Sea kayaking at Kraalbaai, West Coast National Park30 Sep - 2 Oct 2002 |
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| Hiking and wilderness trail diaries Kayaking Hangklip to Gordons Bays ... and more |
Well, it's not quite hardcore kayaking. I'm new to the sport, having got tired of waiting for wind that sometimes never comes during twenty-three years of windsurfing. Now there's an alternative. These couple of days gave me time to familiarise myself with my new Kaskazi Duo kayak. Kraalbaai is also one of my favourite places. It is located in the West Coast National Park and is the site where 117 thousand-year-old human footprints were recently discovered. The lagoon, a Ramsar wetland site, is a big expanse of water and we paddled plenty of km's. Conditions ranged from sublime calm to 30-knot squalls out of the west. Calm days are unusual for the west coast in late spring - usually the southerly kicks in at midday like clockwork, making Kraalbaai a favourite dragstrip for mellow, older windsurfers and their families. I can remember pioneering windsurfing here when I lived nearby during the early eighties. Then there would be two of us sailing in solitude...
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