The Wrong Way Round….!!

From the time I set foot back on Parrot Cay, I had resolved to try and get into better shape…

The long hours of sitting in one position on the bike, and many other hours hunched over my laptop for a good deal of the past three years, had not been kind to my joints, and while making some muscles work overtime, others had been sadly neglected…

In order to improve matters, I have been attending yoga and Pilates classes on a regular basis, sometimes twice a day… (At this point I can picture a few of my friends falling off their chairs…!!)

The sun rises over North Caicos as I set out from Guest Dock, paddling down the channel…

After two weeks of regular exercise I felt stronger and fitter, and ready for a bigger challenge…

I had asked the activity guides and some of the employees in the boatyard how long they thought it would take to kayak around the island… I received a few blank stares and raised eyebrows… Clearly this was not something that had been done too often…!!

This was the view I would have for the next few hours….

Some said it would take a day, others said 5 or 6 hours… I checked my MapSource program and figured I would have to cover about 12 km to circumnavigate the island, half of it in the quieter waters of the channel between Parrot Cay and North Caicos, and the other half  in the open sea…

I was unable to convince any of the staff members to accompany me, but was determined to make the trip anyway, so resigned myself to having to go it solo…

The Turks and Caicos Islands are surrounded by the third largest Barrier Reef in the world, and much of the water off shore is only a few metres deep, so the term “open sea” in this case is not in reference to deep water ocean… The shallow waters between the outer reef and the island therefore held no fears for me…

It had been a long time since I last spent time in a kayak, so I decided to paddle south down the channel, to get used to the balance of the kayak in the smoother water, and tackle the open water on the way back…

I packed a few apples and a litre of water into my knapsack, and set off from Guest Dock at 7.00 am… A big storm off the island of Bermuda the night before, had changed the height of the tides, pushing more water into the channel and making it easier to paddle over the sandbars that are normally exposed at low tide…

I paddled across the front of the Spa building, which faces towards the channel, and paused to take a photo… The water was calm, but each time I paused to take a photo, the light wind would blow the kayak off course, and point it towards the deeper channel on the edge of North Caicos Island…

The Spa at Parrot Cay, where Patricia and her staff work to relieve the stresses of their guests…

With the water higher than I expected, I was able to hug the shore close to the mangroves and cut a few corners as I I made my way towards South Dock on the southern tip of the island…

The Gypsy Biker is out on the water, using a very different form of transport than he is used to…!!

This sunken barge lies a few hundred metres away from South Dock…

I had quickly set up a rhythm that I was comfortable with and made very good time down the channel… I paddled between a few small islands that were little more than clumps of mangrove that had somehow managed to take root in the channel… I saw very few fish, but did get close up to the many herons and other water birds that had settled on the outer branches of the mangroves…

I reached South Dock barely an hour after settling out, surprised that it had been such an easy paddle… I pulled the kayak up on the concrete slipway and made my way over to the security hut to refill my water bottle…

I arrived at South Dock a lot sooner than expected, paddling across the bow of the catamaran anchored there…

Seeing that I had arrived at South Dock a few hours earlier than I had expected to, I decided that It was still possible to make the 9.00 am Pilates class, so leaving my paddle and life jacket with the security guard on duty, I hoofed it the 3 miles back to the hotel and got there just in time to surprise Patricia who was teaching the class…

After an hour of Pilates, I managed to get a lift back to South Dock from one of the private home owners, and prepared to tackle the second leg of my excursion…

A second security guard was there on his bicycle and when he heard that I was about to attempt the return to Guest Dock  by taking the sea route back, he was incredulous…!!

“You going the wrong way round, brother…!! You gotta go back the way you came… Up the channel…!!”

“I can’t do that, because then I wouldn’t complete my plan to kayak around the island…!!” I replied with a grin…

“Well, it’s gonna take you a long time to get back… The wind is blowing right into your face and getting around Rocky Point is gonna be testing…!! You gonna take a few big hits when you pass there…!! I’ll cycle along the shore to keep an eye on you and then hand you over to the next guard on duty there… Good luck, man…!! You’re gonna need it…!! he chuckled as he mounted his bicycle and pedaled off up the road leading back to the hotel…

Ready for Round 2…!! This was the last photo I took until I beached the kayak an hour later… The sea was too rough to be fiddling with a camera and trying to hold a paddle at the same time…!!

I paddled out into the channel, after first stashing my knapsack and camera in the dry hold in the front of the kayak… I was concerned that I may get pitched over in the waves and did not want to lose my camera…

As soon as I cleared the rocky breakwater and turned north, I knew that i was in for a tough old slog… The wind blew steadily towards me, pushing the waves perpendicular to the shore… Even though I was in water only a four or five feet deep, I had to paddle about 500 metres off shore to stop from being blown off course and too close to the beach…

When I stopped paddling to drink some water, I was driven backwards, and had to paddle 8 to 10 strokes just to get the kayak moving forward again…!! It took ages to pass the various private homes along the shore, and I paddled without pause for half an hour at a time, just to make some progress…

I beached the kayak after an hour, a few hundred metres short of Rocky Point… I was desperate for water and needed to take a short break to ease the strain in my shoulders and lower back…

I had seen the security guard waving to me from various spots along the way and wondered if he had seen me paddle to shore… I was on private property and did not want to hang around too long there…

Up on the beach for a short break…

I was back in the kayak a few minutes later and then headed out to get around Rocky Point… This is an area where the reef runs right up to the shore and cause the water all around it to run in just about every direction…

It was like being in a washing machine…!! When you backside is down at sea level, and you’re battling through waves four feet high, and being blown every which way by the wind, you know you’re in for a tough time…

It took almost 20 minutes to paddle around the point, a distance of only a few hundred metres… At time it felt as though I was going back wards… The wind never let up, and it took another hour before I had passed the main beach of the hotel and eased back into the channel that would take me back to Guest Dock…

The security guard was waiting there for me. He watched as I ran the kayak up onto the narrow strip of beach and staggered ashore…

“Man, you’re tough…!! I thought you was gonna give it up going around the point… You were paddling in the same spot for 15 minutes…!!” he laughed, and then slapped me on the back before walking away…

I dragged the kayak up onto the dock, and lay the paddle down next to it, then threw myself backwards into the water to float there for a few minutes… My arms and shoulders ached something fierce and my lower back felt as if it was on fire…

I knew that I was flirting with heat exhaustion, as I had lost my water bottle coming around Rocky Point… A large wave had hit me from the right as I was watching another coming at me from my left, and the as water swamped the kayak, it washed my water bottle overboard…

It had taken three hours of paddling to get around the island, but as I hobbled back to our apartment, I was happy that I had not given up and had once again had my mettle tested, and won through… Despite my exhaustion, I drank a litre of water before taking a shower and then did a few stretching exercise to try to unravel the knots of muscles in my shoulders and lower back…

Later that afternoon, I went back to the Yoga Pavilion and endured another hour of Yoga…

It had been a long day, and by 8.30 pm I had flopped face down onto our bed and was asleep in minutes…

©GBWT 2012