With the HAT and the wind on the Pine Rivers "I'm glad we bought the
Roscoe" did not come into its own until the end. Rigged for sailing, an electric outboard and two double ended paddles, she was armed for motion. Leaving from Bald Hills and heading downstream along the South Pine River it was into a firm incoming
tide. A brief and successful sail towards the North Pine River was kyboshed when we rounded the corner into a persistent pesky headwind. The outriggers limited the paddle sweep turning the push up the river into relatively hard work. It took a while to catch the waiting kayaks and, together with Irena they were into morning tea by the time we pulled into Leis Park.
The river was brown, murky and decidedly uninviting as were the
bull ants in the park. Having thwacked the remaining attacking
ants it was time to relish a piece (or two) or Carol's moist dark
chocolate cake. The Roscoe thought it time to go and took it upon herself to take her leave. Sentiments about the river were swept aside. At least the water was soothing on the butt welts.
Heading upstream the wind persisted as did the hoon element with jet skiers rocketing up the narrow channel. The wind looked like she was changing direction, and given the effort it had taken to get this far we called it a day so we could catch what remaining wind we had in our favour. Lunch was had in an ant free place in the park where the captain now had to forfeit half his lunch in
trade for a small dug out portion of the day's watermelon. In the interim the flooding HAT allowed the rest of group to travel (with a couple of portages) all the way up to the North Pine Water Treatment Plant - at least a further 5Km upstream from the
place we had last run out of water and had lunch on a gravelly river bed with the West End Club.
The wind continued and while fluky allowed for lady muck moments cruising downstream with the feet up, paddle slack, leaning up against the outrigger watching the sea eagles. Nice. Crabbing around into the South Pine River we sailed/motored to windward against the tide. At times she blew a bit more. Enough to take my
hat off, fortunately caught by the captain on the way through otherwise it would have been involuntary swim number two. The wind picked up some more and this was starting to be FUN scooting across the river in front of the jet boats with one outrigger
buried in the drink. Well fun until there was a big wiggle and thrash around at the back of the Roscoe. I thought the captain had gone overboard - you know like one of those horror stories, non sailor marooned in drifting vessel. Turned out to be more hat problems with nothing lost overboard.
Around the ox bow lakes, it all looks pretty much the same and it is easy to see how a night paddle went awry. The only problem today was that getting it wrong could mean a very good workout. As it was, cruising under sail we pulled the right route with some UHF guidance from Mark who had been the first ashore. All
that was missing was a fishing line, a beer, a bowl of grapes and a few kayakers.
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