reasonably experienced. I rose early and headed for Aramoana feeling that it would be enjoyable to do a solo paddle. Conditions from the beach at the base of the mole looked perfect, calm and sunny, but as I assembled my gear, I made my first mistake — no sunscreen. It was so warm that I almost dispensed with my wetsuit, but some sense of caution dissuaded me. Feeling a little silly, I put on my farmer johns, wondering if I was a wimp compared to other sparsely clad paddlers I often encountered. I fixed my water supply to deck and set out across the harbour mouth to Taiaroa Head.
On the ebb tide, the channel between Pilots Beach and Aramoana is fun to paddle, especially when the wind is against the tide and standing waves develop in the rip current. I have seen these waters splash with jumping kahawai. At other times, deep green rolling wave trains are washed with brilliant red surface swarms of lobster krill. These are the pelagic larvae of a primitive galatheid crab that are abundant in Otago waters from November to March. On this day though the channel was calm, and the only sea life was little shags scared up from their roost on a channel marker.
I decided to paddle from Pilots Beach along the cliffs to the outer point of the Heads, and then choose whether to go north or south. Perhaps because I had not made up my own mind, I had not bothered to tell anyone where I was headed or when to expect me home. Mistake number two.
Pilots Beach and Taiaroa Head was home to a thriving colony of New Zealand fur seals. They bred there, and it was common to see very small pups. The seals are fairly accustomed to boats and as I paddled close in to the cliff, most of them ignored me or simply raised their heads to watch me pass with their soulful looking weeping eyes. An old colony of Stewart Island shags had built nest mounds on a large barren patch below the Royal albatross colony and above the seal rocks. As I moved along the shore, one or more of the shags would launch from the roost in a majestic swooping arc and plane over the water. Both the black and pied morphs of Stewart Island shags occur at this colony.
The cliffs themselves are fascinating here. Stratification colours the rock layers and the conglomerate rock adds interesting textures. Small caves provide roosts for little black shags, many of them resplendent with green head plumes. The seals groan and bark and squeal among the boulders. Paddling close in to the rocks I passed near seals nosing into the kelp, lolling their flippers in the air. Other seals porpoised around my boat and flashed beneath me in the clear water. When I got too close to the rookery, a big male came up with a rush of exhaled air as he surfaced to eye me. The eye-to-eye animal contact made my hair prickle and me to realise that I was intruding. I backed off quickly.
At the headland where the red and white Taiaroa light looks down from the cliffs, the white fronted terns slip and slide through the air above their colony. Sometimes we watched Royal albatross soaring from here. But that day was calm and no southerly swell beat on the point.
The coast between Taiaroa and Pipikaretu offers few landings. It is exposed to the south, east and north-east. The few level spots are boulder strewn ledges below tall cliffs, wave-swept and dangerous. There is an awesome beauty to these places. At Pipikaretu the coast changes to a broad sweep of sandy beach, suitable for a surf landing if the swell is not too big. I paddled past the beach to the far headland where I decided it was time to turn for home. I was only forty-five minutes out from Aramoana, yet it felt remote.
Paddling back along Pipikaretu the wind was gentle but steady on my face. I remembered a very experienced friend telling me that the wind could come up quickly on this coast, but I had kept my eye on the sea, and knew how different the ocean looks with the wind behind you compared to the wind in your face. I was experienced, I knew the coast. By now I was getting badly sunburned and began to regret forgetting my sunscreen. The surf on the point seemed to be beating harder now. I took a long pull on my water bottle and headed for home.
As I went the wind strengthened steadily from the north-east. On reaching the point at the northern end of Pipikaretu I realised I had pushed it a bit far. The coastal oceanography here is quite complex. Swells come in from several directions, are reflected from the cliffs and interact with the wind generated waves. The indented coastline diffracts the waves, bending the wave trains to focus their energy on the points. A northward flowing coastal current interacts with strong tidal ebb currents emerging into the coastal waters from two major estuaries and the harbour mouth. The result can be a complex, choppy sea of small, aperiodic, pyramid shaped waves superimposed on unpredictable and irregular surges. The feeling superficially resembles paddling across the chop in a strong rip zone without the current shear, but with the frightening aspect of high cliffs on one side and the open ocean on the other.
Hair raising
I hesitated for a moment. Should I put in at Pipikaretu and walk out, or paddle home? The wind was rising slowly, but steadily. It was a good thirty minutes to the harbour mouth. If I went ashore here I was in for along walk in my wetsuit booties (why had I not put a set of clothes and pair of boots in one of the hatches?). Better still, why was I not rich enough to use my cell phone to call for a lift from the beach? Too late to debate these issues; I decided to paddle back. I put my rudder down, checked my gear and headed into the chop.
The next half hour was a little hair raising. I paddled steadily and evenly into progressively rougher water. The waves were coming side on, tossing the kayak like a bucking horse. I angled my paddle blades for more support and smiled a bit wryly at my exulting over the perfect conditions I left in. I was making steady progress in a rough sea when a reflected wave nearly threw me over. I slapped a recovery with my paddle and paid more attention, reminding myself to relax and trust the boat. Panic is your worst enemy out here. I took some comfort from a motor boat over half a mile away but could not shake the nagging fear that beset me beneath the cliffs. The sea had changed completely in the space of ten minutes to water requiring my full repertoire of kayaking skills. My relief on reaching the harbour entrance was tangible. I surfed the standing waves in the channel feeling light headed. The even, predictable surge of those rolling waves was sheer pleasure after the cliff-shattered chaos of water I’d just paddled through.
On this paddle, I broke all my own safety rules. I went alone, told no one my destination or expected time home, and failed to check the local weather (which forecasted a freshening Nor’easter). I also forgot how quickly a calm sea can turn on you. On reflection though, I wonder how much safer you really are in a group, unless you’ve practised extensively together? You definitely feel safer, but the chances of a deep sea rescue or a tow being successful in such water are not good. Having a bullet-proof roll is definitely an advantage, but the best protection is lots of practise paddling rough water in relatively safe locations. My advice is to not be fooled by the sweetly singing sirens of sea kayaking, and to be prepared, one sunny day, to meet an unforgiving sea.
