After speaking briefly to our 'mOOse in the hole' (One of the paddlers who couldn't make our final weekend), we set about trying to keep Bertie awake for a whole evening. Going...

Going...

Going...

Gone!


But he did wake up nice and early the next morning and woke us up with good news about the weather. As we lay in our sleeping bags pretending to be asleep Bertie told us that the wind had died down to a force 4, the sun was trying to come out and that if we made a move soon we could complete a shortened version of our original Saturday plan.

We launched at Porth Dafarch beach in the sunshine. Although Bertie had 'lost' his bunny ears we had found them. Although he had then hidden them we had found them again. They made a smashing ornament on his bow.

The plan was to paddle out to Penryn Mawr then on to the stacks, South and North, arriving at North stack in time to play in the races.

Penryn Mawr is featured in the finale of the 'This is the sea' video. I had waqtched that section ten times before we had left for Anglesey. We saw the race from quite a distance. The waves broke the horizon it was white and it was large. It looked much larger than on screen. There are three options when heading through. The chicken run runs fast but flat-ish, the outer race according to Nigel Dennis can back flip you on a big day. We headed for the inner race. The plan was to break out into the eddy behind a large rock to the right. Paul and I ran too far left. Before we could alter our course we were being sucked into the race on a 6 knot flow. We tried an agressive ferry glide but that just delayed our arrival to coincide with a large set coming towards us. Only one option left, straighten up tuck down and punch through a collapsing 6 foot wall of water. After a few more wet moments we got across and broke out into the eddy.

Paul in the Penryn Mawr eddy.

Bertie in the Penryn Mawr eddy.

David in the Penryn Mawr eddy.

We decided that it was too early in the day to get so cold if something went wrong so we headed on towards South Stack.

The paddle across the bay was tough due to a eddie so we kept well out into the tidal flow. When we got close to the stack however we couldn't make any ground. We decided to go between the stack and Holy Island, under the bridge.

This seemed daunting. The flow was still strong and good paddling only meant that you could hold your position. The swell was coming through and bouncing awkwardly off the cliffs. We had a 3 metre gap 10 metres long. The only way could make any progress was to paddle to hold position and line, then as the swell went through, surf down the back of it avoiding the rocks that appeared in the trough. A bit unerving, but again this is the kind of thing we had covered in our last 6 months of coaching so all was good.

Out the back of South Stack we kept close into the cliffs and worked our way around Golgarth Bay. This was fun. I was closer to the rocks than I would normally be and in one of the largest seas I have ever paddled in.

We reached North Stack quickly and although the flow was not yet at it's strongest the race behind it looked like fun, so off we went for a play. After all that's why we had come here.

You'll have to forgive the quality of the next few photos. They were taken whilst in the race. They don't really do any justice to what we were playing in but I took these while we surfed 2 metre high waves with other waves crashing in to us at odd angles. It was a real point and click moment. I didn't even look through the view finder. But boy was it good fun!!!

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