"Over and Back"

On the way to Green Island on Sunday. Clyde and Tony after we had our bite to eat and heading down the south coast of Witless Bay for a small crossing to Green Island. The waters actually turned out to be kind of gnarly over there and we realized that Clyde's' day hatch cover had popped off some where so we headed back. Interesting enough when I was trying out Malcolm's Nordkapp before I bought mine, I forgot to put the day hatch cover on after a short break. We then paddled out into some gnarly conditions, then too, and realized the cover was off but it was tethered and the hacth filled to the top with water. I didn't even know the hatch cover was off til Tony pointed it out. Nordkapps I find, and I discovered this at the pool last week with a cockpit full of water, remain remarkably stable with water in them. I don't recommend paddling that way but good to know when in a bind. As compared to other boats I've paddled with water in them, the Nordkapp is by far more stable. This may be true to a point but one must understand that once sloshing for whatever reason starts to happen inside the boat you can be rest assured that the stability will change for the worst drastically.




Returning from Green Island. Clyde, the distant kayak, paddled across without hatch cover in place but when we hit shore on the other side he did a nifty jerryrig on the hatch by rearranging the gear inside and inserting his inflateable paddle float in the hatch, with the valve sticking out and inflating it to make a tight seal on the hatch opening until we returned to our takeout. Pretty cool I thought.