Woody Head - Black Rock overnighter

Author: josh

Category: Trip Reports

Created on Sunday, 11 April 2010 16:14

Written by Josh

There were several highlights on my 2-day kayak camping & fishing expedition, two of which I failed to catch on cam. I'm still very annoyed at myself for one of those instances because not only did I have time to get the cams switched on, the footage would have been brilliant. I'll come back to that in a moment and will start from the beginning.

Signs were good when I launched at Woody Head (NSW) with a kayak full of camping and fishing gear. With sun shining, near flat water, light winds and birds working in the distance I was off to a good start. It went from good to great when my first cast - thrown into a frenzy of bird, fish and shark activity - was nailed by what felt a lot like a tuna. I'd barely left the launch area and I was getting towed already!

Unfortunately that fish flicked the lure so it all when from great back to just good soon after. A couple of casts later and I noticed a shark chasing my lure in... probably a bronzie, of around 5' long. Back to great again! Next cast had a similar result only this time the shark was a fair bit bigger. I didn't get a good look at this one, but it looked vaguely like a hammerhead. Bird activity had died down by now and I didn't hang around much longer. I had 18km to sail after all and it was already midday. To make things interesting the wind was blowing from the nth east. My bearing was north, so I was pointing into the wind almost as high as I could go. For the most part my northward trek went smoothly, though some wide tacks were required near the end. As the crow flies, this is how it looked in 3D using Google Earth (18km line). I was anything but a crow.

Along the way I spotted numerous other baitfish boils and zig-zagged my way between them, casting in a thick plastic lure whenever it looked right. I managed to catch a tailor doing this, as well as a stripey tuna that (in hindsight) I should have kept as bait (bait fishos were nailing mackerel in some of the usual suspect hotspots). As the sun drew closer to the horizon line, however, it became increasingly challenging to navigate to my mark at Black Rock. According to my GPS I had already passed it by 2km, yet I hadn't seen any patch of land that looked remotely what I was looking for (identified on google earth). So I pushed onwards, figuring that I'd made an error in setting coordinates. The sun had dipped by the time I gave up on trying to find the campsite at Black Rock, and instead scanned the beach for somewhere suitable to land and camp.

The main problem I had now was finding somewhere to come in that looked safe to land. Although the water was relatively flat (1mt seas), dumping waves were crashing hard and from my vantage point from behind I couldn't tell how big they were - but I could tell they were curling high. I spotted an area that looked good for camping and then tried to determine a safe route in. Eventually I found a small break that was flatter than the surrounds - but it wasn't a big window, allowing for no room for error. Curling waves were forming in tight formation left and right of it. It was at this point I should have turned my cams on. I should have also packed away my rods and reels and dissasembled the mast and secured it to the akas.

I sat back just beyond the breaker line and tried to figure out if I should sail in, or just pedal in. In the end I decided pedalling in had the lesser amount of cons involved, which was a big mistake as it turnes out. Because by the time I'd gathered the courage to pedal hard and get into the surf zone, the wind had pushed me closer to the breakers... as in right in their path. Still 80 metres out from land this would not do I figured, so I quickly turned around in the surf to pedal out and then come in again. But it was too late.

I turned right into a wall of water that curled and crashed right over my head, pushing the kayak up (almost into 180 degrees) and backwards. I was pedalling hard again even before the aftermath cleared because I could see another wave forming behind it, which hit me just as hard only seconds later. And as I started pushing into the third one (reminding myself that big waves come in sets of 3) I could feel lactic acid screaming in my legs, threatening to deaden them completely. As the third wave crashed over me I knew it was too late to punch out of there, so I swung around and started pedalling with the waves instead. I didn't like my chances one bit, but I had no energy left to try anything else. Bracing myself for pain as a large wave rolled in from behind and picked up the stern I threw my weight out onto the tramp and in what I can only describe as the bumpiest-ride-ever, somehow I managed to keep it upright as the breaking wave settled. Another rolled in behind it, but by now the worst was behind me - this wave just pushed me to the beach. I'd survived!

It wasn't until I unpacked the yak and pitched the tent that I noticed the 'warning: military range boundary. Live firing - do not enter' sign. I've actually watched the bombing take place here from 20km away before, so I was a little nervous about this. The rolling waves, sounding just like a fighter jet engine all night long, didn't help. Regardless, I slept like a baby all night long and awoke to a slow start on Sunday.

The water was even flater today, though winds were lower to. launching was a simple matter compared to landing and in no time at all I was sailing home. 3 hours later and only a couple km away from land my rod buckled over and the reel started screaming - I was on to a live on here. it only took about 5 minutes of lift and winding for the longtail tuna to surface near the kayak but once it saw me it's second wind came in strong. It took another 10 minutes from that point for me to conquer the fish, which I gaffed aboard. After removing the baby bonito Rapala Magnum lure from it's mouth I then stuck in the knife to bleed it and then set sail for home.