Kayaking & "KNUP"ing the Clutha River

Thursday 5 February

Red sky in the morning - kayakers warning! But it all seemed fine…

We hitched up Banjo and towed her carefully to Wānaka Auto Services as one of her brake cables had come detached. Fortunately the other three were all good and our anti-sway kit was compensating for this failure, but fixing it was beyond our skills!

Popped down into town for brekkie at Scroggin; it was warm inside so we moved outside and watched the sparrows helping clean up the dirty plates!! Stealing scrambled egg does seem vaguely cannibalistic though! Went for a stroll by the lake then picked up Banjo & met Possum the dog a couple of hours later. Lunch time was a novelty - over-excited to find pomelo in the supermarket - a favourite from our Vietnam trip in 2018. I made a salad with iceberg, prawns, pomelo, edamame beans and a kewpie sesame dressing - it was delicious 😋

Early afternoon Russ had finished work, we packed up the kayak and the SUPs into RUSSF and made the fateful decision to drive round to Dublin Bay rather than the Outlet Beach to launch them.

Fateful because by the time we got there and pumped up all the craft, the skies had become apocalyptic and the wind was blowing a bit of a hooley across the lake, straight at us, causing quite a bit of chop. 😳 Still, we set off for a gnarly 30-40 minutes up and across to the Outlet - Nickie had a sense of humour failure, Russ took an accidental plunge and Louis & I took on board gallons of water, so it was like sitting in a paddling pool! Quite a swell starting to rise here in the last photo above - got way worse the further we went, but no pics as we were too busy paddling and trying not to take on toooo much water 💦

Finally made it to The Outlet Beach and poured half the lake out of the kayak! We regrouped at beach and set sail in the calmer waters of the Clutha River as it left the lake. This was much more fun, cruising down the fast flowing waters, navigating a few mini-rapids, avoiding a sunken tree and loving the views along the way - especially as the sun popped out occasionally lighting the water a glorious turquoise teal colour 🩵. What a beautiful ride - river was mostly flat, but flowing fast - we hardly paddled at all; Nickie & Russ took it easy much of the way - Russ even stood for some of it and acted as our crow's nest navigator, whereas Nickie preferred the lower centre of gravity!

We cruised in at the camp, sadly in amongst a bunch of slimy didymo algae, dried off, wiped clean the kayak and put it upside down to dry in the sun, picked up the Ute from Dublin Bay (no key confusion for us!) and chilled out with venison burgers, sitting in the shade of the Fernandivan as the sun was scorching by now! ☀️

Met a few more campsite dogs and ducks and Banjo almost git undermined by Kaia, the border collie, who went digging for rabbits under our back leg!!!

What a fab day!