kayaking the Noosa Canals

James and I rented a sea kayak for a day while we were in Noosa so that we could take it out on the ocean and then into the canals. We had this grand idea of paddling to a remote little beach in the Noosa National Park to have a picknick lunch, sunbathe and do some swimming.
As some of you may or may not know, James is a National Kayaking Champion here in Australia so i was not the least bit worried about heading out to sea with him. I opted not to bring my camera just in case we somehow got wet or our bag fell in the water.

As we started our kayaking journey, we had to walk the kayak out a little ways past a jetty where the guy who rented us the kayak explained that there was a rip and that it would pull us out into the ocean. So huge rocks to the right, huge breaking waves to the left. ugh.
I opted to take the front seat and got into the kayak first. James was yelling at me to start paddling and i see this HUGE wave coming toward us. Naturally im getting a bit panicked and my instinct is telling me to turn around....NOPE. James is paddling so hard that their is no way i will be able to make the boat turn around. The wave just breaks on the bow of the kayak and i got a full facefull of sea water. It was also only about 9 am in the morning so the air temp hadn't quite reached full warmth. There i was out to sea, already soaking wet in the first 5 minutes.

We paddled for about 2.5 hours over towards the national park. Stopping to watch the surfers along the way. As we rounded the bend of the shore we decided to head towards Granite Bay which is a beautiful secluded little beach that you have to hike through the park to get to. James was itching to do some wave riding and i was ready to go do some sunbathing and have some lunch. The waves were pretty big so at this point we had no choice but to ride the kayak in.
Now the last time i tried this was in Florida and i ended up with a mouthful of water, sand in my pants and sunglasses lost to sea. It was not a fun experience and i wasn't really looking forward to doing it again. In any case i complied, i had no choice if i wanted to get to shore.

Our wave riding started out beautifully, it was pushing us along towards the beach and James seemed like he had things under control. GLORIOUS....and then i felt the kayak turning sideways and before i knew it i was under the water trying to stay away from the kayak. All the contents of the boat were dumped. Lifevests were in the water, hats were in the waves, paddles floating away, the boat safely at shore and there was our lunch bag floating away. By this point i was praying that it was semi-waterproof and that our lunch hadn't been seasoned with the saltwater. When i opened the bag there was a bit of water in the bottom of the bag but everything looked fine. Until i picked up one soggy sandwhich and then a second. yuck. Luckily that was the only thing that soaked up any water so we had a very lite luch of apples, eggs, potato chips and water. So glad i didn't bring my camera, it wouldve been ruined.


In the afternoon we took it easy and headed over to the canals. No waves, calm water. It was perfect!




Took a few pics of other houses that i thought were cool.