Setev kayaking
Day 24 Report

Day 24 - 5/5/08 - Mooloolaba to Caloundra

The wind was light initially from the South West and swinging to the South. Maximum gusts were 12 knots with a lot of the time less than 10 knots. This made for a very pleasant run down the coast but the tide at the Caloundra bar was awful.

Crossing the bar was a bit hairy with some side bouncing on the broken waves but the kayak stayed upright all the way in. The river was running out at 10 knots or more so there was no chance of paddling all the way in. After a bit of hopping between rocks I got washed sideways and backwards and gave up and walked the 100m around the worst bit.

At Noosa the coastguard said the outgoing tide reached 14 knots. These speeds are not natural. Both of these bars have canal estates upstream. These mean that more water must come in and out the bar every tide. To fix this problem the Gold Coast built the seaway around 1980. Maybe this offends some people but they certainly found the link and had to do something about the results from the canal estates.

When we pulled into the car park at Mooloolaba there was a very pleasant surprise which was pure coincidence. The bloke who was in front of me when I crashed my motorbike in soft sand near Alice Springs is called Laurie. At that time he had a pain in his chest and stopped the bike. When he looked back there was no dust where I should have been. When he found me he said it looked like a train wreck and he did not think I would make it. To cut a long story short I did make it, I have completed thousands of kilometres paddling in the past almost two years and there was Laurie with his wife Sue this morning.




Leaving Mooloolaba
John, Steve & Jessica


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